How smartphones erode trustworthiness
Studies show that every day, the average American checks their phone almost 100 times, spending more than five hours staring down at a screen. While this may seem like a fine diversion, a new study by Sandy Campbell, PhD 24, shows that it may come at a social cost.
Campbell and Professor Uri Gneezy of UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management found that being on our phones instead of engaging with other people can affect our trustworthiness.
For their experiment, published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, groups of six students waited together for 20 minutes. Some groups were allowed to have phones; other groups were not. The researchers then paired up students for a trust game that gave them the chance to earn more money back by sharing more with their partner up front—if they trusted the partner to actually split the final pot.
Among people who didn’t have phones, those who also interacted with others in the waiting room tended to share more up front than those who didn’t interact. The partners without phones also gave back more than those with phones—and more than those with phones initially received. Campbell attributes this generosity to the trust engendered when people connect. “If you’re not looking someone in the eye, you’re almost treating them as less than human—it’s just money,” she says. “But if you’d looked up and smiled and chatted, then you’d developed more of a sense of who this person is.”
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