Authored by Luiza Quinn* & Linda K. Kaye
*Luiza Quinn is currently a BSc (Hons) Psychology Student at Edge Hill University
Online messaging has become a huge part of daily life for most people which makes this field within psychology fascinating to study. Here is an example of a study in this field that helps us understand people’s personality based on their use of WhatsApp.
Montage et al. (2015) explored WhatsApp use to assess how dominating it is in our lives, aiming to provide some descriptive analysis on smartphone usage and its association to personality traits. WhatsApp is one of the most commonly used communication applications but it is scarcely researched, especially in the context of personality inferences, so this research widened scientific discussions.
How Was This Done?
The researchers used Psychoinformatics which uses computer science methods and directly records behaviour on a daily basis. Utilising a custom-developed application called Menthal, the researchers could track users’ smartphone use over a four week experimentation period.
Users’ personality was explored using a questionnaire taken from the Five Factor Model of Personality which measured extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. In total, 2,418 WhatsApp users, with mean age of 24.64 took part in the study.
So What Did They Find?
The objective log data from Menthal showed that WhatsApp users used their smartphones for 162 minutes per day on average, whereby 32 minutes of this time was WhatsApp (19.83% of the time). Interestingly there were significant differences in overall smartphone usage for gender: women used WhatsApp for 40.08 minutes in each day whereas men only 26.94 minutes.
In terms of personality, WhatsApp use was positively correlated with the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism, and inversely correlated to conscientiousness. This provides support that conscientious people may handle their consumption of online communication technology more carefully. This helps us get a more nuanced understanding of the individual differences which underpin online behaviour, and therefore why a user-centred approach to digital consumption and experiences is important.
Article citation
Montage, C., Blaszkiewicz, K., Sariyska, R., Lachmann, B., Androne, I., Trendafilov, B., Eibes, M., & Markowetz, A. (2015). Smartphone usage in the 21st Century: Who is active on WhatsApp? BMC Research Notes, 8(1). Article 331, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-015-1280-z
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