The mobile phone… not to miss in our communication. But it also has negative sides, it can disturb and cause attention problems to people when they are face-to-face.
Scientists from Essex wanted to show this helped by 68 participants. Those were split into two groups. The first group had at the experimental time a mobile phone on the desk, at the second group, not.
Every participant from the two groups received a discussion partner during 10 minutes. There were discussed different topics but also important and deep-rooted topics.
After the discussion, the participants had to complete questionnaires about empathy and about the trust they felt from the discussion partner.
From the testing, it resulted that the presence of the mobile phone had a negative impact on the discussion quality, especially when profound topics were discussed.
The disposition of the group with a mobile phone on the desk was lower after the discussion compared to those from the group without a mobile phone on the desk.
Conclusion: The mobile phone influences people unconsciously by suggesting a presence of a bigger social group. And this interferes with the intimacy of a vis-a-vis discussion.