Smartphones can make our conversations less fulfilling

If you often pull out your smartphone during a conversation, it may leave your partner feeling less connected to you, according to a new study.
The mere presence of a smartphone is enough to drag down the quality of a face-to-face conversation, the study led by an Indian-origin scientist has found.
Shalini Misra, a psychology professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, found that during conversations where someone pulled out a smartphone while talking, the participants rated the conversation as less fulfilling and felt less connected to their partner than in conversations where no one pulled out a phone.
"Mobile phones hold symbolic meaning in advanced technological societies. In their presence, people have the constant urge to seek out information, check for communication and direct their thoughts to other people and worlds," researchers said.

Previous studies have shown that "cyber-based overload" makes people feel compelled to multitask and constantly check their phones, emails and social networks.
People are also becoming more and more obsessed with cultivating horizontal relationships: vast networks of shallow relationships with people who are not present, with a smartphone acting as the portal, according to Misra.

The compulsion to check phones and the need to stay tied into the horizontal network can make people withdraw from the present, and it can create resentment among family and friends, Misra and her co-authors wrote.
Misra and the research team divided 200 coffee shop visitors into pairs. They were assigned either a casual topic to discuss, such as their thoughts and feelings about plastic Christmas trees, or a more serious topic, such as the most meaningful events that happened in the past year.

A researcher then observed the participants during a 10-minute conversation about the given topic.
The observers did not record the content of the conversation, but sat at a distance and recorded only if the participants pulled out a phone or set one on the table.
The researchers report that someone pulled out a phone in 29 of the 100 groups, 'Live Science' reported.
After the conversation, the participants were asked to fill out a survey describing how close their relationship was, how close they felt to the other person during the conversation and how well they thought their partner understood them during the conversation.

In the conversations where someone pulled out a phone, the participants reported feeling less fulfilled and feeling less empathy for the other person.
The topic of conversation did not influence whether or not the participants felt that they had a fulfilling conversation.
Further, researchers found that phones affected close friends more than casual friends. In pairs of people who knew each other very well, the presence of a phone had an even bigger negative effect on the perceived quality of the conversation.