Psychosocial Outcomes and Emotion Processing in Media Multitaskers

Abstract

Media multitasking refers to the simultaneous use of more than one media form (Ophir et al., 2009). This definition has sometimes been inclusive of using media while doing a non-media activity such as interacting with others (Xu et al., 2016). This research examined the relationship between media multitasking, psychosocial well-being and personality traits. Additionally, this research investigated media multitaskers’ emotion processing on three established attention tasks. Existing research has shown that media multitasking is associated with poorer psychological (Becker et al., 2013) and general well-being (Pea et al., 2013). A principle aim of the present research was to expand on the existing literature by exploring the link between media multitasking and a range of psychosocial well-being constructs including trait depression, trait anxiety, social anxiety, general well-being, and empathy. A link between media multitasking and personality traits has also been reported in the literature, however only a few traits have been examined to date (e.g., impulsivity, sensation seeking). One aim of the current research was to expand on this by exploring other personality traits such as the Big 5 (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness) and narcissism. Therefore, the link between media multitasking and well-being has been reported, and the link between media multitasking and personality appears to be present as well. Yet, how these three variables might intertwine with each other has yet to be investigated. In the present research, Study 1 examined the relationship between media multitasking, psychosocial well-being (trait depression, trait anxiety, social anxiety, general well-being, and empathy), and personality traits (Big 5 and narcissism) through an online survey. The study examined if media multitasking mediated the relationship between personality traits and psychosocial outcomes. Study 1 also investigated the specific association between using media while interacting with others, and how this behaviour contributes to psychosocial well-being after controlling for personality variables. Study 2 was a word rating study that was necessary to generate comparable face and word stimuli sets that would be used in Study 3. This was needed because word databases have generally categorised words into positive and negative categories only, or have used words that may have subjective meaning attached to it (e.g., objects or occasions). Study 3 employed three well-established attention tasks: the dot-probe paradigm, visual search task, and attentional blink task. These tasks are designed to measure selective, spatial and temporal attention, respectively. Across the tasks, happy, angry and neutral faces and words were used. The primary research questions of interest were: (a) whether heavy media multitaskers perform worse on attention tasks compared to light and average media multitaskers; (b) whether different groups of media multitaskers have attentional biases towards specific emotions; and (c) whether the group differences are consistent across the three attention tasks. Findings from Study 1 showed that higher levels of media multitasking were related to poorer levels of psychosocial well-being, in particular, trait depression, trait anxiety, general well-being, and empathy. Further analyses showed that media multitasking partially mediated a number of the relationships between personality traits and psychosocial well-being outcomes. Study 1 also found that using media while interacting with others was associated with higher levels of trait depression, trait anxiety, social anxiety, and lower levels of general well-being, and empathy. Whereas previous studies have found that heavy media multitasking is related to performance on several cognitive tasks such as task switching (Cardoso-Leite et al., 2016; Ophir et al., 2009), filtering (Cardoso-Leite et al., 2016; Ophir et al., 2009), and working memory tasks (Ralph & Smilek, 2017; Uncapher et al., 2016), findings from Study 3 showed a significant group difference on the dot-probe task in relation to emotion bias, but not on overall performance. There were no group differences found on the visual search and attentional blink tasks. Potential explanations for these unexpected findings are outlined and discussed. The overall performance on each task also produced results showing some biases towards emotions compared to neutral stimuli, but this was not consistent across all conditions nor across faces and word tasks. This was likely due to the use of subtle stimuli and task instructions which resulted in an inconsistency with previous research showing robust effects for emotional biases. This research provides a better understanding of how an increasingly prevalent behaviour such as media multitasking can potentially contribute to people’s well-being and cognitive performance. This has practical implications for the need to highlight cautionary use of multiple media forms concurrently, as it is currently increasingly encouraged or sometimes necessary in schools, workplaces, and homes.