Dr. Claire Hart

I appreciate it.

Yeah, I think the response, we've done a lot of research on fubbing now, and whenever I do talk about it with anybody, that is the first response.

It's rude.

But what we wanted to do here was show that for some people, the phone is actually being used as a way of meeting psychological needs.

So it's not just about rudeness, it's

You know, for people who are using their phone for reassurance, for validation, for feeling important.

And yes, the consequence is that you then fub your partner.

But there's a reason why you're doing that.

Definitely.

I mean, we were actually interested in whether certain people are more likely to fob than others.

So we actually drew on attachment theory, which explains how people differ in how secure they are in their close relationships.

So attachment styles, they basically develop from early experiences that you have growing up.

And most people are generally secure, but there are other people who fall into that insecure category.

So you might be high in what we call attachment anxiety, where you tend to worry about rejection and abandonment and you really crave reassurance.

Or you might be high in attachment avoidance, where you're quite uncomfortable with closeness and you prefer emotional distance and independence.

So we wanted to see how that impacts whether or not you're likely to fub and how you perceive being fubbed by other people.

Very true.

So in our study, we found that people who were more anxiously attached are the ones that really crave reassurance.

They were much more likely to feel hurt when their partner fubbed them.

Completely understandable because they're seeing this as a form of rejection.