Phubbing and Anxiety
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What is phubbing and why is it significant?
The human algorithm, where emotional inputs create unexpected outputs. The Last Show with David Cooper. Do you think your partner is addicted to their phone? Do they look at it constantly while you're trying to have a conversation? What if that little glowing screen they stare at while they talk to you isn't a sign of disrespect? It's attachment anxiety in disguise. So let's ask this question. Has your smartphone become your emotional support blanket? That is what Dr. Claire Hart has researched. She's a psychology professor at the University of Southampton in the UK. Claire, what a joy it is to have you on the show. Aren't you glad I'm not staring at my phone while we start talking?
I appreciate it.
Fubbing, which is maybe my favorite annoying word. It means snubbing people by going on your phone. I think the immediate reaction when you're talking to someone and they whip out their phone and pay attention to it is that it's rude. But you thought to ask the question, is something else going on with that person?
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.
Could it have something to do with anxiety?
How does attachment anxiety relate to smartphone use?
If it's at a party, maybe social anxiety. If it's when you're alone with your partner, maybe just like a general form of anxiety. Could it have something to do with 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.
So how does my attachment style affect whether I'm going to fub? Side note, I always find this attachment theory kind of rude because there's four kinds and only one seems good. The other three seem kind of bad.
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. But they were also more likely to actually engage in fubbing.
Oh, no.
Which was really, really interesting.
That's not good.
Those who were avoidantly attached. So they were particularly likely to perceive fubbing, but they weren't actually more likely to fub themselves. Right.
Okay, that's probably where I land on the attachment style thing.
But then we did something a little bit more interesting. So we tried to look at, you know, like what's that psychological bridge? And we threw out materialism. So we found that people who actually place greater importance on their possessions, their status, their external sort of symbols of success were actually more likely to translate that attachment insecurity into fobbing behaviours.
Interesting. So the anxious partner, the materialistic partner fubs more. That's right. Perhaps feels more hurt by being fubbed at the same time. Yeah. That's got to be a rough way to be, right?
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