Smartphones reduce smiles between strangers

Smartphones reduce smiles between strangers. Kostadin Kushlev et al. Computers in Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.09.023

Highlights
•    Strangers smiled less to one another when they had their phones in a waiting room.
•    Participants were randomly assigned in pairs to have or not have their phones.
•    Smiling behavior was coded by trained researchers blind to hypotheses.
•    The effects applied to frequency of Duchenne smiles and to total smiling time.
•    This preregistered study shows that phones are altering the fabric of social life.

Abstract: New developments in technology—from the printing press to television—have long facilitated our capacity for “absent presence,” enabling us to escape the limits of our immediate environment. Does being constantly connected to other people and activities through our smartphones diminish the need to engage with others in the immediate social world, reducing the likelihood of approach behavior such as smiling? In a preregistered experiment, strangers waited together with or without their smartphones; their smiling was later coded by trained assistants. Compared to participants without smartphones, participants with smartphones exhibited significantly fewer smiles of any kind and fewer genuine (Duchenne) smiles. These findings are based on objective behavioral coding rather than self-report and provide clear evidence that being constantly connected to the digital world may undermine important approach behavior.