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Do you get frustrated and angry when your WiFi connection stops working? It could be because of your personality.
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When digital technology stops working, people with a fear of missing out (FOMO) -AMAZONPOLLY-ONLYWORDS-START-–-AMAZONPOLLY-ONLYWORDS-END- the anxiety that you’re missing a social experience others might be having while you’re not online – or an internet addiction have more extreme reactions, according to a new study published in Heliyon.
The researchers behind the study, psychologists Dr Lee Hadlington and Dr Mark Scase from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU), also show that certain personality traits directly influence people’s responses to failures in digital technology: people who were seen as being more neurotic and extrovert had more extreme reactions to failures in digital technology.
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Anxiety and Personality : The Concept of a Directing Object and its Applications
“The ‘frustration’ response is one of the things we all experience on a daily basis, so it seemed to be a logical step in our research,” said lead author Dr Lee Hadlington. “Much of the existing research on this topic is from the 1940s – you could say that this research is the first of its kind to actually explore how individual react to failures with digital technology, and more importantly, places this in the context of the modern digital era.”
If something goes wrong with digital technology that prevents us from being online, we will react in different ways. ‘Maladaptive’ responses include getting angry, panicking or feeling depressed; these responses are not only unhelpful, they have also been shown to have a detrimental impact on productivity and achieving goals, and can therefore lead to poor job performance.
If the digital technology failure is due to a malicious cyberattack, this could affect many people and businesses, so it’s important to understand the responses in order to limit the negative effects.
“If we can understand what leads individuals to react in certain ways, and why these differences occur, we can hopefully make sure that when digital technology does fail people are better supported and there are relevant signposts for them to follow to get help,” said Dr. Hadlington.
In the study, 630 participants aged 18-68 completed an online questionnaire in which they self-reported their responses to failures in digital technology, fear of missing out, internet addiction and answered questions that scored them on the BIG-5 personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. -AMAZONPOLLY-ONLYWORDS-START-Take the test here-AMAZONPOLLY-ONLYWORDS-END-
Source: De Montfort University
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