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Big five personality traits and problematic mobile phone use: A meta-analytic review

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Abstract

This article reports a meta-analysis of the relationships between the Big Five personality traits and problematic mobile phone use (PMPU). After searching and screening the literature, a total of 36 studies involving 15,660 participants were included in the analysis. Using the random-effects model, the results indicated that neuroticism and extraversion were positively associated with PMPU. Conversely, agreeableness and conscientiousness were negatively associated with PMPU, while openness showed no association with PMPU. The result also showed that culture could moderate the relationship between openness and PMPU. Specifically, the negative relationship between openness and PMPU was not significant in collectivist culture but was significant in individualistic culture. In conclusion, high neuroticism, high extraversion, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness are associated with PMPU. Moreover, the relationship between neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness and PMPU is relatively stable. Besides, cultural background moderates the relationship between openness and PMPU.

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Notes

  1. Hemphill (2003) recommended a reconceptualization of effect sizes in psychological research, in which r = .10 is “small”, r = .20 is “medium”, and r = .30 is “large”.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (Project No. 11&ZD151), Research Program Funds of the Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality at Beijing Normal University (BJZK-2018A2-18030) and the Fundamental Research Funds of Central China Normal Universities (Project No. CCNU18CXTD03). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

We thank editor and reviewers for their work for this paper. We also thank all the authors for their providing of data. We would like to express our deep gratitude to Ran Zhou, Yunfei Wang and Chengyang Han for their contributions to our research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Adolescent Cyberpsychology and Behavior (CCNU), Ministry of Education, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Lingfeng Gao, Sumin Zhai, Heping Xie, Qingqi Liu, Gengfeng Niu & Zongkui Zhou

  2. School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Lingfeng Gao, Sumin Zhai, Heping Xie, Qingqi Liu, Gengfeng Niu & Zongkui Zhou

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  1. Lingfeng Gao
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  2. Sumin Zhai
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  3. Heping Xie
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Correspondence to Zongkui Zhou.

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All procedures performed in this study were approved by the Ethics in Human Research Committee of Central China Normal University and in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Gao, L., Zhai, S., Xie, H. et al. Big five personality traits and problematic mobile phone use: A meta-analytic review. Curr Psychol 41, 3093–3110 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00817-x

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