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THECONSUMERINACONNECTEDWORLD
Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own
Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
ADRIAN F. WARD, KRISTEN DUKE, AYELET GNEEZY, AND MAARTEN W. BOS
ABSTRACT Our smartphones enable—and encourage—constant connection to information, entertainment, and
each other. They put the world at our fingertips, and rarely leave our sides. Although these devices have immense po-
tential to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost. In this research, we test the “brain
drain”hypothesis that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources,
thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance. Results from two
experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding
the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity. More-
over, these cognitive costs are highest for those highest in smartphone dependence. We conclude by discussing the
practical implications of this smartphone-induced brain drain for consumer decision-making and consumer welfare.
We all understand the joys of our always-wired world—the connections, the validations, the laughs ...the info. ... But we are only beginning to get
our minds around the costs.
—Andrew Sullivan (2016)
The proliferation of smartphones has ushered in an
era of unprecedented connectivity. Consumers around
the globe are now constantly connected to faraway
friends, endless entertainment, and virtually unlimited in-
formation. With smartphones in hand, they check the
weather from bed, trade stocks—and gossip—while stuck
in traffic, browse potential romantic partners between ap-
pointments, make online purchases while standing in-store,
and live-stream each others’experiences, in real time, from
opposite sides of the globe. Just a decade ago, this state of
constant connection would have been inconceivable; today,
it is seemingly indispensable.
1
Smartphone owners interact
with their phones an average of 85 times a day, including
immediately upon waking up, just before going to sleep,
and even in the middle of the night (Perlow 2012; Andrews
et al. 2015; dscout 2016). Ninety-one percent report that
they never leave home without their phones (Deutsche
Telekom 2012), and 46% say that they couldn’t live without
them (Pew Research Center 2015). These revolutionary de-
vices enable on-demand access to friends, family, col-
leagues, companies, brands, retailers, cat videos, and much
more. They represent all that the connected world has to of-
fer, condensed into a device that fits in the palm of one’s
hand—and almost never leaves one’s side.
The sharp penetration of smartphones, both across
global markets and into consumers’everyday lives, repre-
sents a phenomenon high in “meaning and mattering”
(e.g., Kernan 1979; Mick 2006)—one that has the potential
to affect the welfare of billions of consumers worldwide.
As individuals increasingly turn to smartphone screens
for managing and enhancing their daily lives, we must
ask how dependence on these devices affects the ability to
Adrian F. Ward (adrian.ward@mccombs.utexas.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing in the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin,
2110 Speedway, Austin, TX 78712. Kristen Duke (kristen.duke@rady.ucsd.edu) is a PhD candidate in marketing at the Rady School of Management, Uni-
versity of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093. Ayelet Gneezy (agneezy@ucsd.edu) is an associate professor of behavioral sciences
and marketing at the Rady School of Management, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093. Maarten W. Bos (mbos
@disneyresearch.com) is a research scientist at Disney Research, 4720 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. The authors thank Jiyoung Lee, Stephanie
Schwartz, Yael Horwitz, and the Atkinson Behavioral Lab for research assistance.
1. In 2007, only 4% of American adults owned smartphones (Radwanick 2012). As of January 2017, 77% of American adults—and 92% of those under
the age of 35—own smartphones (Pew Research Center 2017). Penetration is similarly high in most Western nations, and even higher in several Middle
Eastern and Asian countries. South Korea, for example, has a national smartphone ownership rate of 88%, including 100% of those under 35 (Pew Research
Center 2016).
JACR, volume 2, number 2. Published online April 3, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/691462
©2017 the Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved. 2378-1815/2017/0202-0009$10.00
think and function in the world off-screen. Smartphones
promise to create a surplus of resources, productivity, and
time (e.g., Turkle 2011; Lee 2016); however, they may also
create unexpected deficits. Prior research on the costs and
benefits associated with smartphones has focused on how
consumers’interactions with their smartphones can both
facilitate and interrupt off-screen performance (e.g., Isik-
man et al. 2016; Sciandra and Inman 2016). In the present
research, we focus on a previously unexplored (but com-
mon) situation: when smartphones are not in use, but are
merely present.
We propose that the mere presence of one’s own smart-
phone may induce “brain drain”by occupying limited-
capacity cognitive resources for purposes of attentional con-
trol. Because the same finite pool of attentional resources
supports both attentional control and other cognitive pro-
cesses, resources recruited to inhibit automatic attention
to one’s phone are made unavailable for other tasks, and
performance on these tasks will suffer. We differentiate be-
tween the orientation and allocation of attention and argue
that the mere presence of smartphones may reduce the
availability of attentional resources even when consumers
are successful at controlling the conscious orientation of at-
tention.
COGNITIVE CAPACITY AND
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Consumers’finite capacity for cognitive processing is one
of the most fundamental influences on “real world”con-
sumer behavior (e.g., Bettman 1979; Bettman, Johnson,
and Payne 1991). Individuals are constantly surrounded
by potentially meaningful information; however, their abil-
ity to use this information is consistently constrained by
cognitive systems that are capable of attending to and pro-
cessing only a small amount of the information available at
any given time (e.g., Craik and Lockhart 1972; Newell and
Simon 1972). This capacity limit shapes a wide range of be-
haviors, from in-the-moment decision-making strategies
and performance (e.g., Lane 1982; Lynch and Srull 1982)
to long-term goal pursuit and self-regulation (e.g., Hof-
mann, Strack, and Deutsch 2008; Benjamin, Brown, and
Shapiro 2013).
Consumers’cognitive capabilities—and constraints—are
largely determined by the availability of domain-general,
limited-capacity attentional resources associated with both
working memory and fluid intelligence (e.g., Halford, Cowan,
and Andrews 2007; Jaeggi et al. 2008). “Working memory”
(WM) refers to the theoretical cognitive system that sup-
ports complex cognition by actively selecting, maintaining,
and processing information relevant to current tasks and/
or goals. “Working memory capacity”(WMC) reflects the
availability of attentional resources, which serve the “cen-
tral executive”function of controlling and regulating cogni-
tive processes across domains (Baddeley and Hitch 1974;
Miyake and Shah 1999; Engle 2002; Baddeley 2003). “Fluid
intelligence”(Gf) represents the ability to reason and solve
novel problems, independent of any contributions from ac-
quired skills and knowledge stored in “crystallized intelli-
gence”(Cattell 1987). Similar to WM, Gf stresses the ability
to select, store, and manipulate information in a goal-directed
manner.AlsosimilartoWM,Gfisconstrainedbytheavail-
ability of attentional resources (e.g., Engle et al. 1999; Halford
et al. 2007). Crucially, the limited capacity of these domain-
general resources dictates that using attentional resources
for one cognitive process or task leaves fewer available for
other tasks; in other words, occupying cognitive resources re-
duces available cognitive capacity.
Given the chronic mismatch between the abundance of
environmental information and the limited ability to pro-
cess that information, individuals need to be selective in
their allocation of attentional resources (e.g., Kahneman
1973; Johnston and Dark 1986). The priority of a stimu-
lus—that is, the likelihood that it will attract attention—
is determined by both its physical “salience”(e.g., location,
perceptual contrast) and its goal “relevance”(i.e., potential
importance for goal-directed behavior) (e.g., Corbetta and
Shulman 2002; Fecteau and Munoz 2006). Preferential at-
tention to temporarily relevant stimuli, such as those asso-
ciated with a current task or decision, is supported by WM;
when a goal is active in WM, stimuli relevant to that goal
are more likely to attract attention (e.g., Moskowitz 2002;
Soto et al. 2005; Vogt et al. 2010). Frequently relevant stim-
uli, such as those associated with long-term and/or self-
relevant goals, may automatically attract attention even
when the goals associated with these stimuli are not active
in WM (Shiffrin and Schneider 1977; Johnston and Dark
1986); for example, individuals automatically orient to
the sounds of their own names in ignored audio channels
(Moray 1959), and mothers, more so than nonmothers,
automatically attend to infants’emotional expressions
(Thompson-Booth et al. 2014). Automatic attention gen-
erally helps individuals make the most of their limited
cognitive capacity by directing attention to frequently goal-
relevant stimuli without requiring these goals to be con-
stantly kept in mind. However, automatic attention may
undermine performance when an environmental stimulus is
Volume 2 Number 2 2017 141
frequently relevant to an individual’s goals but currently irrel-
evant to the task at hand; inhibiting automatic attention—
keeping attractive but task-irrelevant stimuli from interfer-
ing with the contents of consciousness—occupies attentional
resources (e.g., Engle 2002).
Smartphones serve as consumers’personal access points
to all the connected world has to offer. We suggest that the
increasing integration of these devices into the minutiae of
daily life both reflects and creates a sense that they are fre-
quently relevant to their owners’goals; it lays the founda-
tion for automatic attention. Consistent with this position,
research indicates that signals from one’s own phone ( but
not someone else’s) activate the same involuntary atten-
tion system that responds to the sound of one’s own name
(Roye, Jacobsen, and Schröger 2007). When these devices
are salient in the environment, their status as high-priority
(relevant and salient) stimuli suggests that they will exert
a gravitational pull on the orientation of attention. And
when consumers are engaged in tasks for which their smart-
phones are task-irrelevant, the ability of these devices to
automatically attract attention may undermine performance
in two ways (Clapp, Rubens, and Gazzaley 2009; Clapp and
Gazzaley 2012). First, smartphones may redirect the orien-
tation of conscious attention away from the focal task and
toward thoughts or behaviors associated with one’sphone.
Prior research provides ample evidence that individuals
spontaneously attend to their phones at inopportune times
(e.g., Oulasvirta et al. 2011), and that this digital distraction
adversely affects both performance (End et al. 2009) and en-
joyment (Isikman et al. 2016). Second, smartphones may re-
distribute the allocation of attentional resources between en-
gaging with the focal task and inhibiting attention to one’s
phone. Because inhibiting automatic attention occupies at-
tentional resources, performance on tasks that rely on these
resources may suffer even when consumers do not con-
sciously attend to their phones. We explore this possibility
in the current research.
SMARTPHONE USE AND CONSCIOUS
DISTRACTION (THE ORIENTATION
OF ATTENTION)
Research on the relationship between mobile devices and
cognitive functioning has largely focused on downstream
consequences of device-related changes in the orientation
of attention. For example, research on mobile device use
while driving indicates that interacting with one’s phone
while behind the wheel causes performance deficits such
as delayed reaction times and inattentional blindness (e.g.,
Strayer and Johnston 2001; Caird et al. 2008); these defi-
cits mirror those associated with distracting “live”conver-
sations (Recarte and Nunes 2003). Similarly, research in
the educational sphere demonstrates that using mobile de-
vices and social media while learning new material reduces
comprehension and impairs academic performance (e.g.,
Froese et al. 2012). However, mobile device use does not af-
fect performance on self-paced tasks, which allow individu-
als to compensate for device-related distractions by pick-
ing up where they left off (e.g., Fox, Rosen, and Crawford
2009; Bowman et al. 2010). Taken together, these findings
suggest that many of the cognitive impairments associated
with mobile device use may simply represent the general
deleterious effects of diverting conscious attention away
from a focal task. What may be special about smartphones,
however, is the frequency with which they seem to create
these diversions; their omnipresence and personal rele-
vance may combine to create a particularly potent draw
on the orientation of attention.
A more limited body of work explores the cognitive
consequences of smartphone-related distractions in the ab-
sence of behavioral interaction (i.e., when consumers con-
sciously think about phone-related stimuli, but do not actu-
ally use their phones). Research on the attentional cost of
receiving cellphone notifications indicates that awareness
of a missed text message or call impairs performance on tasks
requiring sustained attention, arguably because unaddressed
notifications prompt message-related (and task-unrelated)
thoughts (Stothart, Mitchum, and Yehnert 2015). Related re-
search shows that individuals who hear their phones ring
while being separated from them report decreased enjoy-
ment of focal tasks as a consequence of increased attention
to phone-related thoughts (Isikman et al. 2016). Forced sep-
aration from one’s ringing phone can also increase heart rate
and anxiety and decrease cognitive performance (Clayton,
Leshner, and Almond 2015). To our knowledge, only one prior
study has investigated the cognitive effects of the mere pre-
sence of a mobile device—one that is not ringing, buzzing,
or otherwise actively interfering with a focal task. Thornton
et al. (2014, 485–86) found that a visually salient cellphone
can impair performance on tasks requiring sustained atten-
tion by eliciting awareness of the “broad social and informa-
tional network ...that one is not part of at the moment.”
Together, these investigations of phone-related distractions
provide evidence that mobile devices can adversely affect cog-
nitive performance even when consumers are not actively
using them. Similar to earlier research on distracted driving
and learning while multitasking, however, these studies
142 Brain Drain Ward et al.
connect the cognitive costs of smartphones to their (re-
markable) ability to attract the conscious orientation of at-
tention. When individuals interact with or think about their
phones rather than attend to the task at hand, their perfor-
mance suffers.
SMARTPHONE PRESENCE AND COGNITIVE
CAPACITY (THE ALLOCATION OF
ATTENTIONAL RESOURCES)
We suggest that smartphones may also impair cognitive
performance by affecting the allocation of attentional re-
sources, even when consumers successfully resist the urge
to multitask, mind-wander, or otherwise (consciously) at-
tend to their phones—that is, when their phones are merely
present. Despite the frequency with which individuals use
their smartphones, we note that these devices are quite of-
ten present but not in use—and that the attractiveness
of these high-priority stimuli should predict not just their
ability to capture the orientation of attention, but also the
cognitive costs associated with inhibiting this automatic at-
tention response.
We propose that the mere presence of one’s smartphone
may impose a “brain drain”as limited-capacity attentional
resources are recruited to inhibit automatic attention to
one’s phone, and are thus unavailable for engaging with
the task at hand. Research on controlled versus automatic
processing provides evidence that the mere presence of per-
sonally relevant stimuli can impair performance on cognitive
tasks (e.g., Geller and Shaver 1976; Bargh 1982; Wingenfeld
et al. 2006). Importantly, these performance deficits occur
without conscious attention to the potentially interfering
stimuli and as a function of inhibiting these stimuli from in-
terfering with the contents of consciousness (e.g., Shallice
1972; Lavie et al. 2004). Consistent with this evidence, we
posit that the mere presence of consumers’own smartphones
can reduce the availability of attentional resources (i.e., cog-
nitive capacity) even when consumers are successful at con-
trolling the conscious orientation of attention (i.e., resisting
overt distraction).
If smartphones undermine cognitive performance by oc-
cupying attentional resources, the cognitive consequences
of smartphone presence should be sensitive to variation
in both the salience and the personal relevance of these de-
vices, which together determine their priority in attracting
attention (e.g., Fecteau and Munoz 2006). Prior research
suggests that smartphones are chronically salient for many
individuals, even when they are located out of sight in one’s
pocket or bag (e.g., Deb 2015). However, we expect that in-
creasing the salience of one’s smartphone—for example, by
placing it nearby and in the field of vision—will amplify the
cognitive costs associated with its presence, as more atten-
tional resources are required to inhibit its influence on the
orientation of attention. We also expect that these costs
will vary according to the personal relevance of one’s smart-
phone. We operationalize relevance in terms of “smart-
phone dependence,”or the extent to which individuals rely
on their phones in their everyday lives. We posit that indi-
vidual differences in dependence on one’s smartphone will
moderate the effects of smartphone salience on available
cognitive capacity, such that individuals who most depend
on their phones will suffer the most from their presence—
and benefit the most from their absence.
OVERVIEW OF THE EXPERIMENTS
In two experiments, we test the hypothesis that the mere
presence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cogni-
tive capacity. We manipulate smartphone salience by ask-
ing participants to place their devices nearby and in sight
(high salience, “desk”condition), nearby and out of sight
(medium salience, “pocket/bag”condition), or in a separate
room (low salience, “other room”condition).
2
Our data in-
dicate that the mere presence of one’s smartphone ad-
versely affects two domain-general measures of cognitive
capacity—available working memory capacity (WMC) and
functional fluid intelligence (Gf)—even when participants
are not using their phones and do not report thinking
about them (experiment 1). Data from experiment 2 repli-
cate this effect on available cognitive capacity, show no ef-
fect on a behavioral measure of sustained attention, and
provide evidence that individual differences in consumers’
dependence on their devices moderate the effects of smart-
phone salience on available WMC.
EXPERIMENT 1: SMARTPHONE SALIENCE
AFFECTS AVAILABLE COGNITIVE CAPACITY
In experiment 1, we test the proposition that the mere pres-
ence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cognitive
capacity, as reflected in performance on tests of WMC
2. A pilot study confirmed that these physical locations predict indi-
viduals’top-of-mind awareness of their smartphones, with a nearby and
in sight →nearby and out of sight →not nearby linear trend (F(1,
111) 514.58, p<.001, partial h
2
5.116) and no quadratic trend ( p5
.996). Interestingly, the majority of respondents (67.5%) indicated that
they typically keep their smartphones nearby and in sight, where these de-
vices are most salient. See the appendix for method and detailed analyses.
Volume 2 Number 2 2017 143
and Gf. Each of these domain-general cognitive constructs
is constrained by the availability of attentional resources,
and the moment-to-moment availability of these resources
predicts performance on tests of both WMC (Engle, Cantor,
and Carullo 1992; Ilkowska and Engle 2010) and Gf (Horn
1972; Mani et al. 2013). If the mere presence of one’s
own smartphone taxes the limited-capacity attentional re-
sources that constrain both WMC and Gf, then the salience
of this device should predict performance on tasks associ-
ated with these constructs. We test this hypothesis in ex-
periment 1.
Method
Participants. Five hundred forty-eight undergraduates
(53.3% female; M
age
521.1 years; SD
age
52.4 years) partic-
ipated for course credit. Data collection spanned two
weeks. Duplicate data from repeat participants were dis-
carded prior to analysis. We applied the same three data
selection criteria in experiments 1 and 2; see the appendix
(available online) for additional detail. In experiment 1,
three participants were excluded for indicating they did
not own smartphones, eight participants were excluded
for failing to follow instructions, and seventeen participants
were excluded due to excessive error rates on the OSpan
task (less than 85% accuracy; see Unsworth et al. 2005).
Our final sample consisted of 520 smartphone users.
Procedure. We manipulated smartphone salience by ran-
domly assigning participants to one of three phone location
conditions: desk, pocket/bag, or other room. Participants
in the “other room”condition left all of their belongings
in the lobby before entering the testing room (as per typical
lab protocol). Participants in the “desk”condition left most
of their belongings in the lobby but took their phones into
the testing room “for use in a later study;”once in the test-
ing room, they were instructed to place their phones face
down in a designated location on their desks. Participants
in the “pocket/bag”condition carried all of their belongings
into the testing room with them and kept their phones
wherever they “naturally”would. Of the 174 participants
in this condition, 91 (52.3%) reported keeping their phones
in their pockets, and 83 (47.7%) reported keeping their
phones in their bags; a planned contrast revealed no differ-
ence between these groups on our key dependent variable
(p5.17), and they were pooled for all subsequent analyses.
Participants in all conditions were instructed to “turn your
phones completely on silent; this means turn off the ring
and vibrate so that your phone won’t make any sounds.”
After participants entered the testing room, they com-
pleted two tasks intended to measure available cognitive
capacity: the Automated Operation Span task (OSpan;
Unsworth et al. 2005) and a 10-item subset of Raven’s Stan-
dard Progressive Matrices (RSPM; Raven, Raven, and Court
1998). The OSpan task, a prominent measure of WMC, as-
sesses the ability to keep track of task-relevant information
while engaging in complex cognitive tasks. This particular
measure was designed to stress the domain-general nature
of the attentional resources at the heart of the WM system
(Turner and Engle 1989); in each trial set, participants
complete a series of math problems (information process-
ing) while simultaneously updating and remembering a
randomly generated letter sequence (information mainte-
nance). Performance on the OSpan assesses the domain-
general attentional resources “available to the individual
on a moment-to-moment basis”(Engle et al. 1992). The
RSPM test, a nonverbal measure of Gf, was developed to
isolate individuals’capacity for understanding and solv-
ing novel problems (fluid intelligence), independent of any
influence of accumulated knowledge or domain-specific skill
(crystallized intelligence). In each trial, participants are
shown an incomplete pattern matrix and asked to select
the element that best completes the pattern. Much like the
OSpan task, performance on the RSPM test is sensitive to
the current availability of attentional resources (e.g., Mani
et al. 2013). Complete details of the tasks and measures
used in experiments 1 and 2 are provided in the appendix.
Participants also completed an exploratory test of the
“ending-digit drop-off”effect, modeled after the procedure
of Bizer and Schindler (2005). In this task, participants are
shown a series of products with .99-ending and .00-ending
prices and asked to report the quantity they would be able
to purchase for $73. Overestimating purchasing power for
a .99-ending price relative to a matched .00-ending price
(e.g., $3.99 vs. $4.00) constitutes evidence of the drop-off
effect. We thought this effect might be more pronounced
for those whose phones were made salient. However, we
failed to replicate the basic effect and did not find any
evidence of ending-digit drop-off in any condition (F(1,
514) 5.20, p5.65). See the appendix for detailed analyses
and results.
Next, participants completed a questionnaire that in-
cluded items related to their experiences in the lab and their
lay beliefs about the connection between smartphones
and performance. These questions assessed how often they
thought about their phones during the experiment, to what
extent they thought the locations of their phones affected
144 Brain Drain Ward et al.
their performance in the lab, how they thought phone loca-
tion might have affected their performance, and to what
extent they believed their phones affected their perfor-
mance and attention spans more generally; all responses
were measured using 7-point Likert scales. Finally, partici-
pants answered a series of demographic questions (gender,
age, ethnicity, nationality) and provided information about
their cellphone make/model and data plan.
Results and Discussion
All analyses in experiment 1 include a “Week”factor to ac-
count for variation across research assistants; this factor
does not interact with Phone Location in any analysis (all
F<1.27, all p>.28).
Cognitive Capacity. We assessed the effects of smartphone
salience on available cognitive capacity using two measures
of domain-general cognitive function: OSpan task perfor-
mance and RSPM test score. Because both tasks rely on
limited-capacity attentional resources, both should be sen-
sitive to fluctuations in the availability of these resources.
A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) testing
the effects of Phone Location (desk, pocket/bag, other
room) on the optimal linear combination of these measures
revealed a significant effect of Phone Location on cognitive
capacity (Pillai’s Trace 5.027, F(4, 1028) 53.51, p5.007,
partial h
2
5.014). Paired comparisons revealed that partic-
ipants in the “other room”condition performed better than
those in the “desk”condition (p5.002). Participants in the
“pocket/bag”condition did not perform significantly differ-
ently from those in either the “desk”(p5.09) or “other
room”(p5.11) conditions. However, planned contrasts
revealed a significant desk →pocket/bag →other room lin-
ear trend (Pillai’s Trace 5.023, F(2, 513) 56.07, p5.002,
partial h
2
5.023) and no quadratic trend (Pillai’s Trace 5
.004, F(2, 513) 5.96, p5.39), suggesting that as smart-
phone salience increases, available cognitive capacity de-
creases.
Follow-up univariate ANOVAs separately testing the ef-
fect of Phone Location on OSpan performance and RSPM
score were consistent with our focal multivariate analysis.
Phone Location significantly affected both OSpan perfor-
mance (F(2, 514) 53.74, p5.02, partial h
2
5.014) and
RSPM score (F(2, 514) 53.96, p5.02, partial h
2
5
.015). See figure 1 for means, and the appendix for detailed
analyses and results.
Conscious Thought. A one-way ANOVA on participants’
responses to the question “While completing today’s tasks,
how often were you thinking about your cellphone?”(1 5
Figure 1. Experiment 1: effect of randomly assigned phone location condition on available WMC (OSpan Score, panel A) and functional Gf
(Correctly Solved Raven’s Matrices, panel B). Participants in the “desk”condition (high salience) displayed the lowest available cognitive
capacity; those in the “other room”condition (low salience) displayed the highest available cognitive capacity. Error bars represent standard
errors of the means. Asterisks indicate significant differences between conditions, with *p<.05 and **p<.01.
Volume 2 Number 2 2017 145
not at all to 7 5constantly/the whole time) revealed no
effect of Phone Location on phone-related thoughts (F(2,
514) 5.84, p5.43). Notably, the modal self-reported fre-
quency of thinking about one’s phone in each condition was
“not at all.”Combined with the significant effect of Phone
Location on available cognitive capacity, these results sup-
port our proposition that the mere presence of one’s smart-
phone may impair cognitive functioning even when it does
not occupy the contents of consciousness.
Perceived Influence of Smartphone Presence. There were
no differences between conditions on any measures related
to the perceived effects of smartphones on performance
(“How much / in what way do you think the position of your
cellphone affected your performance on today’s tasks?”;“In
general, how much do you think your cellphone usually
affects your performance and attention span?”), either in
the context of the experiment (all F<1.58, all p>.21) or
in general (F(2, 494) 52.26, p5.11). Across conditions,
a majority of participants indicated that the location of their
phones during the experiment did not affect their perfor-
mance (“not at all”; 75.9%) and “neither helped nor hurt
[their] performance”(85.6%). This contrast between per-
ceived influence and actual performance suggests that par-
ticipants failed to anticipate or acknowledge the cognitive
consequences associated with the mere presence of their
phones.
Discussion. The results of experiment 1 indicate that the
mere presence of participants’own smartphones impaired
their performance on tasks that are sensitive to the avail-
ability of limited-capacity attentional resources. In contrast
to prior research, participants in our experiment did not in-
teract with or receive notifications from their phones. In
addition, self-reported frequency of thoughts about these
devices did not differ across conditions. Taken together,
these results suggest that the mere presence of one’s smart-
phone may reduce available cognitive capacity and impair
cognitive functioning, even when consumers are successful
at remaining focused on the task at hand.
EXPERIMENT 2: SMARTPHONE DEPENDENCE
MODERATES THE EFFECT OF SMARTPHONE
SALIENCE ON COGNITIVE CAPACITY
The results of experiment 1 support the proposition that
the mere presence of one’s smartphone reduces available
cognitive capacity, even when it is not in use. In experi-
ment 2, we replicate the basic design of experiment 1, with
the following exceptions. First, we conduct a stronger test
of the proposed impairment-without-interruption effect
by examining the effects of smartphone salience on both
cognitive capacity (WMC) and a behavioral measure of sus-
tained attention. Consistent with both the proposed theo-
retical framework and participants’self-reports in experi-
ment 1, we predict that increasing smartphone salience
will adversely affect the availability of attentional resources
without interrupting sustained attention. Second, one could
argue that participants who had access to their phones in
experiment 1 surreptitiously checked for notifications, were
consciously distracted by unanswerable messages, and dis-
played impaired performance as a result (as in Clayton et al.
2015; Stothart et al. 2015; Isikman et al. 2016). We did
not observe any behavior or this sort, and did not find any
differences between conditions in the frequency of phone-
related thoughts. In experiment 2, we further address this
alternate explanation by randomly assigning participants
to either silence their phones (as in experiment 1) or turn
them off completely. We predict that the salience of partic-
ipants’smartphones will influence available cognitive ca-
pacity even when these devices are turned off and will not
influence sustained attention even when they are turned
on. Third, we test a potential moderator of the effects of
smartphone salience on available cognitive capacity: indi-
vidual differences in the personal relevance of one’s phone,
operationalized in terms of “smartphone dependence.”We
predict that individuals who are more dependent on their
phones will be more affected by their presence.
Method
Participants. Two hundred and ninety-six undergraduates
(56.9% female; M
age
521.3 years; SD
age
52.6 years) partic-
ipated for course credit. Eleven participants were excluded
for reporting that they did not own smartphones, four par-
ticipants were excluded due to excessive error rates (<85%
OSpan accuracy), and six participants were excluded due to
missing (5) or extreme (1) response times in a Go/No-Go task
(see below). Our final sample consisted of 275 participants.
Procedure. This experiment followed a 3 (Phone Location:
desk, pocket/bag, other room) 2 (Phone Power: on, off )
between-subjects design. Phone Location instructions and
randomization procedures were identical to those used in
experiment 1, with the exception that participants in the
“desk”condition were instructed to place their phones fac-
ing up. Of the 91 participants in the “pocket/bag”condi-
tion, 68 (74.7%) reported keeping their phones in their
146 Brain Drain Ward et al.
pockets, and 23 (25.3%) reported keeping their phones in
their bags; as in experiment 1, a planned contrast revealed
no difference between these groups on our key dependent
variable (p5.55), and they were pooled for all subsequent
analyses. Participants were randomly assigned to one of
two Phone Power conditions prior to entering the testing
room. The instructions for participants in the “power on”
condition were identical to those used in experiment 1;
we instructed participants in the “power off”condition to
completely turn off their devices.
After placing their phones in the proper location and
power mode, participants completed our two key depen-
dent measures: the OSpan task and the Cue-Dependent
Go/No-Go task (order counterbalanced across partici-
pants). In the Go/No-Go task, participants are presented
with a series of “go”and “no go”targets, and instructed
to respond to “go”targets as quickly as possible without
making errors, but to refrain from responding to “no go”
targets. In this task, both omission errors (failure to re-
spond to “go”targets) and reaction time (speed of respond-
ing to these targets) serve as measures of sustained atten-
tion (Bezdjian et al. 2009). After completing both tasks,
participants reported the subjective difficulty of each task.
Next, they completed a battery of exploratory questions
intended to assess individual differences in use of and con-
nection to one’s smartphone, including a 13-item inventory
related to reliance on one’s phone (see appendix for all
items and analyses). Finally, participants answered a series
of demographic questions (gender, age, ethnicity, national-
ity) and provided information about their cellphone make/
model and data plan.
Results and Discussion
All analyses in experiment 2 include a Task Order reflecting
our counterbalanced experimental design; this factor does
not interact with Phone Location or Phone Location
Phone Power in any analysis (all F<1.51, all p>.22).
Cognitive Capacity. As in experiment 1, performance on
the OSpan task measures the attentional resources avail-
able to the individual on a moment-to-moment basis (Engle
et al. 1992). A 3 (Phone Location: desk, pocket/bag, other
room) 2 (Phone Power: on, off ) between-subjects ANOVA
revealed a significant effect of Location on OSpan perfor-
mance (F(2, 263) 53.53, p5.03, partial h
2
5.026). There
was no effect of Power (F(1, 263) 5.05, p5.83) or of the
Power Location interaction (F(2, 263) 51.05, p5.35).
Paired comparisons revealed that participants in the “other
room”condition performed significantly better on the OSpan
task than did those in the “desk”condition (M
diff
54.67, p5
.008). Participants in the “pocket/bag”condition did not per-
form significantly differently from those in either the “desk”
(M
diff
52.30, p5.20) or “other room”(M
diff
52.37, p5.17)
conditions. See figure 2 for means.
Planned contrasts revealed a significant desk →pocket/
bag →other room linear trend (F(1, 263) 57.05, p5.008,
partial h
2
5.026) and no quadratic trend (F(1, 263) 5.001,
p5.98). Consistent with experiment 1, this pattern of re-
sults indicates that increasing the salience of one’s smart-
phone impairs OSpan performance, and decreasing the sa-
lience of one’s smartphone improves performance. Further,
the null effects of Power and the Power Location in-
teraction suggest that decreases in performance are not re-
lated to incoming notifications (or the possibility of receiv-
ing notifications), ruling out this alternative explanation
of the effects found in experiment 1.
Moderation by Smartphone Dependence. Our framework
suggests that the effects of smartphone salience on avail-
able cognitive capacity should be moderated by individual
differences in dependence on these devices. We tested this
prediction by investigating responses to an exploratory
13-item inventory of individual differences in reliance on
one’s phone. A principal components factor analysis with
Varimax rotation revealed that these items loaded onto
two distinct factors, together explaining 52.67% of the var-
iance.
3
Factor 1 (Smartphone Dependence; six items) ex-
plained 31.02% of the variance and captured our primary
concept of interest: the degree of dependence on one’ssmart-
phone (e.g., “I would have trouble getting through a normal
day without my cellphone”). Factor 2 (Emotional Attach-
ment; five items) explained 21.65% of the variance and ac-
counted for the emotional aspects of smartphone use (e.g.,
“Using my cellphone makes me feel happy”). Reliability anal-
yses indicated high reliability for both Smartphone Depen-
dence (a5.89) and Emotional Attachment (a5.79) as dis-
tinct factors. See appendix table 1 for all items and factor
loadings.
We tested the potential moderating role of Smartphone
Dependence in a univariate generalized linear model pre-
dicting OSpan performance from all variables included in
our original 3 (Phone Location: desk, pocket/bag, other room)
3. Two items did not clearly load onto either primary factor and were
excluded from further analyses (Costello and Osborne 2005).
Volume 2 Number 2 2017 147
2 (Phone Power: on, off) ANOVA, mean-centered Smart-
phone Dependence score, and all independent variable
Smartphone Dependenceinteraction terms (Baron and Kenny
1986). This analysis revealed a significant Phone Location
Smartphone Dependence interaction (F(2, 247) 53.25,
p5.04, partial h
2
5.026), indicating that the effects of
smartphone salience on OSpan performance are moder-
ated by individual differences in dependence on one’ssmart-
phone. Follow-up analyses probing the conditional effects of
Location at the sample mean of the moderator and plus/
minus one SD from the mean revealed no effect of Location
on OSpan performance at low levels of Smartphone Depen-
dence (21SD;p5.28); however, this effect was significant
at both mean (p5.05) and high levels ( p5.007) of Depen-
dence. See figure 3 for estimated marginal means. Similar re-
sults for other measures of smartphone dependence (e.g.,
number of texts sent per day) are reported in the appendix.
Interestingly, a parallel moderation analysis indicated
that Emotional Attachment did not moderate the effects
of Phone Location on OSpan performance (p5.61). Al-
though we are cautious about making strong claims based
on null effects and reiterate that these factors were derived
from an exploratory inventory, this disparity between Smart-
phone Dependence and Emotional Attachment suggests that
the effects of smartphone salience on available cognitive ca-
pacity may be determined by the extent to which consumers
feel they need their phones, as opposed to how much they like
them. These results are consistent with the proposition that
the effects of smartphone salience on available cognitive ca-
pacity stem from the singularly important role these devices
play in many consumers’lives.
Sustained Attention. We analyzed the effects of smart-
phone salience on two behavioral measures of sustained
attention: omission errors and reaction time in the Go/
No-Go task. A 3 (Phone Location: desk, pocket/bag, other
room) 2 (Phone Power: on, off) ANOVA revealed no ef-
fects of Location, Power, or their interaction on either of
these measures (all F<1.05, all p>.35). See figure 2 for
reaction time means, and the appendix for full results.
Perceived Difficulty. Finally, we analyzed perceived task
difficulty in order to see if the cognitive consequences of
smartphone salience were reflected in participants’subjec-
tive experiences. A 3 (Phone Location: desk, pocket/bag,
other room) 2 (Phone Power: on, off) ANOVA revealed
a marginal effect of Location on perceived difficulty for
the memory section of the OSpan task (F(1, 256) 52.38,
p5.09, partial h
2
5.018). Paired comparisons revealed
that participants in the “other room”condition found it sig-
Figure 2. Experiment 2: effect of randomly assigned phone location condition on available cognitive capacity (OSpan Score) and sustained
attention (Mean Reaction Time, Go/No-Go). Participants in the “desk”condition (high salience) displayed the lowest available cognitive
capacity; those in the “other room”condition ( low salience) displayed the highest available cognitive capacity. Phone location did not affect
sustained attention. Error bars represent standard errors of the means. Asterisks indicate significant differences between conditions, with
**p<.01.
148 Brain Drain Ward et al.
nificantly easier to remember information in this task rel-
ative to participants in the “desk”condition (M
diff
5.49,
p5.04) and marginally easier relative to those in the
“pocket/bag”condition (M
diff
5.40, p5.09). This pattern
of results is consistent with participants’actual perfor-
mance on the OSpan task and suggests that the cognitive
benefits of escaping the mere presence of one’s phone
may be reflected, at least partially, in subjective experience.
However, the lay beliefs reported in experiment 1 suggest
that even when consumers notice these benefits, they
may not attribute them to the presence (or absence) of
their phones. There were no differences between condi-
tions on any of the other perceived difficulty or perceived
performance measures (all F<1.82, all p>.16).
Discussion. Consistent with the behavioral and self-report
results observed in experiment 1, the results of experiment 2
suggest that the mere presence of consumers’own smart-
phones may adversely affect cognitive functioning even
when consumers are not consciously attending to them. Ex-
periment 2 also provides evidence that these cognitive costs
are moderated by individual differences in dependence on
these devices. Ironically, the more consumers depend on
their smartphones, the more they seem to suffer from their
presence—or, more optimistically, the more they may stand
to benefit from their absence.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The proliferation of smartphones represents a profound
shift in the relationship between consumers and technol-
ogy. Across human history, the vast majority of innovations
have occupied a defined space in consumers’lives; they
have been constrained by the functions they perform and
the locations they inhabit. Smartphones transcend these
limitations. They are consumers’constant companions, of-
fering unprecedented connection to information, enter-
tainment, and each other. They play an integral role in
the lives of billions of consumers worldwide and, as a re-
sult, have vast potential to influence consumer welfare—
both for better and for worse.
The present research identifies a potentially costly side
effect of the integration of smartphones into daily life:
smartphone-induced “brain drain.”We provide evidence
that the mere presence of consumers’smartphones can ad-
versely affect two measures of cognitive capacity—available
working memory capacity and functional fluid intelligence—
without interrupting sustained attention or increasing the
frequency of phone-related thoughts. Consumers who were
engaged with ongoing cognitive tasks were able to keep their
phones not just out of their hands, but also out of their (con-
scious) minds; however, the mere presence of these devices
left fewer attentional resources available for engaging with
the task at hand.
Figure 3. Experiment 2: estimated marginal means representing the effect of phone location on available cognitive capacity (OSpan Score)
at low (21 SD), mean, and high (11 SD) levels of smartphone dependence. Phone location affects available cognitive capacity at mean and
high levels of smartphone dependence, but not at low levels of smartphone dependence. Asterisks indicate significant differences between
conditions, with *p<.05 and **p<.01.
Volume 2 Number 2 2017 149
Further, we find that the effects of smartphone salience
on available cognitive capacity are moderated by individual
differences in the personal relevance of these devices (op-
erationalized in terms of smartphone dependence); those
who depend most on their devices suffer the most from
their salience, and benefit the most from their absence.
The role of dependence in determining mere presence ef-
fects suggests that similar cognitive costs would not be in-
curred by the presence of just any product, device, or even
phone. We submit that few, if any, stimuli are both so per-
sonally relevant and so perpetually present as consumers’
own smartphones. However, we leave open the door for
our insights to apply more broadly to future connective
technologies that may become equally central to consum-
ers’lives as technology continues to advance.
Our research also offers insight into the tactics that
might mitigate “brain drain”—as well as those that might
not. For example, we find that the effect of smartphone sa-
lience on cognitive capacity is robust to both the visibility
of the phone’s screen (face down in experiment 1, face up
in experiment 2) and the phone’s power (silent vs. powered
off in experiment 2), suggesting that intuitive “fixes”such
as placing one’s phone face down or turning it off are likely
futile. However, our data suggest at least one simple solu-
tion: separation. Although this approach may seem at odds
with prior research indicating that being separated from
one’s phone undermines performance by increasing anxi-
ety (Cheever et al. 2014; Clayton et al. 2015), we note that
participants in those studies were unexpectedly separated
from their phones (Cheever et al. 2014) and forced to hear
them ring while being unable to answer (Clayton et al.
2015). In contrast, participants in our experiments ex-
pected to be separated from their phones (this was the
norm in the lab) and were not confronted with unanswer-
able notifications or calls while separated. We therefore
suggest that defined and protected periods of separation,
such as these, may allow consumers to perform better not
just by reducing interruptions but also by increasing avail-
able cognitive capacity.
Our theoretical framework draws on prior research out-
lining the role of limited-capacity attentional resources
in inhibiting responses to high-priority but task-irrelevant
stimuli (Shallice 1972; Bargh 1982; Lavie et al. 2004; Clapp
et al. 2009). However, our data are equally consistent with
an alternate explanation: that these attentional resources
are recruited for purposes of hypervigilance, or monitoring
high-priority stimuli in the absence of conscious awareness
(e.g., Legrain et al. 2011; Jacob, Jacobs, and Silvanto 2015).
This interpretation is consistent with the common phe-
nomenon of “phantom vibration syndrome,”or the feeling
that one’s phone is vibrating when it actually is not (e.g.,
Rothberg et al. 2010; Deb 2015). Data suggest that 89%
of mobile phone users experience phantom vibrations at
least occasionally (Drouin, Kaiser, and Miller 2012), and
that this over-responsiveness to innocuous sensations is
particularly prevalent in those whose devices are particu-
larly meaningful (e.g., Rothberg et al. 2010). Because the
same limited-capacity attentional resources are implicated
in both hypervigilance and inhibition, our data cannot dis-
tinguish between the two theoretical explanations. In fact,
it is plausible that these processes may operate in tandem,
as goal-directed attentional control processes both monitor
for signals of potentially important information from high-
priority stimuli, and (attempt to) prevent these stimuli
from interrupting conscious attention until such signals
appear.
Implications and Future Directions
Consumers’limited cognitive resources shape innumerable
aspects of their daily lives, from their approaches to deci-
sions (Bettman et al. 1991) to their enjoyment of experi-
ences (Weber et al. 2009). Our data suggest that the mere
presence of consumers’own smartphones may further con-
strain their already limited cognitive capacity by taxing the
attentional resources that reside at the core of both work-
ing memory capacity and fluid intelligence. The specific
cognitive capacity measures used in our experiments are
associated with domain-general capabilities that support
fundamental processes such as learning, logical reasoning,
abstract thought, problem solving, and creativity (e.g.,
Cattell 1987; Kane et al. 2004). Because consumers’smart-
phones are so frequently present, the mere presence effects
observed in our experiments have the potential to influence
consumer welfare across a wide range of contexts: when
consumers work, shop, take classes, watch movies, dine
with friends, attend concerts, play games, receive massages,
read books, and more (Isikman et al. 2016). Moreover, re-
sults from our pilot study (reported prior to experiment 1)
indicate that the majority of consumers typically keep their
smartphones nearby and in sight, where smartphone sa-
lience is particularly high.
Consumer Choice. Prior research indicates that occupying
cognitive resources by increasing cognitive load causes con-
sumers to rely less on analytic and deliberative “system 2”
processing, and more on intuitive and heuristic-based “sys-
150 Brain Drain Ward et al.
tem 1”approaches (Evans 2008). To the extent that both
cognitive load and the mere presence of consumers’smart-
phones reduce available cognitive capacity, we may expect
consumers to be more likely to adopt choice strategies asso-
ciated with system 1 when their smartphones are present
but irrelevant to the choice task. Reliance on system 1 pro-
cessing could, for example, enhance the appeal of affect-rich
choice alternatives (Rottenstreich, Sood, and Brenner 2007),
amplify the preference for simple (and possibly inferior) so-
lutions (Drolet, Luce, and Simonson 2009), increase consum-
ers’willingness to make attribute trade-offs (Drolet and Luce
2004), and heighten susceptibility to anchoring effects (Deck
and Jahedi 2015). Building on these connections, future re-
search could explore whether the presence of smartphones
accentuates individuals’preference for options favored by
system 1 processing.
Advertising Effectiveness. The availability of cognitive re-
sources also predicts elaboration likelihood (e.g., Petty and
Cacioppo 1986) and susceptibility to deceptive advertising
(Xie and Boush 2011). Consistent with a potential shift to-
ward reliance on system 1 processing, consumers who view
advertising messages in the presence of their smartphones
may be less likely to elaborate on advertising messages and
more likely to be influenced by heuristics such as likability of
the communicator (e.g., Chaiken 1980). Note that the pro-
posed theoretical framework suggests that this may not be
the case for advertising delivered via smartphone, because
the cognitive costs associated with mere presence should be
incurred when consumers’phones are present but not in use.
Education. Younger adults—92% of whom are smartphone
owners—rely heavily on smartphones (Pew Research Center
2016). Given that many of them are in school, the potential
detrimental effects of smartphones on their cognitive func-
tioning may have an outsized effect on long-term welfare.
As educational institutions increasingly embrace “connected
classrooms”(e.g., Petrina 2007), the presence of students’
mobile devices in educational environments may undermine
both learning and test performance—particularly when these
devices are present but not in use. Future research could fo-
cus on how children, adolescents, and young adults are affected
by the mere presence of personally relevant technologies in
the classroom.
Intentional Disconnection. Although we have primarily fo-
cused on the cognitive costs associated with the presence of
smartphones, our research is equally relevant to the poten-
tial implications of their absence. Discussions of “disconnec-
tion”in popular culture reflect increasing consumer interest
in intentionally reducing—or at least controlling—the ex-
tent to which they interact with their devices (e.g., Perlow
2012; Harmon and Mazmanian 2013). Some consumers
are replacing their smartphones with feature phones (i.e.,
phones lacking the advanced functionality of smartphones;
Thomas 2016), others are supplementing their smart-
phones with stripped-down devices that offer “a short break
from connectedness”(http://www.thelightphone.com/), and
still others are turning to apps that track, filter, and limit
smartphone usage (e.g., https://inthemoment.io/). Our re-
search suggests that these measures may be doubly beneficial
for the digitally weary; by redefining the relevance of their de-
vices, these consumers may both reduce digital distraction
and increase available cognitive capacity. More broadly, our
research contributes to the growing discussion among con-
sumers and marketers alike about the influence of technol-
ogy on consumers—and consumers on technology—in an
increasingly connected world.
One’s smartphone is more than just a phone, a camera,
or a collection of apps. It is the one thing that connects ev-
erything—the hub of the connected world. The presence of
one’s smartphone enables on-demand access to informa-
tion, entertainment, social stimulation, and more. However,
our research suggests that these benefits—and the depen-
dence they engender—may come at a cognitive cost.
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