What your phone says about your personality
YOUR mobile phone can be a dead ringer for your personality, researchers said yesterday.
Scientists claim to have found that people who buy Android phones are more honest and humble than those who pick iPhones.
The study also revealed that women were twice as likely to own an iPhone than an Android, and that iPhone users were more worried about having a high-status phone as their Android-owning rivals.
Heather Shaw, from the University of Lincoln’s School of Psychology, conducted two studies into users of iPhone and Android smartphones.
In the first, 240 volunteers were asked to complete a questionnaire about the characteristics they associated with users of each smartphone type.
It found that Android users were perceived to have greater levels of honesty and humility, and were kinder, more open and less extroverted than iPhone users.
In the second study, the researchers tested these stereotypes against the personality traits of 530 smartphone users.
They discovered that while Android users were more honest and humble, the other personality stereotypes identified in the first survey were not particularly prevalent.
Miss Shaw said: ‘This study provides new insights into personality differences between different types of smartphone users.
‘Smartphone choice is the most basic level of smartphone personalisation, and even this can tell us a lot about the user.
‘Imagine if we further researched how personality traits relate to the applications people download.
‘It is becoming more and more apparent that smartphones are becoming a mini digital version of the user. Many of us don’t like it when other people use our phones because it can reveal so much about us.’