• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 13, 2015

Research from the University of Missouri reveals that separation from their phone can have serious psychological and physiological effects on iPhone users, including a decline in cognitive functions and mental tasks. The study seems to confirm what marketers have believed for some time -- that the phone has become an extension of the owner. Mobile phones have become a common tool to search for products, services, and local directions, but they also provide insight on product reviews. 

UM professor Russell Clayton, along University of Oklahoma professor Glenn Leshner, and Anthony Almond, doctoral student at Indiana University-Bloomington, found that when iPhone users are unable to answer their ringing iPhones while solving simple word-search puzzles, their heart rate and blood pressure levels rise, as did feelings of anxiety and unpleasantness. 

The researchers asked study participants to sit at a computer cubicle in a media psychology lab. The researchers told the participants that the purpose of the experiment was to test the reliability of a new wireless blood pressure cuff, but they had no idea that the researchers would call their iPhones during the experiment.

Participants completed one word-search puzzle with their iPhone in their possession and the second word-search word puzzle without their iPhone, as the researchers monitored their heart rates and blood pressure levels. They separated the person from the phone by telling them the phone caused interference with the wireless device. 

Of the 117 iPhone users who completed the survey, 41 participated in the experimental portion of the study. Heart rate, systolic, and diastolic data were analyzed during possession and separation from the phone while it rang. It turns out the data shows that the inability to answer one's iPhone while it was ringing increases the heart rate and unpleasantness, and also led to a decline in cognitive performance, perhaps from being distracted.

Findings from the study also show that cell phone users are capable of perceiving their iPhone as an object of their extended self, which can be negatively impacted during separation. This finding alone calls for future research on whether other technological devices are capable of becoming incorporated into the extended self.

"Aggressive businesswoman screaming in mobile phone" photo from Shutterstock.