Mobile Phones and Physical Pain

Abstract

Mobile phones have become a pervasive part of American life over the past 40 years. According to the Pew Research Center’s Mobile Fact Sheet (2017), mobile phone ownership has steadily risen to an overwhelming 95% of Americans. Additionally, smartphone use among Americans has increased from 35% in 2011 to 64% in 2015 (Smith, 2015). Smartphones can be used for everything from text messaging and e-mail, to video and music streaming. Given their useful capabilities combined with their ever-growing accessibility, it is not difficult to understand why mobile phones and the impact of these devices intrigue researchers of all fields, especially psychologists. Although research on the psychological and social effects of mobile phone usage is limited, the findings have been substantial. Attachment to mobile phones has been found to mirror conventional social attachment (Konok, Pogány, & Miklósi, 2017), and can be impactful enough to cause feelings of social exclusion or inclusion. For example, Smith and Williams (2004) used mobile phone text messages to evoke imagined ostracism in participants to test if it would cause psychological pain. They found that imagined ostracism from the text messages was just as effective as real-life ostracism in causing psychological pain and feelings of social exclusion. Conversely, Barlott, Adams, Diaz, and Molina (2014) found that caregivers who suffered from social exclusion found social comfort in participating in a community text messaging program. Both of these studies involved participants primarily or exclusively receiving text messages, yet even this passive usage of one’s mobile phone was enough to significantly alter levels of social pain or comfort. Extending these results to test physical pain and physical pain relief via mobile phones would be of great use to the field, specifically in the way of pain interventions. Physiological and psychological connections ABSTRACT. Mobile phones and their psychological effects have been a point of interest for researchers in recent years. Although research has assessed the effects of active mobile phone use on pain management (e.g., Wiederhold, Gao, Kong, & Wiederhold, 2014), most mobile phone interaction is passive. If personal phones are associated with social support, the mere presence/absence of a mobile phone may influence pain responses. Our study aimed to test this effect. A sample of 100 were randomly assigned to hold a mobile phone or television remote control while a cold pressor task was used to ethically induce acute pain. During the task, pain threshold and tolerance were recorded. Afterward, subjective pain, social support, current emotions, perceived mobile phone attachment, and mobile phone usage were also measured. The mobile phone group reported marginally higher pain thresholds, F(4, 95) = 0.47, p = .76, R2 = .02, and showed marginally greater pain tolerance, F(4, 95) = 1.98, p = .10, R2 = .08, than the remote control group. The effects did not rise to the level of statistical significance. Interestingly, the remote control group scored marginally higher in some negative emotions compared to the mobile phone group. This research lays the groundwork for future research on the effects that increasingly routine interactions with mobile phones have on people, often without their knowledge. Mobile Phones and Physical Pain