The effect of mobile messaging during a conversation on impression formation and interaction quality

This paper presents two experimental studies investigating the impact of mobile messaging during an offline conversation on relational outcomes. A first study examined the impact on impression formation. A 3 × 1 experiment revealed that phone users were perceived as significantly less polite and attentive, and that self-initiated messaging behavior led to more negative impression formation than messaging behavior in response to a notification. A second study examined the impact on perceived conversation quality and social attraction. A 2 × 2 experiment revealed that perceived conversation quality was negatively affected by co-present mobile messaging behavior, while social attraction was not. Whether persons were acquainted or not with the phone user did not moderate this relationship.