Smartphone application personality and its relationship to personalities of smartphone users and social capital accrued through use of smartphone social applications

Few studies have considered the personalities of smartphone applications. This study identifies four underlying smartphone application personality dimensions: interactive and daring, interesting and attractive, open and wide-ranging, and principled and wholesome. The smartphone application personalities reveal the strong interactive property of smartphones. This study also investigates how smartphone users' personalities, smartphone social applications that connect people directly or indirectly, and perceived social capital accrued through smartphone social application usage contribute to smartphone application personality. The analysis shows that the shift from voice calls and SMS to Facebook and instant messaging causes traditional communication applications to play little role in contributing to smartphone application personality. In addition to having hedonic value, entertainment applications should also be viewed as able to contribute to social capital and all of the smartphone application personality dimensions. Although the neuroticism personality of smartphone users plays a lesser role than extraversion in contributing to smartphone social application usage, social capital formation and smartphone application personality, smartphones are useful for individuals high in neuroticism to gain social capital. The inward-looking and exclusiveness properties of bonding social capital cause it to contribute negatively to the interactive and attractive smartphone application personality.