Links of personality traits to media multitasking: Conscientiousness predicts mobile phone use in the college classroom

The present study investigated the relation among mobile phone use in the college classroom and Big Five personality traits, which had not been addressed in previous research. Undergraduate students (83 males and 92 females) whose average age was 20 (SD = 5.1) completed questionnaires on demographic characteristics, mobile phone use, impulse control, and Big Five personality traits. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine whether each personality trait made a unique contribution in predicting mobile phone use in the classroom after taking into consideration the contribution of impulse control in this prediction. The results show that impulse control and conscientiousness are significant, independent predictors of in-class mobile phone use over and above each other after controlling for demographic characteristics and general mobile phone use. These results suggest that some aspects of conscientiousness unexplained by impulse control may also be related to media multitasking in the college classroom, and the present study sheds light on the importance of continued research on the relation between conscientiousness and in-class media multitasking.