Sorry, iPhone Users. This Study Says You Can't Be Trusted
Researchers also found that iPhone owners consider their smartphones to be a status symbol.
By Samantha Khor — 01 Dec 2016, 03:06 PM
If you're an iPhone user, you're gonna want to sit down for this.
A recent study has found that people who use iPhones tend to be less trustworthy and humble when compared to Android users.
The study, published in the journal 'Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking' in November, involved asking 240 participants to complete a questionnaire about the characteristics they associated with iPhone and Android users.
The results are then tested against 530 real-world smartphone users. This was where they found that the first group's assumed stereotypes did not match up with their findings from the second group of people.
The study, conducted by psychologists from several UK universities, discovered that iPhone users are more likely to be female, younger, and care very much about their smartphones being seen as a status symbol
People who use iPhones are also said to have higher levels of emotionality and more likely to be extroverted.
According to Heather Shaw, one of the psychologists involved in the study, an individual's smartphone choice can tell you a lot about the user.
"This study provides new insights into personality differences between different types of smartphone users. Smartphone choice is the most basic level of smartphone personalisation, and even this can tell us a lot about the user," she explained.
In contrast, Android users - who are more likely to be male and older - are less interested in wealth and social status
The study also concludes that they are more honest, humble, agreeable, open, and less likely to break rules for personal gain compared to their iPhone-owning counterparts.
The sample of participants may be small, but the researchers were still able to use their findings to build a statistical model that can predict whether you are an iPhone or Android user with 70% accuracy
Moving on, the researchers are considering diving deeper into the differences in regards to app ownership
"Imagine if we further researched how personality traits relate to the applications people download. It is becoming more and more apparent that smartphones are becoming a mini digital version of the user, and many of us don't like it when other people use our phones because it can reveal so much about us," Shaw said.