Digital Technology and Human Psychology Research

Digital Technology and Human Psychology Research

Cybercology Research

Current Research:

‘What strategies do professionals use in their day-to-day management of their work and personal commitments through the use of both personal and professional technology’.

Remote and Hybrid Work Boundary Blurring Strategies

Remote working during Covid-19 has impacted individuals in different ways.

Some studies show that individuals used a range of strategies to manage their work-home boundaries during the time of lockdowns, while others find that such segmentation strategies may have been abandoned altogether among some working parents.

Since then, hybrid working has become a new norm for many professionals and many businesses are continuing flexible working arrangements.

This study aims to understand how professionals use technology to manage their professional and personal responsibilities and the strategies they use to delineate their work and home boundaries. There is little research in this area at present.

This project is affiliated with the University of Buckingham and there are no funding partners associated with this research. The results of this study can be beneficial to inform practices by organisational psychologists, HR professionals, managers or workers themselves by highlighting how individuals manage their work- and home-based technology in the pursuit of maintaining a better work-life balance.

This research has received ethics approval from the University of Buckingham.

If you would like to be involved or would like a copy of the final research report, please get in touch and we will message you directly with the details.

Researchers: Dr Maša Popovac and Carolyn Freeman

Previous Research:

Always On, Always Available: Working Parent's use of business and personal technology during private hours, and the impact of e-communication overload on stress and anxiety and perceived burnout (Freeman, C., 2021)

The MSc research was conducted during the first Lockdown of 2020 (Spring and early Summer of 2020) when both knowledge worker parents and their children were told to ‘stay at home’. Full-time working parents were expected to navigate the challenges of Working from Home and simultaneously home-schooling their children.

The research aim was to understand how full-time knowledge worker parents layered their personal and professional technology use during this time, and what impact this had on their stress anxiety and levels of potential burnout.

The Relationship between Personality Traits, Creative Ability and Lateral Thinking Ability (Freeman, C. 2018)

Creative ability has long been associated with the Openness personality type, but no research, to date, had been conducted on the link between personality type and the ability to think laterally. Lateral Thinking abilities are highly prized skills in corporate settings to help in problem resolution.

This research set out to understand if there was a direct link, or if other factors were more likely to be associated with the Lateral Thinking skillset.

Other Academic Research Summaries

Research on the impact of technology on human behaviour and psychology in the workplace has been conducted in a number of different academic disciplines, across a variety of countries and within different industrial/organisational contexts.

The research featured here may be directly or indirectly psychologically or behaviourally related to the use of technology by ‘knowledge workers’ (i.e. those who use technology to produce knowledge-based assets for profit or non-profit organisations). It

The summaries below highlight, in one way or another, the impact of when, why and how technology is used in our general ‘work, home and play’ – from a psychological and behavioural perspective.

Work-Home Boundary Blurring

Technology, Work, and Family: Digital Cultural Capital and Boundary Management (Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Jerry A. Jacobs, and Nancy P. Rothbard, 2019)

The boundaries that we create between work and home can be compared to a ‘mental fence’ that divides two differing life roles. Like any physical geographic boundary, this fence can have varying degrees of permeability and cross-over-ability. This research looks at the active management of temporal, spatial and relational boundaries between work and home.

When You Just Cannot Get Away - Exploring the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Facilitating Negative Work/Home Spillover (Berkowski, R., 2013)

This research investigates the negative impact of mobile digital technology use in relation to work spilling over into home life and home life spilling over into the workplace.

From Work to Life and Back Again: Examining the Digitally-Mediated Work/Life Practices of a Group of Knowledge Workers (Ciolfi L., & Lockley E., 2018)

This qual. research examines how professional knowledge workers manage their work and home life segmentation strategies. This includes how they blur the boundaries between work and home life, and the advantages of creating bespoke boundary strategies between these two life realms.

Hybrid, Remote and Flexible Working Culture, Policies and Practices

Three Generations of Telework: New ICTs and the (R)evolution from Home Office to Virtual Office (Messenger, J., Lutz, G., 2016)

This research is a deep dive into how revolutions in digital technology have evolved through three main stages since 1970 to present including the: Home Office, Mobile Office and Virtual Office.

Autonomy, Flexibility and Job Control

The Autonomy Paradox: The Implications of Mobile Email Devices for Knowledge Professionals (Mazmanian, M., Wanda, O., Yates, J., 2013)

This research is widely cited by those in the field of human-technology behaviour. It notes how giving professional knowledge workers autonomy in what work they conduct during private time increases, rather than reduces the amount of time they actually spend working after hours.

Productivity, Attention and Impact on Work

Technological Tethering, Digital Natives, and Challenges in the Work-Family Interface (Nevin, A., Schieman, S., 2020)

This Canadian-based research investigates whether generational digital familiarity alters the use of technology during private time.

Are communications about work outside regular working hours associated with work-to-family conflict, psychological distress and sleep problems? (Schieman, S., Young, M., 2013)

This research investigates how engaging in work-based activities outside of working hours may lead to increased levels of conflict with the family and issues with sleep.

The Mere Presence of a Cell Phone May Be Distracting: Implications for Attention and Task Performance (Thornton, B., Alyson, F., Maija, R., Rollins, E., 2014)

Previous research has shown that using a phone can be distracting while multi-tasking, such as while walking or driving. Recent research has even shown that the simple presence of a phone (e.g. placed on a table), with all the connections and networks that it represents, can distract from in-person physical social interactions and connections. This research goes a step further to investigate the distracting capability of mobile phones while performing tasks that require greater cognitive demands within the workplace (and in education).

The Paradox of Family Structure and Plans after Work: Why Single Childless Employees May Be the Least Absorbed at Work

There is a perception that spending more time in the office is equated to higher productivity levels. This research study explores which category of workers are, indeed, the most productive.

Information CyberSecurity

Exploring the Role of Work Identity and Work Locus of Control in Information Security Awareness (Hadlington, L., Popovac, M., Janicke, J., Yevseyeva, I., Jones, K., 2019)

This research explores ‘the adherence to organisational information security and the role of work-related and individual factors such as individuals’ perceived control within the workplace, their commitment to current work identity, and the extent to which they are reconsidering commitment to work.’

Academic Research Resources

UK-based Resources

The British Psychology CyberPsychology Section are a wealth of academic-based resources and recommendations including, but not limited to:

Book recommendations
Models, scales and measures
Teaching resources
Tools

USA-based Resources

Technology, Mind and Behaviour Journal (American Psychology Association Open Access Journal) has joined the Science Open Platform.

‘Technology, Mind, and Behavior (TMB) is an open access, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal published by the American Psychological Association and launched in 2020. TMB publishes original work in the area of human-technology interaction with a focus on human behavior at the individual or group level.’