Psychological perspectives on mobile media: A flyover review

Abstract

Psychology-infused research has always been a central section within the literature on mobile media and communication, highlighting the diverse emotional, cognitive, social, and personality processes that can interact with mobile behavior. While past work on the psychology of media and technology has been rooted more in the discipline of Communication than Psychology, more social scientists across disciplines are conducting mobile research with each year going forward. The result is a massive, and arguably scattered, body of knowledge on the psychological predictors, processes, effects, and implications of mobile media use. Despite the breadth of the burgeoning literature, there have been increasing attempts to synthesize this wide-ranging work (Bayer et al., 2016; Cumiskey & Ling, 2015; Ellis, 2020; Kushlev & Leitao, 2020; Melumad & Pham, 2020; Ross & Campbell, 2021; Wilmer et al., 2017). That said, it is unclear how much psychologically tuned research has been published in Mobile Media & Communication (MMC) so far. In this short review, we evaluate the prevalence of psychological work in MMC by completing a flyover of article abstracts published during the journal’s 10-year history. We then identify the core themes within this set of articles, extracting the guiding perspectives that drive research on the psychology of mobile media. To conclude, we reconsider the