Greater perceived partner phubbing, defined as a preoccupation with a phone during face-to-face interactions, may be associated with lower psychological well-being among young adults in romantic relationships.
Investigators conducted a cross-sectional study of 1,627 heterosexual, unmarried young adults aged 18 to 35 years who were in romantic relationships. Participants were recruited through convenience sampling, primarily in a university setting, and completed self-report questionnaires.
They assessed perceived partner phubbing, self-esteem, romantic loneliness, and psychological well-being using validated measures. The investigators examined whether self-esteem and romantic loneliness independently and sequentially mediated the association between partner phubbing and psychological well-being using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples.
Greater partner phubbing was associated with lower self-esteem, greater romantic loneliness, and lower psychological well-being. Self-esteem was positively associated with psychological well-being and inversely associated with romantic loneliness, while greater romantic loneliness was associated with lower psychological well-being.
The association between partner phubbing and self-esteem was relatively weak, a finding the investigators noted was consistent with evidence that partner phubbing may be more strongly associated with relationship outcomes than with individual psychological variables.
When a direct pathway between partner phubbing and psychological well-being was included, the association was not statistically significant. The investigators therefore selected the fully mediated model, in which self-esteem and romantic loneliness accounted for the association between perceived partner phubbing and psychological well-being.
The study had several limitations. Its cross-sectional design prevented conclusions about causality or the temporal ordering of the proposed pathways, and reliance on self-reported measures may have introduced social desirability bias. The use of individual rather than dyadic data prevented examination of reciprocal processes between partners. Generalizability was also limited by convenience sampling and a population composed of young, heterosexual, unmarried participants, many of whom were university students. In addition, the romantic loneliness subscale had relatively modest internal consistency, warranting caution when interpreting associations involving that measure.
Self-esteem and romantic loneliness may help explain the association between perceived partner phubbing and psychological well-being, but they do not establish that phubbing causes changes in these outcomes.
“The proposed serial mediation model is intended as a theoretically grounded, process-oriented explanation rather than a causal pathway,” wrote lead study author Muhammet Can Doğru, and TuğbaTürkKurtça, both of the Department of Psychological Counseling and Guidance at Yıldız Technical University and Trakya University, respectively, in Türkiye, and colleagues.
The study authors reported no conflicts of interest.
Source: Journal of Community Psychology
