Investigating the Relationships Between Mobility Behaviours and Indicators of Subjective Well-Being Using Smartphone-Based Experience Sampling and GPS Tracking

People interact with their physical environments every day by visiting different places and moving between them. Such mobility behaviours likely influence and are influenced by people's subjective well-being. However, past research examining the links between mobility behaviours and well-being has been inconclusive. Here, we provide a comprehensive investigation of these relationships by examining individual differences in two types of mobility behaviours (movement patterns and places visited) and their relationship to six indicators of subjective well-being (depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress, affect, and energy) at two different temporal levels of analysis (two-week tendencies and daily level). Using data from a large smartphone-based longitudinal study (N = 1765), we show that (i) movement patterns assessed via GPS data (distance travelled, entropy, and irregularity) and (ii) places visited assessed via experience sampling reports (home, work, and social places) are associated with subjective well-being at the between and within person levels. Our findings suggest that distance travelled is related to anxiety, affect, and stress, irregularity is related to depression and loneliness, and spending time in social places is negatively associated with loneliness. We discuss the implications of our work and highlight directions for future research on the generalizability to other populations as well as the characteristics of places. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Does Microcredit “Empower”? Reflections on the Grameen Bank Debate

Recent debates about the Grameen Bank’s microlending practices depict participating female borrowers as having fundamentally empowering or disempowering experiences. I argue that this discursive framework may be too reductive: it can conceal how technique and technology simultaneously facilitate relations of dependence and independence; and it can diminish our capacity to understand and assess innovative development initiatives.

L’évolution des normes face au développement des objets de santé connectés

A lot of connected objects can be sold on the Internet and in some general stores. These products can be used in a health environment; they can help to promote a healthy lifestyle. But they do not always have a well determined legal status, that is established to protect the patients or the healthcare professionals. The connected objects can support innovation. They can become an essential help for the patients and the healthcare professionals, nevertheless they can be at the origin of physical injuries, if they are badly used.     

抑制控制训练对手机依赖大学生的干预效果

依照手机成瘾倾向量表得分及手机使用时间记录从548名被试中筛选出60名手机依赖大学生,将其随机分配到抑制控制训练组和非训练组进行实验。预期通过抑制控制训练提升手机依赖大学生抑制控制能力,降低其手机依赖水平。结果发现：训练组被试在接受为期8周的抑制控制训练任务后,手机依赖总分、手机使用时间和非训练组相比显著降低,抑制控制能力显著提升。结果表明抑制控制训练对手机依赖大学生的干预效果明显。     

The effects of operating a touch screen smartphone and other common activities performed while bicycling on cycling behaviour

Although it has been shown that making phone calls or sending text messages while riding a bicycle can have a negative impact on bicyclist’s behaviour, in countries such as the Netherlands the operation of a mobile phone while cycling on a bicycle is not illegal and is actually quite common. In recent years conventional mobile phones with a physical keypad are increasingly being replaced by smartphones with a touch screen. The operation of a touch screen phone ironically cannot be done purely ‘by touch’ due to the lack of tactile feedback, and instead requires fixations on a relatively small screen. The question therefore can be asked whether the operation of touch screen telephones deteriorates cycling behaviour more than operation of a conventional mobile phone.Twenty-four participants completed a track on their own bicycle while sending a text message from a conventional and a touch screen mobile phone. In addition the effects of other common activities that can accompany bicycling were studied, including texting at the same time as listening to music, talking on a mobile phone or cycling next to someone and speaking with this companion, and playing a game on a touch screen phone while bicycling. The impacts of all the above conditions on cycling performance and visual detection performance were compared with control conditions in which participants cycled with either one or two hands on the handlebars and were not required to perform any secondary tasks.Bicycle speed was reduced in all telephone conditions and in the condition when cycling next to someone. Lateral position variation increased in all telephone conditions. Use of the touch screen led to a more central position in the cycle lane and resulted in worse visual detection performance compared with the operation of a conventional mobile phone. The main effect of listening to music was that an auditory signal to stop cycling was missed by 83% of the participants. In conclusion, while all investigated types of phone deteriorated cycling performance, the use of a touch phone has a larger negative effect on cycling performance than a conventional mobile phone. With touch screen smartphones taking the place of conventional mobile phones and being used for other purposes than verbal communication, these effects on cycling performance pose a threat to traffic safety.     

Eyes on the road,hands upon the wheel? Reciprocal dynamics between smartphone use while driving and job crafting

Smartphones are essential tools for communications and information management in organizational settings. However, smartphone use is a risky behavior when used while driving to and from work. As work experiences have been found to influence risky commuting behaviors, we hypothesized that job crafting, i.e., a set of proactive work behaviors through which employees change their job demands and resources, influences and is influenced by risky commuting behaviors. We argued that employees' smartphone use during driving commutes is related to how employees proactively choose to transform their demands and resources at work. A quantitative diary study was designed to investigate the process linking smartphone use during driving commutes to and from work and job crafting. A sample of 128 office employees completed two short daily questionnaires for five consecutive workdays (N = 627 observations). Results from multilevel analyses showed that daily talking on the phone while driving to work was positively associated with the proactive optimization of job demands, while daily proactive pursuing of challenging stimuli at work (i.e., seeking challenges) was positively related to looking at the phone when employees drove back from work. Furthermore, on days when employees reduced their hindering job demands, they reported less frequent talking on the phone while driving back from work. Results provide practical implications for the prevention of distracted driving and other risky driving behaviors.     

Is all high-risk behaviour premeditated? A qualitative exploratory approach to the self-regulation of habitual and risky driving behaviours

The majority of research surrounding the intervention of risky driving behaviours has operated on the notion that offending behaviour is intentional, leading to a defined theoretical approach on deterrence. This study aimed to investigate the motivations, regulatory behaviours and resisting beliefs that contribute to the occurrence of risky driving behaviours, from the perspective that some behaviour may be unintentional and habitual by nature. An online sample of Australian drivers (N = 46) were recruited to complete a qualitative phone interview regarding their perceptions of risky driving behaviours. Thematic analysis revealed that firstly, speeding and the use of technology while driving (i.e., distraction) were the most commonly reported risky driving habits. Speeding in particular appeared to be both habitual and unintentional, whereas phone use while driving was attributable to addiction, impulses and attitudes. Factors such as drivers’ mentality, the automaticity of the behaviour, and social norms were perceived to make habitual behaviours more difficult to change, whilst personal experiences with legal and physical consequences were perceived to increase risk perceptions and promote behavioural change. Participants also reported using cognitive reframing strategies and behaviours to increase and maintain awareness of the behaviours. Overall, this study has highlighted the resistant and multi-dimensional nature of risky driving habits, as well as the situational factors that preclude them. Based on the findings, future research may benefit by focusing efforts to understanding how habituality fits in the broader deterrence literature, and how such behaviours can be best intervened.     

Suppression of brain activity related to a car-following task with an auditory task: An fMRI study

Driving a car in daily life involves multiple tasks. One important task for safe driving is car-following, the interference of which causes rear-end collisions: the most common type of car accident. Recent reports have described that car-following is hindered even by hands-free mobile telephones. We conducted functional MRI with 18 normal volunteers to investigate brain activity changes that occur during a car-following task with a concurrent auditory task. Participants performed three tasks: a driving task, an auditory task, and a dual task in an fMRI run. During the driving task, participants use a joystick to control their vehicle speed in a driving simulator to maintain a constant distance from a leading car, which moves at varying speed. Language trials and tone discrimination trials are presented during the auditory task. Car-following performance was worse during the dual task than during the single-driving task, showing positive correlation with brain activity in the bilateral lateral occipital complex and the right inferior parietal lobule. In the medial prefrontal cortex and left superior occipital gyrus, the brain activity of the dual task condition was less than that in the single-driving task condition. These results suggest that the decline of brain activity in these regions may induce car-following performance deterioration.