8/9/2019 Omstreden onderzoek Glenn Wilson
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THE “INFOMANIA” STUDY
In 2005 I was commissioned by Porter-Novelli, the London
publicists of Hewlett-
Pacard, to supervise a small in-house e!periment on the ne"ative
effects of #always-on$ technolo"y, dubbed #infomania$% &his was
to accompany a lar"e-scale survey of
around '000 people conducted by pollin" company &N(,
revealin" the e!tent of
misuse of technolo"y amon" )* worers% +or e!ample, 2 would chec
email and
te!t messa"es out of hours and when on holiday, and 20 would
interrupt a business
or social meetin" to respond to an email or telephone messa"e%
&he findin"s of the
e!perimental part of the study, for which I was responsible,
were as follows.
SUMMARY
Design
/i"ht Porter Novelli employees 1 male and 1 female were tested
twice 3 once in
4uiet conditions and once in distractin" conditions mobile
phones rin"in" and e-mails arrivin"% Parallel forms of a
matrices-type I test were used% &he desi"n was
balanced with respect to se!, order of test conditions,
and order of I test forms%
6easures of sin conductance, heart rate and blood pressure were
taen under both
conditions as well as self-reported stress ratin"s%
Effect of distraction on IQ
7esults showed clearly that technolo"ical distraction diminished
I test performance
mean scores dropped from '18%89 achieved under 4uiet conditions
to '82%:5 under
#noisy$ conditions%
Sex difference
&he impact of distraction was "reater for males '15%50 down
to '2: than for females
'1'%25 down to '89%50% Puttin" that another way, males were
superior in 4uiet
conditions, females were superior in the distraction condition%
&his is consistent with
the idea that women are better than men at #multi-tasin"$%
Sef!re"orted stress
Noisy conditions caused a striin" increase in
self-reported stress% 7atin"s on a 0-'0
scale of #stress e!perienced durin" the test$ increased from
2%:5 to 5%5 for males and
1%:5 to %:5 for females% Note that in addition to the main
effect of conditions of
testin", women reported hi"her stress levels than men
overall%
#$%sioogica stress indicators
(in conductance a reflection of sweat "land activity increased
sli"htly for both
males 28%00; 25%:5 and females '%25; '9%25 under distraction
conditions
compared with 4uiet% Heart rate and blood pressure showed no
consistent relationship
with wor conditions% 6ales were hi"her than females on all these
marers, which
contrasts with the self-report measure%
NOTE
&his study was widely misrepresented in the media, with the
number of participants
for the two aspects of the report bein" confused and the
impression "iven that it was a published report the only
publication was a press release from Porter-Novelli%
