Personality and dissociative experiences in smartphone users

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between Problematic Smartphone Use (PSU), dissociative experiences and some characteristics of personality. The sample consisted of 400 Italian college students aged between 20 and 24 (M = 21.59, SD = 1.43). The materials included: a questionnaire on the use of smartphones, the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS-SV), the Dissociative Experience Scale (DES), and the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI). Results showed that the college students in our sample used their smartphones mainly for messaging (50%), calling (42.5%), accessing the internet (38%), connecting via social networks (33.5%), taking photos (26.5%), gaming (8.5%) and using applications (.5%). According to the results of the SAS-SV, 70% of our sample showed PSU, without gender differences. Regarding the correlation with personality factors, intensive use of smartphones corresponds to lower emotional stability and the extraversion or 'energy' factor is predictive near the significance cut-off (p = .06), while among the dissociative experiences, passive influence and dissociative amnesia are the best predictors of smartphone addiction. The other variables are less significant (p = .07). The results underline the importance of detecting the PSU predictors in college students, in order to prevent psychopathological consequences