Avoid this brain draining mistake! (Psychology, Study) | SMARTPHONE BRAIN DRAIN

when we are working for a presentation at work or if school children are doing their homework and of course if the smartphone is lying next to us we grab the smartphone from time to time and we take a look if we have new messages or if something new happened in the world or if there's a new youtube video from our favorite youtuber and if we do so every five or ten minutes of course our concentration gets drained more and more and we again and again have to find back to our concentration to do the tasks that we planned to do this phenomenon i think is quite common sense everybody knows that this happens what is not that well known is that even if the smartphone is lying next to us and we don't take a look at it it can drain our cognitive capacity this at least could be shown in a study called brain drain the mere presence of one's own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity so the mere presence you really don't have to look at your smartphone just the smartphone lying on your desk can drain your cognitive capacity that is the hypothesis the scientists had in this study and when i heard about this study the first time i thought well probably it's not well done study probably just a small number of participants maybe there are some methodological flaws but actually i was completely wrong because the study is very well done and they had 844 participants so a really solid number of participants and also the effects they observed were quite strong but let's take a look what they did they invited all participants to the laboratory and told them well your task will be to do some cognitive tasks on the computer and for these tasks please turn your smartphone on completely silent so turn off the ring and vibrate so that your phone won't make any sounds so this is what they told all participants but to one group they also said well take your smartphone with you because you will need it later on so please take your smartphone with you and put it on a desk beside you but face down so that you don't get distracted so this group was the mere presence of the smartphone group in a second experimental group the participants were told well please put your smartphone in your pocket or in your handbag so in this condition the smartphone was also a little bit present but it was out of sight and the third group was told okay please give us your stuff your handbag and your smartphone before you enter the lab because otherwise you might be distracted by anything so for this group the smartphone was in another room it was no longer present and now the participants had to do some difficult cognitive tasks like for example a working memory task or fluid intelligence tasks and the big question was whether the location of the smartphone would have an impact on their cognitive abilities and it really turned out that the closer the smartphone was especially when it was lying on the desk right beside the participants when they were working on for example the intelligence tasks the closer the smartphone was the stronger the cognitive drain so the less good the participants were in solving the intelligence tasks you could say if your smartphone is lying next to you on the desk the mere presence of the smartphone decreases your intelligence and the effect actually is really quite strong and to put it in perspective in Germany we have the so-called Gymnasium which is the highest level of school education and then we have the so-called Realschule which is the second level of education and the difference between the IQ results was about the difference between a pupil from Gymnasium in comparison to the pupil from Realschule so a really strong solid effect what they found here just because the smartphone is lying next to someone and the big question is why does the smartphone just because of its mere presence decrease our cognitive abilities and the scientists say it's because of the willpower you have to constantly invest to not grab the smartphone and to take a look on your smartphone and this willpower of course costs a lot of cognitive capacity and it's like if you have your favorite chocolate lying next to you it's already unpacked and you want to grab the chocolate and eat something but no you have now have to focus on the present task all the time you have to focus and to ignore the chocolate or take for example if you are a smoker and there's lying this package of cigarettes right next to you all the time and you are not allowed to grab a cigarette so all the time you have you constantly have to bring a lot of cognitive willpower which finally is no longer available to solve the cognitive tasks that you have to do at the moment that you are supposed to do and what is really interesting or somehow disturbing is that this effect seems to be highly unconscious because the participants were asked well did you think about your smartphone or do you think that your smartphone had an impact while it was lying next to you and most participants almost all participants said no i didn't think about my smartphone or no i don't think that it's had an impact on my cognitive abilities i don't think that i was worse at this task just because the smartphone was lying next to me so i think many people should know about this scientific results because for example children who are learning for school maybe they shouldn't have their smartphone lying next to them or maybe if you are working for a really important project maybe you shouldn't have your smartphone lying next to you because then you can't achieve as much as you would like to so i really hope you found this interesting a little bit enlightening and maybe you think about how you use your smartphone in the future and where you locate your smartphone in the future if you need to get something really cognitive demanding done and if you want we will see you next time