Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

8-2022

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that grit serves as a protective trait against maladaptive smartphone use. However, little is known about possible boundary conditions, such as cognitive abilities, that could modulate the relations. Evidence suggests that the cognitive functions that underlie goal-maintenance abilities—specifically, inhibition—could moderate the relations of the two subfactors of grit (i.e., grit-consistency and grit-perseverance) with problematic smartphone use. Hence, we investigated the moderating roles of two core aspects of inhibition: prepotent response inhibition and resistance to distracter interference. Testing college students (N = 237, Mage = 21.8 years, 73.4% female), we found that only resistance to distracter interference, but not prepotent response inhibition, significantly moderated the link between grit-perseverance and problematic smartphone use. However, neither facet of inhibition moderated the associations between grit-consistency and problematic smartphone use. These results underscore the importance of cognitive inhibition for resisting task-irrelevant distracters and strengthening the protective role of grit-perseverance against problematic smartphone use.

Keywords

Grit, Resistance to distracter interference, Response inhibition, Smartphone use

Discipline

Applied Behavior Analysis | Social Psychology

Research Areas

Psychology

Publication

Personality and Individual Differences

Volume

194

First Page

1

Last Page

5

ISSN

0191-8869

Identifier

10.1016/j.paid.2022.111644

Publisher

Elsevier

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111644

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