Phubbing, the act of prioritizing one’s smartphone during an ongoing face-to-face interaction, has become a prominent topic in communication research because of its detrimental effects on interpersonal experiences such as perceived politeness and conversation quality. Although this phenomenon has been widely studied, most research has focused on one specific relational context—often among friends—and primarily relied on student samples. Consequently, little is known about how evaluations of phubbing differ across varying relational contexts and age groups.
Grounded in Expectancy Violations Theory, this study examined how the closeness of a relationship and the age of the observer influence evaluations of a conversational partner’s politeness and of the overall conversation quality after phubbing occurs. It was assumed that behavior from a familiar partner would be evaluated less negatively than the same behavior from a stranger, and that older adults would uphold stricter conversational norms than younger adults.
To test these assumptions, an online vignette-based experiment was conducted. Participants were randomly assigned to imagine either a close interaction partner, such as a friend or romantic partner, or a distant one, such as a stranger. Each participant read a short, realistic scenario describing a conversation in which the partner repeatedly looked at their phone and asked for repetitions of what had just been said. The two versions of the vignette were identical except for the framing of the relationship between the speakers. Age group was coded post hoc as younger (born ≥ 1980) versus older (born < 1980). After reading the vignette, participants rated perceived conversation quality and politeness on established 7-point Likert scales
The results demonstrated that relational context played a central role: when the inattentive partner was described as a close acquaintance, participants rated both politeness and conversation quality more positively than when the same behavior was attributed to a stranger. Familiarity thus appeared to buffer the negative impact of divided attention on interpersonal evaluations. Contrary to expectations, no meaningful differences emerged between younger and older participants in their judgements.