Lopez, Richard B.Salinger, Julia M.Heatherton, Todd F.Wagner, Dylan D.2018-11-282018-11-282018-10-11Lopez, Richard B., Salinger, Julia M., Heatherton, Todd F., et al.. "Media multitasking is associated with altered processing of incidental, irrelevant cues during person perception." (2018) BioMed Central: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-018-0256-x.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/103433Abstract Background Media multitasking (MMT)—using and switching between unrelated forms of media—has been implicated in altered processing of extraneous stimuli, resulting in performance deficits. Here, we sought to extend our prior work to test the hypothesis that MMT might be associated with enhanced processing of incidental environmental cues during person perception. Method We tested the relationship between individual differences in MMT and person perception, by experimentally manipulating the relevance of environmental cues that participants could use to make trait and personality judgements of an unfamiliar social target. Relevant environmental cues consisted of neat or messy arrangements of the target’s belongings, whereas irrelevant cues consisted of similarly neat or messy arrangements of the testing room in which participants viewed a video of the target. Results In general, relevant cues affected ratings of the target’s conscientiousness. Additionally, and consistent with our hypothesis, there was a significant interaction between irrelevant cue condition and MMT, such that high media multitaskers more readily incorporated irrelevant environmental cues into their evaluations of the target’s conscientiousness. Conclusions These results suggest that high media multitaskers are more responsive to irrelevant environmental cues, which in turn can lead them to form inaccurate impressions of others.This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Journal article2018-11-28https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-018-0256-xenThe Author(s).