PhD student Heather Shaw, from the University of Lincoln, School of Psychology, conducted a study in which she wanted to find out what types of personalities iOS and Android users have.
Shaw and her fellow researchers conducted two studies of personality differences between iOS and Android users.
In the first study, the researchers asked the 240 participants to complete a questionnaire regarding the characteristics they associate with smartphone users of each brand.
In the second study, they tested these stereotypes against real personality traits of 530 Android and iOS smartphone users.
The results showed that Android users are perceived to have higher levels of honesty and humility but are seen as less extraverted than iOS users.
They also concluded that women tend not to think too much, and are twice as likely to choose an iPhone than a Samsung.
When measuring the characteristic 'avoidance of similarity' which describes whether people like having the same products as others, Android Users avoided similarity more than iPhone users. Finally, iPhone users thought it was more important to have a high status phone than Android users.
Heather explained
This study provides new insights into personality differences between different types of smartphone users. Smartphone choice is the most basic level of smartphone personalization, and even this can tell us a lot about the user.
Imagine if we further researched how personality traits relate to the applications people download. It is becoming more and more apparent that smartphones are becoming a mini digital version of the user, and many of us don't like it when other people use our phones because it can reveal so much about us
