Personality and Smartphone Addiction in Romania’s Digital Age: The Mediating Role of Professional Status and the Moderating Effect of Adaptive Coping

TL;DR

This study explores how personality traits and professional status influence smartphone addiction in Romania, with adaptive coping strategies playing a moderating role.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel analysis of how professional status mediates and adaptive coping moderates the relationship between personality and smartphone addiction.

Findings

Maturity consistently predicts lower smartphone addiction across all analyses.

Extraversion's effect on addiction is indirectly mediated by professional status.

Adaptive coping strategies moderate the impact of Agreeableness on smartphone addiction.

Abstract

In this research, we aimed to evaluate the relationship between the main dimensions of personality (Extraversion, Maturity, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Self-actualization) and mobile phone addiction, both directly and mediated by the professional context (professional status), and moderated by adaptive cognitive-emotional coping strategies. The participants, adult Romanian citizens, completed measures of personality—Big Five ABCD-M, a mobile phone addiction questionnaire, and the CERQ for adaptive coping strategies. They also responded to a question about current professional status (employed, student, etc.). Data were analyzed using Jamovi, and the findings were somewhat unexpected, though it aligned with the existing literature. Maturity emerged as a consistent inverse predictor of smartphone addiction (r = −0.45, β = −0.43, p < 0.001) across all three analyses. Extraversion showed an indirect effect mediated by professional status (β = −0.077, p < 0.05). Self-actualization was also found to predict smartphone addiction positively through full mediation by professional status (β = 0.05, p < 0.05). Agreeableness became a significant negative predictor (β = −0.13, p < 0.05) only when adaptive coping strategies were included. These findings highlight that the transition from frequent smartphone use—whether for work or personal reasons—to addiction can be subtle. This study may support both the general population in understanding smartphone use from a psycho-emotional perspective and organizations in promoting a healthy work-life balance.

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