Android users more honest and humble than IPhone users

Believe it or not but Android smartphone users have greater levels of honesty and humility, agreeableness and openness personality traits but are seen as less extroverted than Apple iPhone users, an interesting study has revealed.

This may be because iPhone users thought it was more important to have a high-status phone than Android users.

The team from University of Lincoln also found that women were twice more likely to own an iPhone than an Android device.

"This study provides new insights into personality differences between different types of smartphone users. Smartphone choice is the most basic level of smartphone personalisation, and even this can tell us a lot about the user," explained Heather Shaw from University of Lincoln's school of psychology.

However, most of the personality stereotypes did not occur in reality as only honesty and humility was found in greater amounts within Android users, the findings showed.

Shaw and her fellow researchers conducted two studies of personality differences between iPhone and Android smartphone users. Lancaster University was also involved in the study.

In the first study, the researchers asked 240 participants to complete a questionnaire about characteristics they associate with users of each smartphone brand.

In the second study, they tested these stereotypes against actual personality traits of 530 Android and iPhone smartphone users.

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.

"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,a Shaw noted.

She was scheduled to present her work to the annual conference of British Psychological Society Social Psychology Section in Cardiff on September 1.