If you're getting push notifications on your smart phone, it might be making you depressed. Those dings tend to make us hostile and anxious. University of Houston researcher Mai-Ly Nguyen Steers said push notifications are a type of "classical conditioning".
“Which is a basic psychological principle where something that is normally a neutral stimulus then becomes associated with something else,” said Nguien-Steers.
Actual human friends messaging make us happy. But, work-related and non-human notifications make us grumpy.
A new study suggests that one third of notifications which pop up cause a downturn in our mood. A team at Nottingham Trent University investigated the effect on mood as 50 participants received thousands of digital alerts over a five-week period.
Nguien Steers said you feel compelled to look at your phone...almost like you're chained to it.
“You just feel bombarded constantly with information. And, it probably feels like yet another thing I have to look at and deal with,” said Nguien-Steers.
“While we like our friends messaging us, work notifications—especially a lot of them—makes us anxious and hostile.