Understanding the Mental Recovery Effect of Cyberloafing: Attention Replenishment and Task-Set Inertia

Hemin Jiang ()
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Hemin Jiang: University of Science and Technology of China

A chapter in Information Systems and Neuroscience, 2020, pp 204-210 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Many employees justify their cyberloafing (i.e., non-work-related Internet use during work time) behavior as a mental break. However, there is little empirical research to examine the mental recovery effect of cyberloafing. This study aims to design a lab experiment to investigate the impact of cyberloafing on employee mental fatigue and task productivity. The study also aims to compare cyberloafing with a traditional means of mental breaks (i.e., walking outside for a while) in alleviating mental fatigue and improving productivity. The expected findings of this study are (1) cyberloafing can help employees reduce mental fatigue to some extent by replenishing their attentional resources; however, (2) compared with walking outside for a while, the mental recovery effect of cyberloafing may not be so good because it may take employees more time and effort to switch their attention from cyberloafing (than from walking outside) back to the work task. Neuroscience tools will be employed to support the expected findings above.

Keywords: Cyberloafing; Mental recovery; Task-set inertia; Task productivity; EEG; Eye tracker (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:lnichp:978-3-030-60073-0_24

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-60073-0_24

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