A notification does not have to make you pick up your phone to affect your attention. In this Mastery Brief, Dr. T-Michael Dougherty looks at research showing that phone notifications alone can disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task—even when the phone is never touched—and why redesigning notification delivery may be more useful than simply trying to ignore every interruption.

The practical question is simple: which things actually deserve the right to interrupt you immediately?

Ignoring a notification may be a successful act of self-control, but it does not necessarily mean the interruption was cognitively free. A better strategy may be to reduce how often unnecessary alerts get the opportunity to recruit your attention in the first place.

Research behind this Brief

Stothart, Mitchum, and Yehnert (2015) tested whether cellular-phone notifications alone could disrupt attention. Participants received phone notifications while performing an attention-demanding task but did not interact with the device. Notifications significantly disrupted task performance. This directly supports the Brief’s central claim that receiving a notification and responding to it are not the same thing—and that an ignored notification can still impose an attentional cost.

Fitz and colleagues (2019) conducted a randomized two-week field experiment with 237 smartphone users. Participants received notifications as usual, in different batching schedules, or not at all. Delivering notifications in three predictable batches per day was associated with greater reported attentiveness and control and lower stress compared with usual notification delivery. Completely eliminating notifications did not simply produce greater benefits; participants in the no-notification condition experienced more anxiety and fear of missing out. This supports a more precise recommendation: redesign notification delivery rather than assuming that “turn everything off” is always best.

The Stothart study supports the claim that notifications alone can disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task without phone interaction. It does not establish that every notification creates a large or lasting deficit.

The Fitz study supports selective redesign and batching of notification delivery. It does not establish that three notification batches per day is the ideal schedule for every person or occupation.

Stothart, C., Mitchum, A., & Yehnert, C. (2015). The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(4), 893–897. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000100

PMID: 26121498

Fitz, N., Kushlev, K., Jagannathan, R., Lewis, T., Paliwal, D., & Ariely, D. (2019). Batching smartphone notifications can improve well-being. Computers in Human Behavior, 101, 84–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.07.016