![]() Milgram ( 1976) assumed that taking and using photos conveys specific abilities, which can be best understood if cameras and photos are regarded as “evolutionary developments” (p. ![]() We will describe these properties in more detail at the beginning of the following section. The invention and further technical developments in photography have conveyed images with characteristics that drawings, paintings, maps, or plans do not have: (a) photos are realistic in a special way (b) photos are produced by technical devices (c) part of the information in photos is there by chance (d) people tend to believe that what they see in photos really happened that way and (e) photos can be created easily, quickly and effortlessly. Photography differs significantly from other visual representation techniques. No theory, however, has suggested an integrated psychological basis of the wide range of photography-related behaviors. There is extensive research on the psychological bases of pictorial representation and art (e.g., Deacon, 2006 Donald, 2006 Dutton, 2009). Although smartphones are capable of easily recording the voices of loved ones, conversations, the sounds of a birthday party, or of a strange city, people rarely use this function (GSMA and NTT DOCOMO, 2014 Lutter et al., 2017). The technology to make audio-recordings, for example, has not been adopted by many people (Milgram, 1976). We consider the distribution of smartphone technology and social media a precondition for the sweeping success of photography, but insufficient to explain it, as not all smartphone features or technologies are widely used just because they are available. We examined the question why people take, view, own, share, and use personal photos, and why photos are important to them. This has rapidly shifted photography from an exclusive activity of socio-economically capable minorities toward engaging a majority of the world's 7.8 billion people. Smartphones integrate photography with many other functions, notably with access to the internet and social media (Smith, 2011 GSMA and NTT DOCOMO, 2014). More than 90 percent of all photographs (henceforth photos) are taken with smartphones (Carrington, 2020), and more than half of the world's population uses smartphones or mobile phones to take, view, and share photos (Statista, 2019 Kemp, 2021). Photography is ubiquitous around the world, with the number of people taking and using personal photographs steadily increasing (Lee and Stewart, 2016 Canon, 2018). ![]() We conclude that photography has become a human universal, which is based on context-sensitive mental predispositions and differentiates itself in the social and societal environment. Our framework comprises a range of testable predictions, provides a new theoretical basis for future empirical investigations into photography, and has practical implications. Including findings from multiple disciplines, we developed a novel conceptual framework-the “Mental Utilization Hypothesis of Photography.” It suggests that people adopt photography because it matches with core human mental mechanisms mainly from the social domain, and people use photography as a cognitive, primarily social coping strategy. We did this based on the four levels, which Nikolaas Tinbergen suggested for analyzing why animals behave in a particular way. We analyzed properties of human nature that have made taking and using photographs functional behaviors. Smartphone technology and social media have pushed the success of photography, but cannot explain it, as not all smartphone features are widely used just because they are available. These behaviors are still poorly understood. We analyzed why people take, share, and use personal photographs, independent of their specific cultural background.
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