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Do social networking sites (SNSs) influence well-being? According to the active-passive model of SNS use, the impact of SNSs on well-being depends on how they are used: Using SNSs actively to interact with other users positively affects well-being, whereas passive consumption of SNS content negatively affects well-being. However, emerging evidence suggests that the active-passive distinction is too coarse to fully capture the relationship between SNS use and well-being. Here we describe the extended active-passive model of SNS use, which refines the original model in three ways: It decomposes active use, decomposes passive use, and crosses usage types with user characteristics. We describe recent empirical evidence illustrating the benefits of these three extensions and highlight important future research directions. The extended active-passive model of SNS use provides a nuanced understanding of the relationship between SNS use and well-being by highlighting that active use of SNSs is not always beneficial and passive use is not always detrimental.

Social media are popular among adolescents worldwide, including the global South. The way adolescents use social media is influenced by their own perception of social media but also by how their parents use and perceive social media. This study aims to understand how Indonesian young adolescents (12–15 years old) and parents of adolescents use and perceive social media. For this purpose, we conducted eight focus group discussions and eight semi-structured interviews with 30 Indonesian adolescents and 15 Indonesian parents. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data reveals that both adolescents and parents use social media for social, practical, and pleasure activities. Most adolescents mention that they consider themselves skilled in using social media, while parents consider themselves less skilled. Both adolescents and parents mention that social media offer benefits for adolescents, including emotional, social, and practical benefits. However, adolescents and parents also mention the risks of social media use for adolescents, including social, emotional, and informational risks, as well as the displacement of more meaningful activities. As such, both adolescents and parents do not perceive social media as inherently good or bad but rather as a novel medium that offers benefits for adolescents but also involves several risks to be considered by parents and other relevant stakeholders. This study adds to our understanding of social media use in the global South and offers a theoretical basis for future studies on the impact of adolescents’ social media usage on wellbeing in an Indonesian context. However, future research is necessary to depict possible differences in social media use between Indonesia and other countries in the global South.

Background Research on the relationship between Facebook use intensity and depressive symptoms has resulted in mixed findings. In contrast, problematic Facebook use has been found to be a robust predictor of depressive symptoms. This suggests that when intense Facebook use results in a problematic usage pattern, it may indirectly predict depressive symptoms. However, this mediation pathway has never been examined. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the possible indirect relationship between Facebook use intensity and depressive symptoms through problematic Facebook use is moderated by demographic (age), and personality (neuroticism and extraversion) characteristics. Methods To address these gaps, we conducted an online cross-sectional study (n = 210, 55% female, age range: 18–70 years old, Mage = 30.26, SD = 12.25). We measured Facebook use intensity (Facebook Intensity Scale), problematic Facebook use (Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale), depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale Revised), and neuroticism and extraversion (Ten Item Personality Inventory). Results A mediation analysis revealed that problematic Facebook use fully mediates the relationship between Facebook use intensity and depressive symptoms. Moreover, a moderated mediation analysis demonstrated that this indirect relationship is especially strong among young users and users scoring high on neuroticism. Conclusions These findings expand our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between Facebook use intensity and depressive symptoms and describe user characteristics that act as vulnerability factors in this relationship.

Problematic use of social networking sites (SNS) has a negative impact on mental health. It has been found that people who score high on neuroticism are especially vulnerable towards engaging with SNS in a problematic way but it is not clear which psychological mechanisms explain this relationship. We addressed this issue by examining the mediating role of fear of missing out and self-control in the relationship between neuroticism and problematic SNS use. For this purpose, we conducted a cross-sectional study ( n = 151, 69.5% female, Mage = 26.23, SD = 7.52) and tested for parallel mediation using structural equation modelling. Neuroticism was found to be predictive of increased levels of problematic SNS use. Moreover, neuroticism was associated with both increased levels of fear of missing out and decreased levels of self-control. However, only fear of missing out was found to robustly mediate the relationship between neuroticism and problematic use of SNS. These findings suggest that fear of missing out could be an intervention target to prevent people scoring high on neuroticism from engaging in problematic SNS use.

Because of the rise of social networking sites (SNSs), social comparisons take place at an unprecedented rate and scale. There is a growing concern that these online social comparisons negatively impact people's subjective well-being (SWB). In this paper, we review research on (a) the antecedents of social comparisons on SNSs, (b) the consequences of social comparisons on SNSs for SWB and, (c) social comparison as a mechanism explaining (mediator) or affecting (moderator) the relationship between SNSs and SWB. The occurrence of social comparisons on SNSs depends on who uses the SNS and on how the SNS is being used with passive use in particular resulting in increased levels of social comparison. Moreover, social comparison on SNSs may occasionally result in an increase in SWB but typically negative effects are found as people tend to engage in contrasting upward social comparisons. Finally, several studies show that social comparison is a key mechanism explaining the relationship between use of SNSs and SWB and that users with a tendency to engage in social comparison are especially likely to be negatively impacted by SNSs. The dynamic, cyclical processes that result from this pattern of findings are discussed.

Psychologists have long debated whether it is possible to assess how people subjectively feel without asking them. The recent proliferation of online social networks has recently added a fresh chapter to this discussion, with research now suggesting that it is possible to index people's subjective experience of emotion by simply counting the number of emotion words contained in their online social network posts. Whether the conclusions that emerge from this work are valid, however, rests on a critical assumption: that people's usage of emotion words in their posts accurately reflects how they feel. Although this assumption is widespread in psychological research, here we suggest that there are reasons to challenge it. We corroborate these assertions in 2 ways. First, using data from 4 experience-sampling studies of emotion in young adults, we show that people's reports of how they feel throughout the day neither predict, nor are predicted by, their use of emotion words on Facebook. Second, using simulations we show that although significant relationships emerge between the use of emotion words on Facebook and self-reported affect with increasingly large numbers of observations, the relationship between these variables was in the opposite of the theoretically expected direction 50% of the time (i.e., 3 of 6 models that we performed simulations on). In contrast to counting emotion words, we show that judges' ratings of the emotionality of participants' Facebook posts consistently predicts how people feel across all analyses. These findings shed light on how to draw inferences about emotion using online social network data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

There is a public concern that smartphone communication undermines well-being by displacing face-to-face interactions. However, research on this “social displacement hypothesis” has provided mixed results. We examined when this hypothesis holds true (within-persons vs. between-persons) and tested an intervention to decrease smartphone communication. Participants (N = 109) reported daily on smartphone communication, face-to-face communication, and emotional well-being for fifteen days. At day six, participants were assigned to a mindfulness-treatment intervention group or a no-treatment control group. The social displacement hypothesis was confirmed at the within-person but not between-person level. Specifically, when someone communicates a lot using her smartphone during a particular day, that person engages in less face-to-face interactions during that same day. However, people who tend to spend a lot of time communicating on their smartphone do not engage in less face-to-face conversations than people who largely refrain from smartphone communication. The mindfulness-intervention reduced daily smartphone communication, which decreased negative emotions.

Thinking about a negative event from a self-distanced (vs. self-immersed) perspective is associated with lower emotion intensity. However, it is unclear how self-distancing impacts emotion unfolding and whether individual differences in depression severity moderate this impact. We addressed this issue by examining the effect of self-distancing on emotion explosiveness (i.e., steepness of the emotion response at onset) and accumulation (i.e., intensification of the response after onset) in participants differing in levels of depression. Participants adopted a self-immersed or self-distanced perspective while reading and thinking about manipulated negative social feedback. Both explosiveness and accumulation decreased when participants adopted a self-distanced perspective. Moreover, the effect of perspective taking on accumulation was especially outspoken for people with high levels of depression severity.

Mindfulness theorists suggest that people spend most of their time focusing on the past or future rather than the present. Despite the prevalence of this assumption, no research that we are aware of has evaluated whether it is true or what the implications of focusing on the present are for subjective well-being. We addressed this issue by using experience sampling to examine how frequently people focus on the present throughout the day over the course of a week and whether focusing on the present predicts improvements in the 2 components of subjective well-being over time-how people feel and how satisfied they are with their lives. Results indicated that participants were present-focused the majority of the time (66%). Moreover, focusing on the present predicted improvements in life satisfaction (but not happiness) over time by reducing negative rumination. These findings advance our understanding of how temporal orientation and well-being relate. (PsycINFO Database Record

It has been shown that both fear of missing out (FoMO) and problematic (i.e., excessive) smartphone use (PSU) are negatively associated with indicators of emotional well-being. Moreover, FoMO has been found to be a key predictor of PSU. This suggests that PSU may mediate the relation between FoMO and decreased emotional well-being but this pathway has never been tested. Moreover, in most studies on PSU, the multidimensional nature of this construct has been ignored. The aim of the present study was to address these gaps by directly testing the mediating role of (subdimensions of) PSU in the association between FoMO and emotional well-being. We conducted a cross-sectional study with Estonian participants (n = 426). Using a simple mediation analysis, we found that PSU partially mediated the relationship between FoMO and decreased emotional well-being. Using a parallel mediation analysis, we found that two specific dimensions of PSU were significant mediators of the relationship between FoMO and decreased emotional well-being: Cyberspace-oriented Relations and Physical Symptoms. This suggests that the negative relationship between FoMO and decreased emotional well-being is due to FoMO stimulating (a) online relationships at the cost of offline interactions and (b) Physical symptoms associated with excessive smartphone use. Overall, this study provides a fine-grained analysis of the relationship between FoMO, PSU and emotional well-being.

Prior research indicates that Facebook usage predicts declines in subjective well-being over time. How does this come about? We examined this issue in 2 studies using experimental and field methods. In Study 1, cueing people in the laboratory to use Facebook passively (rather than actively) led to declines in affective well-being over time. Study 2 replicated these findings in the field using experience-sampling techniques. It also demonstrated how passive Facebook usage leads to declines in affective well-being: by increasing envy. Critically, the relationship between passive Facebook usage and changes in affective well-being remained significant when controlling for active Facebook use, non-Facebook online social network usage, and direct social interactions, highlighting the specificity of this result. These findings demonstrate that passive Facebook usage undermines affective well-being.

In his target article, James Gross presents an extended version of his process model of emotion regulation that has deeply shaped the field of emotion regulation research. The extended process mode...

Quite a few studies in the behavioral sciences result in hierarchical time profile data, with a number of time profiles being measured for each person under study. Associated research questions often focus on individual differences in profile repertoire, that is, differences between persons in the number and the nature of profile shapes that show up for each person. In this paper, we introduce a new method, called KSC-N, that parsimoniously captures such differences while neatly disentangling variability in shape and amplitude. KSC-N induces a few person clusters from the data and derives for each person cluster the types of profile shape that occur most for the persons in that cluster. An algorithm for fitting KSC-N is proposed and evaluated in a simulation study. Finally, the new method is applied to emotional intensity profile data.

The study of emotion dynamics involves the study of the trajectories, patterns, and regularities with which emotions (or rather, the experiential, physiological, and behavioral elements that constitute an emotion) fluctuate across time, their underlying processes, and downstream consequences. Here, we formulate some of the basic principles underlying emotional change over time, discuss methods to study emotion dynamics, their relevance for psychological well-being, and a number of challenges and opportunities for the future.

Time is given a central place in theoretical models of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2015), but key questions regarding the role of time remain unanswered. We investigated 2 such unanswered questions. First, we explored when different emotion regulation strategies were used within the course of an emotional episode in daily life. Second, we investigated the association between the temporal deployment of strategies and negative emotional experience. We conducted a daily diary study in which participants (N = 74) drew an intensity profile depicting the temporal unfolding of their negative emotional experience across daily events (N = 480), and mapped their usage of emotion regulation strategies onto this intensity profile. Strategies varied in their temporal deployment, with suppression and rumination occurring more at the beginning of the episode, and reappraisal and distraction occurring more toward the end of the episode. Strategies also varied in their association with negative emotion: rumination was positively associated with negative emotion, and reappraisal and distraction were negatively associated with negative emotion. Finally, both rumination and reappraisal interacted with time to predict negative emotional experience. Rumination was more strongly positively associated with negative emotions at the end of the episode than the beginning, but reappraisal was more strongly negatively associated with negative emotion at the beginning of the episode than the end. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for timing in the study of emotion regulation, as well as the necessity of studying these temporal processes in daily life. (PsycINFO Database Record

Extant research suggests that self-distancing facilitates adaptive self-reflection of negative emotional experiences. However, this work operationalizes adaptive self-reflection in terms of a reduction in the intensity of negative emotion, ignoring other important aspects of emotional experience such as emotion duration. Moreover, prior research has predominantly focused on how self-distancing influences emotional reactivity in response to reflecting on negative experiences, leaving open questions concerning how this process operates in the context of positive experiences. We addressed these issues by examining the relationship between self-distancing and the duration of daily negative and positive emotions using a daily diary methodology. Discrete-time survival analyses revealed that reflecting on both daily negative (Studies 1 and 2) and positive events (Study 2) from a self-distanced perspective was associated with shorter emotions compared with reflecting on such events from a self-immersed perspective. The basic science and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

An emotional experience can last for only a couple of seconds up to several hours or even longer. In the present study, we examine to which extent covert intrapersonal actions (cognitions both related and unrelated to the emotion-eliciting stimulus) as well as overt interpersonal actions (social sharing) account for this variability in emotion duration. Participants were asked to report the duration of their anger, sadness, joy, and gratitude episodes on a daily basis during five days. Furthermore, information was collected with regard to their cognitions during the episodes and their social sharing behavior. Discrete-time survival analyses revealed that for three of the four emotions under study, stimulus-related cognitions with the same valence as the emotion lead to a prolongation of the episode; in contrast, both stimulus-related and stimulus-unrelated cognitions with a valence opposite to the emotion lead to a shortening. Finally, for the four emotions under study, social sharing was associated with a prolongation. The findings are discussed in terms of a possible process basis underlying the time dynamics of negative as well as positive emotions.

The authors present 2 studies to explain the variability in the duration of emotional experience. Participants were asked to report the duration of their fear, anger, joy, gratitude, and sadness episodes on a daily basis. Information was further collected with regard to potential predictor variables at 3 levels: trait predictors, episode predictors, and moment predictors. Discrete-time survival analyses revealed that, for all 5 emotions under study, the higher the importance of the emotion-eliciting situation and the higher the intensity of the emotion at onset, the longer the emotional experience lasts. Moreover, a reappearance, either physically or merely mentally, of the eliciting stimulus during the emotional episode extended the duration of the emotional experience as well. These findings display interesting links with predictions within N. H. Frijda's theory of emotion, with the phenomenon of reinstatement (as studied within the domain of learning psychology), and with the literature on rumination.

A case is made for the use of hierarchical models in the analysis of generalization gradients. Hierarchical models overcome several restrictions that are imposed by repeated measures analysis-of-variance (rANOVA), the default statistical method in current generalization research. More specifically, hierarchical models allow to include continuous independent variables and overcomes problematic assumptions such as sphericity. We focus on how generalization research can benefit from this added flexibility. In a simulation study we demonstrate the dominance of hierarchical models over rANOVA. In addition, we show the lack of efficiency of the Mauchly's sphericity test in sample sizes typical for generalization research, and confirm how violations of sphericity increase the probability of type I errors. A worked example of a hierarchical model is provided, with a specific emphasis on the interpretation of parameters relevant for generalization research. ispartof: Frontiers in Psychology vol:6 pages:1-10 ispartof: location:Switzerland status: published

Previous research has shown the relation between social sharing and emotional processing to be notoriously complex. In the present study, we unraveled this complexity by, for the first time, taking 3 key aspects of this relation into account simultaneously: the nature of the emotion, the timing of possible sharing effects, and the multicomponential character of emotions. Using the day reconstruction method, we first identified an intense anger or sadness target episode for each participant. In a second phase, participants repeatedly reported their sharing behavior and intensity of different emotion components over 5 days. Growth curve analyses revealed that sharing anger leads to several immediate and delayed beneficial effects, whereas sharing sadness leads to limited positive effects that emerge later on. This implies that all 3 aspects under study, as well as their interplay, are of critical importance in the relation between sharing and emotional processing.

Emotion regulation has primarily been studied either experimentally or by using retrospective trait questionnaires. Very few studies have investigated emotion regulation in the context in which it is usually deployed, namely, the complexity of everyday life. We address this in the current paper by reporting findings of two experience-sampling studies (Ns = 46 and 95) investigating the use of six emotion-regulation strategies (reflection, reappraisal, rumination, distraction, expressive suppression, and social sharing) and their associations with changes in positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) in daily life. Regarding the relative use of emotion-regulation strategies, a highly similar ordering was found across both studies with distraction being used more than sharing and reappraisal. While the use of all six strategies was positively correlated both within- and between-persons, different strategies were associated with distinct affective consequences: Suppression and rumination were associated with increases in NA and decreases in PA, whereas reflection was associated with increases in PA across both studies. Additionally, reappraisal, distraction, and social sharing were related to increases in PA in Study 2. Discussion focuses on how the current findings fit with theoretical models of emotion regulation and with previous evidence from experimental and retrospective studies.

Individual differences in the affective component of global personality traits such as extraversion and neuroticism can be described in terms of three different aspects: frequency, intensity and duration. Extraversion and neuroticism have been found to be related to the frequency and intensity of positive and negative emotions, respectively. However, it is unclear whether both personality traits are related to the duration of emotions and which aspect of trait affect most strongly characterizes the emotional life of extraverts and neurotics. For a period of 1 week, participants were asked to report at the end of each day the frequency, intensity and duration of the positive and negative emotions they experienced earlier that day. Correlational analyses revealed that extraversion is positively related to the frequency, intensity and duration of positive emotions whereas neuroticism is positively related to the frequency and duration of negative emotions. Regression analyses and a comparison of effect sizes further showed that the duration of positive emotions is the strongest predictor of extraversion whereas the frequency of negative emotions is the strongest predictor of neuroticism.

People’s self-perception biases often lead them to see themselves as better than the average person (a phenomenon known as self-enhancement). This bias varies across cultures, and variations are typically explained using cultural variables, such as individualism versus collectivism. We propose that socioeconomic differences among societies—specifically, relative levels of economic inequality—play an important but unrecognized role in how people evaluate themselves. Evidence for selfenhancement was found in 15 diverse nations, but the magnitude of the bias varied. Greater self-enhancement was found in societies with more income inequality, and income inequality predicted cross-cultural differences in self-enhancement better than did individualism/collectivism. These results indicate that macrosocial differences in the distribution of economic goods are linked to microsocial processes of perceiving the self. Steve Loughnan is a postdoctoral research associate funded by the Leverhulme Trust (F/00236/W). Peter Kuppens is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders and is supported by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Research Council Grants GOA/05/04 and OT/11/031. Anu Realo and Jüri Allik were supported by a grant from the Estonian Ministry of Education and Science (SF0180029s08). Junqi Shi was supported by a grant from the National Nature Foundation of China (NSFC:71021001). Revisión por pares