Loneliness and Social Internet Use: Pathways to Reconnection in a Digital World?

With the rise of online social networking, social relationships are increasingly developed and maintained in a digital domain. Drawing conclusions about the impact of the digital world on loneliness is difficult because there are contradictory findings, and cross-sectional studies dominate the literature, making causation difficult to establish. In this review, we present our theoretical model and propose that there is a bidirectional and dynamic relationship between loneliness and social Internet use. When the Internet is used as a way station on the route to enhancing existing relationships and forging new social connections, it is a useful tool for reducing loneliness. But when social technologies are used to escape the social world and withdraw from the “social pain” of interaction, feelings of loneliness are increased. We propose that loneliness is also a determinant of how people interact with the digital world. Lonely people express a preference for using the Internet for social interaction and are more likely to use the Internet in a way that displaces time spent in offline social activities. This suggests that lonely people may need support with their social Internet use so that they employ it in a way that enhances existing friendships and/or to forge new ones

The role of self-math overlap in understanding math anxiety and the relation between math anxiety and performance

Recent work has demonstrated that math anxiety is more than just the product of poor math skills. Psychosocial factors may play a key role in understanding what it means to be math anxious, and hence may aid in attempts to sever the link between math anxiety and poor math performance. One such factor may be the extent to which individuals integrate math into their sense of self. We adapted a well-established measure of this degree of integration (i.e., self-other overlap) to assess individuals’ self-math overlap. This nonverbal single-item measure showed that identifying oneself with math (having higher self-math overlap) was strongly associated with lower math anxiety (r=-.610). We also expected that having higher self-math overlap would leave one especially susceptible to the threat of poor math performance to the self. We identified two competing hypotheses regarding how this plays out in terms of math anxiety. Those higher in self-math overlap might be more likely to worry about poor math performance, exacerbating the negative relation between math anxiety and math ability. Alternatively, those higher in self-math overlap might exhibit self-serving biases regarding their math ability, which would instead predict a decoupling of the relation between their perceived and actual math ability, and in turn the relation between their math ability and math anxiety. Results clearly favored the latter hypothesis: those higher in self-math overlap exhibited almost no relation between math anxiety and math ability, whereas those lower in self-math overlap showed a strong negative relation between math anxiety and math ability. This was partially explained by greater self-serving biases among those higher in self-math overlap. In sum, these results reveal that the degree to which one integrates math into one’s self – self-math overlap – may provide insight into how the pernicious negative relation between math anxiety and math ability may be ameliorated

Is valuing happiness associated with lower well-being? A factor-level analysis using the Valuing Happiness Scale

Recent studies suggest that valuing happiness is negatively associated with well-being. Most of these studies used the Valuing Happiness Scale (Mauss, Tamir, Anderson, & Savino, 2011). In the present paper, we examined the factor structure of this scale using data pooled from six independent samples (N-total = 938). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed that the Valuing Happiness Scale is not unidimensional and that only one of its three factors correlates negatively with various indicators of well-being, whereas non-significant or positive correlations were found for the other factors. These findings indicate that valuing happiness may not necessarily be bad for one's well-being, and call for a better definition, theoretical foundation, and operationalization of this construct. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Measuring the Prevalence of Problematic Respondent Behaviors among MTurk, Campus, and Community Participants.

The reliance on small samples and underpowered studies may undermine the replicability of scientific findings. Large sample sizes may be necessary to achieve adequate statistical power. Crowdsourcing sites such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) have been regarded as an economical means for achieving larger samples. Because MTurk participants may engage in behaviors which adversely affect data quality, much recent research has focused on assessing the quality of data obtained from MTurk samples. However, participants from traditional campus- and community-based samples may also engage in behaviors which adversely affect the quality of the data that they provide. We compare an MTurk, campus, and community sample to measure how frequently participants report engaging in problematic respondent behaviors. We report evidence that suggests that participants from all samples engage in problematic respondent behaviors with comparable rates. Because statistical power is influenced by factors beyond sample size, including data integrity, methodological controls must be refined to better identify and diminish the frequency of participant engagement in problematic respondent behaviors

Measuring the Prevalence of Problematic Respondent Behaviors among MTurk, Campus, and Community Participants

The reliance on small samples and underpowered studies may undermine the replicability of scientific findings. Large sample sizes may be necessary to achieve adequate statistical power. Crowdsourcing sites such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) have been regarded as an economical means for achieving larger samples. Because MTurk participants may engage in behaviors which adversely affect data quality, much recent research has focused on assessing the quality of data obtained from MTurk samples. However, participants from traditional campus- and community-based samples may also engage in behaviors which adversely affect the quality of the data that they provide. We compare an MTurk, campus, and community sample to measure how frequently participants report engaging in problematic respondent behaviors. We report evidence that suggests that participants from all samples engage in problematic respondent behaviors with comparable rates. Because statistical power is influenced by factors beyond sample size, including data integrity, methodological controls must be refined to better identify and diminish the frequency of participant engagement in problematic respondent behaviors

Mean Frequency of Engagement in Potentially Problematic Responding Behaviors.

<p>Mean Frequency of Engagement in Potentially Problematic Responding Behaviors.</p

Estimates of the frequency of problematic respondent behaviors based on estimates of others’ behaviors.

<p>Error bars represent standard errors. Behaviors for which MTurk participants report greater engagement than more traditional samples are starred. Behaviors for which campus and community samples vary are bolded. Behaviors which vary consistently in both the FO and the FS condition are outlined in a box. Significance was determined after correction for false discovery rate using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure. Note that frequency estimates are derived in the most conservative manner possible (scoring each range as the lowest point of its range), but analyses are unaffected by this data reduction technique. For complete text of each behavior, see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0157732#pone.0157732.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>.</p

Physiological dynamics of stress contagion

Can viewing others experiencing stress create a "contagious" physiological stress response in the observer? To investigate second-hand stress, we first created a stimulus set of videos, which featured participants speaking under either minimal stress, high stress, or while recovering from stress. We then recruited a second set of participants to watch these videos. All participants (speakers and observers) were monitored via electrocardiogram. Cardiac activity of the observers while watching the videos was then analyzed and compared to that of the speakers. Furthermore, we assessed dispositional levels of empathy in observers to determine how empathy might be related to the degree of stress contagion. Results revealed that depending on the video being viewed, observers experienced differential changes in cardiac activity that were based on the speaker's stress level. Additionally, this is the first demonstration that individuals high in dispositional empathy experience these physiological changes more quickly.publishe

Estimates of the frequency of problematic respondent behaviors based on self-estimates.

<p>Error bars represent standard errors. Behaviors for which MTurk participants report greater engagement than more traditional samples are starred. Behaviors for which campus and community samples vary are bolded. Behaviors which vary consistently in both the FO and the FS condition are outlined in a box. Significance was determined after correction for false discovery rate using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure. Note that frequency estimates are derived in the most conservative manner possible (scoring each range as the lowest point of its range), but analyses are unaffected by this data reduction technique. For complete text of each behavior, see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0157732#pone.0157732.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>.</p