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

Lay theories of emotions (pride, joy, sadness, jealousy, envy, and anger): life-span trends.

The content and richness of lay theories\u201d (LT) of emotion of Italian male and female adolescents (N=154, 14-year-old; N=136 17-year-old), young adults (N=184 ), and mature adults (N=120, about 44 year-old) were studied using a questionnaire that described, in a vignette format, events typical of one of 5 emotion constellations, namely pride, joy, sadness, jealousy, envy. The judged events differed moreover for their degree of \u201csalience\u201d - defined on the basis of results obtained in previous studies. Subjects attributed to same- or to opposite-sex event-protagonists various aspects of the emotional experience, including perceived 'adequacy' of the experience, social sharing of emotions, conflict and uncertainty about felt emotions. Multiple-choice answers were based on lists of cognate items - e.g., for the felt-emotion question, answer categories included \u201cJoy, happiness, euphoria, pride, cheerfulness\u201d, and \u201cAnxiety, fear, anguish, dread\u201d . Results showed that subjects expressed quite rich and complex LT already at the youngest age, but that LT both get richer, and qualitatively different, at later ages. The beliefs subjects hold, and their \u201crichness\u201d, varied as a function of the specific emotion constellation, of its hedonic tone (e.g., LT for negatively toned constellations were typically more articulate than those for positively toned ones), and of salient features of the judged event (e.g., reactions such as attempts at regulation characterized mostly negatively valenced constellations, especially in relation to specific events). Men and women overall expressed similar, \u201cegalitarian\u201d rather than gender-differentiated theories; observed differences, however, tended to be gender-congruent, i.e., stereotypical ones. The extent to which the obtained results are culture-specific rather than \u2018universal\u2019 needs to be further investigated in cross-cultural studies, to single out similarities and differences in lay theories

Increasing emotion awareness differentially affects Emotional Intelligence traits, abilities and competencies.

Despite the recent interest on the operationalisation and measurement of Emotional intelligence, there has been a dearth of research on how Emotional Intelligence abilities or traits at work can be influenced by different training programmes. The existing research has examined mainly the effects of tuition on changes in EI traits. The study tested the possible effects of a self-administered program to increase emotion awareness on emotional intelligence related Traits, Competencies and Abilities. Four hundred and sixty five (465) career starters in five European sites completed assessments of Emotion competencies, traits and abilities in two times, two months apart. A self-administered training program that was designed to increase awareness of emotion in the self and others was introduced and completed by almost half the participants (Training group). Comparing the training group with those that did not receive training, demonstrated significant changes in Emotion Competencies (Self, awareness, Self, management, and social skills), Emotional abilities (Emotion recognition, Managing others emotions, Empathy at work) and frequency of positive emotions and optimism. However, there were no significant differences between the two groups in changes in Social awareness (ECI) or any of the Emotion traits. These results point to the differential impact of various traits and competencies, and highlight the limitations of general-self reported emotion scales in tapping subtle changes in emotion awareness

Recognizing emotions in comic strips: results from two reaction times study, and a self-report study

Comic books/strips (e.g., Snoopy, Calvin & Hobbes, Dennis the menace, Wizard of Id) constitute a widely-read emotion-ladden literature genre that is predominantly visual. To assess to what extent 7 different emotions it depicts are recognized by its readers, and on the basis of what features, we carried out 2 Reaction time (RT) studies in which, for each of 138 stimuli (selected from Italian strips published since 1982, designed by several authors) depicting the facial emotional or neutral expression of a strip character, 20 subjects judged either (1) whether the character experienced an emotion (Yes/No), or (2) what emotion it expressed (chosing from a list of 7 emotions, plus 'Neutral expression'). In a questionnaire study 120 subjects judged one of three sets of 38 stimuli (derived from the 138 RT stimuli set), answering a variety of questions about each stimulus. The results overall showed that anger, sadness and fear were recognized most quickly and correctly, whereas disgust and embarrassment were 'slow' and often 'confused' with other emotions; recognition of joy and surprise showed mixed results. Emotion recognition in the RT studies was significantly influenced by Vignette clarity (Clear vs Ambiguous emotional expression; tested in a preliminar study), and in the QS study by the presence of verbal information conveyed in the balloon, and of expressive cues (e.g., tears, a hand covering part of the face). In conclusion, the research showed that in comic books/strips some emotions are more easily recognized than others, and that this is at least in part due to the existence of distinct prototypical facial expressio

Assessing and training leaders’ emotional intelligence, and testing its influence on leaders’ employees

Recent literature places emotions at the center of leadership construed as a dynamic pro- cess. The present study, with an experimental pre\u2013post design that included an experimental group formed by leaders and their employ- ees, and a control group of employees whose leaders were not assessed, tested whether self-reported leaders\u2019 emotional intelligence (LEI) is congruent with other-reported LEI, and whether a brief self-administered train- ing program affects self- and other-reported LEI assessment, as well as job involvement and life satisfaction, in leaders\u2019 employees. At Time 1, leaders in the experimental group and employees in both the experimental and the control groups completed the Emotional Com- petence Inventory (ECI; Boyatzis et al., 2000) \u2013 leaders completed the self-reported version; employees completed the other-reported ver- sion, i.e., rated their leaders. All employees evaluated their own job involvement and life satisfaction. At Time 2 (after training experi- mental group leaders), experimental group leaders and both experimental and control group employees again rated LEI using the ECI; all employees also evaluated their own job involvement and life satisfaction. The results show a significant effect of the train- ing on Time 2 measures in the experimental group, both on self- and other-reported LEI assessments, and on employees\u2019 outcomes. In particular, Time 2 showed an increase in lead- ers\u2019 ECI self-assessed conf lict management and other-assessed service orientation com- petences, and in employees\u2019 job involvement. The study indicates overall that training lead- ers for emotional intelligence can diminish the discrepancy between self- and other-reported LEI assessments, and increase employees\u2019 pos- itive outcomes