Junghyun Kim

The Roles of Social Support and Coping Strategies in Predicting Breast Cancer Patients’ Emotional Well-being Testing Mediation and Moderation Models

The goal of the current study was to examine how social support and coping strategies are related in predicting emotional well-being of women with breast cancer. In achieving this goal, we examined two hypothesized models: (1) a moderation model where social support and coping strategies interact with each other in affecting psychological well-being; and (2) a mediation model where the level of social support influences choices of coping strategies between self-blame and positive reframing. In general, the data from the current study were more consistent with the mediation model than the moderation model.

Share, Steal, or Buy? A Social Cognitive Perspective of Music Downloading

The music downloading phenomenon presents a unique opportunity to examine normative influences on media consumption behavior. Downloaders face moral, legal, and ethical quandaries that can be conceptualized as normative influences within the self-regulatory mechanism of social cognitive theory. The music industry hopes to eliminate illegal file sharing and to divert illegal downloaders to pay services by asserting normative influence through selective prosecutions and public information campaigns. However the deficient self-regulation of downloaders counters these efforts maintaining file sharing as a persistent habit that defies attempts to establish normative control. The present research tests and extends the social cognitive theory of downloading on a sample of college students. The expected outcomes of downloading behavior and deficient self-regulation of that behavior were found to be important determinants of intentions to continue downloading. Consistent with social cognitive theory but in contrast to the theory of planned behavior, it was found that descriptive and prescriptive norms influenced deficient self-regulation but had no direct impact on behavioral intentions. Downloading intentions also had no direct relationship to either compact disc purchases or to subscription to online pay music services.

Interactive e-commerce: Promoting consumer efficiency or impulsivity?

Previous research established that online shopping activity might be caused by impulse as much as by rational thinking about the conveniences of e-commerce. Interactive features of ecommerce sites, such as email alerts of special offers and “clickable” product arrays, may stimulate unregulated buying activity by undermining consumer self-regulation, but this connection has not been empirically verified. In this study, structural equation modeling techniques were used to model the relationship of interactive e-commerce features to online buying activity with a sample of 174 college students. Recreational shopping orientation predicted the usage of interactive shopping features thought to promote unregulated purchases, increasing deficient self-regulation, and leading to increased online buying activity. Convenience shopping orientation had a direct impact on buying activity, but it did not influence buying activity through the usage of convenience shopping features. Convenience shopping orientation also contributed to the usage of recreational shopping features that promoted deficient self-regulation. Overall, the model explained fifty percent of the variance in online buying activity.

Mobile phone distraction while studying

The mobile phone is a breakthrough advance for human communication. But with the plethora of choices available via smartphone, individuals who are deficient in self-regulation or with a propensity for addiction may face challenges in managing these choices strategically. To examine this potential dysfunctional aspect, we examined the effect of multitasking when studying or doing homework and found that both frequency and attention to texting and social media were positively related to mobile phone interference in life (MPIL). However, frequency of music use during study was not associated with MPIL, although allocated attention to music while studying was positively associated with MPIL. Ownership of a smartphone and the number of Facebook friends were positively associated with MPIL and women reported more MPIL than men.

Alleviating depression only to become problematic mobile phone users

Depressed people rely on mobile phones to alleviate their negative moods.Depressed people tend to engage in problematic use of mobile phone (PUMP).Face-to-face communication can break the cycle leading to PUMP. With the increasing penetration of mobile phones, problematic use of mobile phone (PUMP) deserves attention. In this study, using a path model we examined the relationship between depression and PUMP, with motivations as mediators. Findings suggest that depressed people may rely on mobile phone to alleviate their negative feelings and spend more time on communication activities via mobile phone, which in turn can deteriorate into PUMP. However, face-to-face communication with others played a moderating role, weakening the link between use of mobile phone for communication activities and deterioration to PUMP.

Media multitasking between two conversational tasks

Communication multitasking was examined in three conditions: IM conversation with one partner, two IM conversations at the same time, and IM and phone conversation at the same time. Participants in the multitasking conditions reported higher task demand and a small loss in task performance was evident. Single-task partners assigned to a task the required discussion and deliberation preferred to interact with the multitasking participant via phone, rather than IM. But interactions via phone with one partner led to poorer assessment by a second partner who was shortchanged during the interaction. Multitasking participants who were focused on helping both partners seemed blind to these perceived differences by their single-task partners. The results suggest a strategic model of multitasking, with IM being the preferred choice for tasks that require fewer, shorter exchanges and voice being the preferred choice for tasks that required more discussion and deliberation.

Health Care and Social Media Platforms in Hospitals

The objective of this article is to illustrate user characteristics of a hospital’s social media structure using analytics and user surveys. A 1-year retrospective analysis was conducted along with an Internet survey of users of the hospital’s Facebook, Twitter, and blog. Of the survey respondents (n = 163), 95.7% are female and 4.3% are male; most are ages 50–59 years (31.5%) and 40–49 years (27.8%); and 93.2% are Caucasian. However, the hospital system database revealed 55% female and 37% minority population, respectively. Of the survey respondents, 61.4% reported having a bachelor’s degree or higher, whereas only 11.7% reported having a high school degree/equivalent or lower. However, within the hospital patient databases, 93% of patients have a high school degree/equivalent or lower and only 3% have a bachelor’s degree or higher in our women’s services population. Social media were used to seek personal health information 68.7% (n = 112), to learn about hospital programming 27.6% (n = 45), and to seek family health information 25.2% (n = 41). Respondents younger than 49 years of age were more likely to seek personal health information using social media compared to those 50 years of age and older (p = .02). Respondents with a bachelor’s degree or higher education were statistically less likely to search for physician information compared to those less educated individuals (p = .04). We conclude that social media may play an important role in personal health information, especially for young female respondents; however, the survey provides strong evidence that further research is needed to ensure that social network sites provided by hospitals are reaching the full spectrum of health system patients.

Balancing uniqueness and assimilation in computer-mediated groups

The goal of the current study is to investigate how the augmented visual similarity and individuation can influence group identification process in computer-mediated groups. In investigating this topic, this study relies on the assumption that human beings need to meet two competing motivations - assimilation motivation and uniqueness motivation - at the same time. An experiment using virtual self-representations showed that uniform virtual appearance, whatever form it may take, encouraged group identification. However, uniform appearance did not increase assimilation within computer-mediated groups all the time, because uniform appearance made individuals perceive a strong threat to their uniqueness and became less willing to agree with others as a way to restore their uniqueness. On the contrary, people might have pandered to their uniqueness motivation from being represented by excessively idiosyncratic visual cues. As a way to boost up the other motivation, assimilation motivation, they tried to find any cue that can bond themselves with others even amongst differences in their visual representations.

Smartphone-mediated communication vs. face-to-face interaction: Two routes to social support and problematic use of smartphone

The present study examines two possible routes lonely people can take to alleviate their loneliness: One route via escape motivation and smartphone-mediated communication vs. another route via relationship motivation and face-to-face interaction. Two hypothesized path models were tested with a total of 930 U.S. American participants who were nationally recruited through a professional survey company. Those with a high level of loneliness tend to rely more on smartphone-mediated communication, while being reluctant to engage in face-to-face interaction. Such combination of the two increases the possibility of developing problematic use of smartphone but decreases perceived social support from their social networks. Furthermore, a multi-group analysis suggested that young adults of age 3140 would develop problematic use of smartphone more than adolescents of age 1318. Examined two possible routes lonely people can take to alleviate their loneliness.Lonely people rely on smartphone while not much on face-to-face interaction.Young adults might develop problems with smartphone more than teenagers.

Toward a Person × Situation Model of Selective Exposure

The present study attempted to predict selective exposure to media messages as a function of personality and situation, which has rarely been examined in prior relevant research. Employing a quasi-experimental method, the interplay between prevailing perceived threat from the economic crisis that started in 2008 and each of the two personality types when dealing with threat – repression and sensitization – was examined to predict online news selection behavior, as unobtrusively recorded. A significant interaction between perceived threat and sensitization tendency was obtained for both the selection of financial crisis-related news and avoidance of financial crisis-unrelated news. The implications of this exclusive pattern of online news selection behavior are discussed.