Emotions as social information in unambiguous situations: role of emotions on procedural justice perception.

Emotion as Social Information Theory claims that in an ambiguous situation, people rely on others' emotions to make sense of the level of fairness encountered. We tested whether the information provided by emotions about the fairness of a procedure is still a significant factor in explaining individual differences in perception of variance, even in unambiguous situations. We assessed the effects of others' emotions on observers inferred procedural justice during (un)ambiguous situations when people are treated (un)fairly. We collected data using Qualtrics online survey software from 1012 employees across different industry services in the United States. The participants were assigned randomly to one of the 12 experimental conditions (fair, unfair, and unknown x happiness, anger, guilt, and neutral). The results indicated that emotions played a significant role in the psychology of justice judgments under the ambiguous situation, as predicted by the EASI, as well as under unambiguous conditions. The study revealed significant interactions between the procedure and emotion. These findings emphasized the importance of considering how others' emotions influence an observer's perception of justice. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings were also discussed. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04640-y.

Mediated effects of insomnia in the association between problematic social media use and subjective well-being among university students during COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, the use of social media has penetrated many aspects of our daily lives. Therefore, it has stimulated much debate and polarisation regarding its impact on mental well-being. The present study investigated the association between problematic use of social media, subjective well-being, and insomnia's potential mediator. A proportionate random sample was collected from a Univerity in Algeria between March and April 2020.The participants (n=288; mean [SD] age = 20.83 [2.13]) involved 101 (35.1%) males. Nearly three-fourths of the participants (n=214; 74.3%) used up more-than three hours daily surfing on social media. Their mean (SD) score was 15.64 (4.80) on the Bergan Social Media Addiction Scale, 16.19 (9.15) on the Arabic Scale of Insomnia, and 28.13 (7.90) on the overall subjective well-being. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed an indirect correlation between problematic use of social media and the overall subjective well-being of users. Similarly, the indirect but not direct effects were found for the overall subjective well-being subdomains. Moreover, all SEM models have a satisfactory fit with the data. Based on the results, it can be concluded that insomnia appears to play an important role in mediating the association between subjective well-being and problematic social media use. This suggests the importance of tackling the issues of insomnia and problematic use of social media for university students. It also has important implications in dealing with the misuse of social media, especially during the covid-19 pandemic.

An Investigation of Differential Relationships of Implicit and Explicit Aggression: Validation of an Arabic Version of the Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression.

Most personality research in the workplace relies on self-reports. Although self-report measures are believed to assess the explicit aspect of personality, a more recent approach for assessing implicit personality is based on conditional reasoning. The Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression (CRT-A) was developed to assess implicit cognitions that justify aggressive behavior. The integrative model of personality proposes that both the explicit and implicit personality interact together to predict different behavioral outcomes. The results of this investigation are reported in two studies. The purpose of Study 1 was to adapt the CRT-A to the Arabic language and to examine its validity evidence using a large sample of Egyptian employees (n = 1,046). Study 2 aimed at examining the differential relationships of implicit and explicit components of aggressive personality in explaining different forms of aggressive behavior variance (n = 271). The results of Study 1 revealed that the psychometric properties of the adapted Arabic version of CRT-A were similar to those obtained for the United States. In addition, factor analysis results were consistent with the psychological theory used to build the conditional reasoning problems. The results of Study 2 provide substantial empirical support for the integrative model of assessment of aggression.

The role and impact of contextual factors on functioning in patients with bipolar disorder.

PURPOSES: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, provides the framework to describe individual's functioning and allows the study of the interaction between patient's health status and the environmental factors involved. The main aim of this study was to analyse systematically those factors involved in the functioning of bipolar patients including the role of contextual factors. METHODS: Eighty-eight euthymic patients with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder were included. To examine the importance of contextual factors above and over clinical variables after controlling of potential socio-demographic variables, a hierarchical multiple regression was used. RESULTS: Clinical variables that significantly predicted patient functioning were the total number of episodes, number of depressive episodes, family history of psychiatric disorders and mild subdepressive symptoms, accounting for 34.1% of the variance of functioning (F=2.14, p =0.011). Contextual factors, including dysfunctional attitudes and perceived social support, accounted for 17.5% of the variance (F=3.04, p <0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Contextual factors appear to play a significant role in explaining bipolar patients' functioning after controlling for socio-demographic and clinical factors. These findings suggest that psychosocial interventions might be helpful to reduce or prevent disability associated to bipolar disorder. From an ICF model, understanding those factors may be useful to produce policy recommendations and guidelines.

Explaining functional outcomes in depression treatment: a multilevel modelling approach.

BACKGROUND: The main aim of this study is to investigate the role that social, environmental and personal factors play in explaining change in function in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). METHOD: The sample of the current study comes from a naturalistic and prospective cohort study of patients starting antidepressant treatment in one distinct health area of Madrid. A total of 97 adults (18 years or older) with MDD have been followed up three points in time and evaluated with the WHO_DAS II and instruments that assessed socio-demographic characteristics, clinical and contextual factors. Data were analysed using multilevel modelling statistical approach to repeated measures data. RESULTS: Change of severity of depression symptoms was the main explanatory factor for change in patient's functioning, accounting for 32% of the variance of functioning over time. Contextual factors (environmental and personal variables), including gender, work status, societal attitudes, health satisfaction and quality of life accounted for 20% of the functioning variance after controlling for the effect of health condition variables. CONCLUSIONS: Social, environmental and personal factors seem to play a significant role in explaining depressed patients' functioning after controlling for health condition/medical factors.

Social network structure and social support in HIV-positive inner city mothers.

It has been documented that social support influences health outcomes of persons with chronic illnesses. The incidence of HIV and AIDS among minority women is growing at an alarming rate, but little is known about social support in this vulnerable population, and even less is known about the social network conveying that support. Guided by the convoy of social networks model, this study describes the social networks in a sample of HIV-positive, urban-dwelling mothers (N = 147) by stage of disease (i.e., asymptomatic, symptomatic, AIDS) and examines relationships between social network structure and social support. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that women's social networks were disproportionately populated by children, and network members of women with AIDS were significantly older than network members of HIV-positive women with or without symptoms. Profile analyses showed that women's perceptions of the quality of social support differed according to the proportion of family members populating different segments of the social network.