Understanding College Students' Perceptions Regarding Mindfulness: The Impact on Intellectual Humility, Faith Development, Religious Communication Apprehension, and Religious Communication.

The objective of the investigation was to test the impact of mindfulness on intellectual humility, faith development, religious communication apprehension, and religious communication. A new scale was developed to measure religious communication. Results revealed (a) mindfulness predicted faith development, intellectual arrogance, and openness; (b) mindfulness predicted less religious communication apprehension, (c) mindfulness did not predict religious communication. Findings help support the notion that greater mindfulness favorably impacts humble faith development. Mindfulness also seemed to buffer less anxiety but with no significant increase in religious communication.

Analyzing College Students' Social Media Communication Apprehension.

Research has shown that college students are heavy users of social media. Yet, very little has looked at the connection between college students' social media use and communication apprehension (CA). Due to the shortage of research concerning CA and social media, this study aims to test the relationship between social media CA and introversion in relationship to social media use and social media addiction. To test these relationships, 396 undergraduate students were surveyed. The survey consisted of instruments used to measure the individuals' levels of social media use, social media addiction, introversion, and CA. After conducting multiple linear regressions, it was determined that there was a negative relationship between social media CA and introversion with (1) social media use and (2) social media addiction. Results indicated that social media CA was significantly related to social media addiction. These findings suggest that college students might gravitate toward social media to communicate rather than face-to-face communication.

The effects of body image perceptions and sociocommunicative orientations on self-esteem, depression, and identification and involvement in the gay community.

The purpose of this study was to examine how nonverbally communicated messages based on weight and physical appearance related to antifat attitudes, image fixation, and discrimination based on physical appearance and weight on bisexual, gay, and lesbian people. Using an Internet-based sample of 233 participants (88% Anglo/Saxon or Caucasian), the results indicated Richmond and Valencic's (2000) conceptualization of image fixation negatively related to an individual's self-esteem and positively related to reported levels of depression. Results also indicated people with highly assertive and responsive communicative behaviors were less likely to hold antifat attitudes and less likely to dislike fat people. Differences between gay/bisexual males and lesbian/bisexual females were also analyzed, and gay/bisexual males had significantly higher levels of image fixation, antifat attitudes, dislike of fat people, weight locus of control, perceptions of self physical/weight discrimination, and depression than lesbian/bisexual females. The results also indicated lesbian/bisexual females had significantly higher levels of self-esteem and interaction and involvement within the bisexual and gay and lesbian community than gay/bisexual men.