Sun Peng, Xing Lu, Wu Junhui, Kou Yu
Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Appl Psychol Health Well Being. 2023 Feb;15(1):97-114. doi: 10.1111/aphw.12378. Epub 2022 Jun 6.
People are increasingly relying on social networking sites (SNSs) to satisfy their needs for relatedness. However, the psychological benefits of receiving others' feedback on SNSs remain relatively understudied. To fill this research gap, the present research examined whether and how others' feedback to one's status updates on WeChat Moments (i.e. the most popular SNS in China) affects loneliness. A correlational study (N = 261) and an experimental study (N = 412) conducted among Chinese university students indicated that receiving more (vs. less) feedback in the forms of "likes" and "comments" predicted lower loneliness, and this effect was explained by a higher sense of social connectedness. However, receiving feedback only elicited higher social connectedness and thus lower loneliness among participants with high public self-consciousness, but this effect was not significant among those with low public self-consciousness. These findings extend the research on SNS use and loneliness by providing new insights into the underlying psychological mechanisms and have important practical implications for SNS developers and users in terms of how to design and use SNSs to better satisfy different users' psychological needs.
人们越来越依赖社交网站（SNS）来满足他们的社交需求。然而，在社交网站上收到他人反馈的心理益处仍相对缺乏研究。为了填补这一研究空白，本研究考察了他人对微信朋友圈（即中国最受欢迎的社交网站）上个人状态更新的反馈是否以及如何影响孤独感。在中国大学生中进行的一项相关性研究（N = 261）和一项实验研究（N = 412）表明，收到更多（而非更少）以“点赞”和“评论”形式出现的反馈预示着更低的孤独感，而这种效应可以通过更高的社会联结感来解释。然而，只有在具有高公众自我意识的参与者中，收到反馈才会引发更高的社会联结感，从而降低孤独感，但在低公众自我意识的参与者中，这种效应并不显著。这些发现通过对潜在心理机制提供新的见解，扩展了关于社交网站使用与孤独感的研究，并在如何设计和使用社交网站以更好地满足不同用户的心理需求方面，对社交网站开发者和用户具有重要的实际意义。
