How Perceptions of Responsibility and Affective Consequences Influence Parents’ Digital Media Engagement in Relation to Human Papillomavirus Vaccination

Individuals are expected to be responsible for their own health and that of their families—and act accordingly. Yet, being in a position of responsibility might be undesirable for individuals either unable or reluctant to comply with the expectations this responsibility entails. In this article, I explore how parents experience the process of engaging responsibly with digital media in relation to the question of human papillomavirus vaccination. The study is based on interviews with eighteen Danish parents, and my findings show that these parents not only understand themselves but also other actors in terms of responsibility, and that being positioned in terms of responsibility can have negative affective consequences. I argue that meeting the expectations of biological citizenship should not necessarily be a goal in relation to complex health topics.

High-fidelity consumption and the claustropolitan structure of feeling

This paper invokes Redhead’s concept of claustropolitanism to critically explore the affective reality for consumers in today’s digital age. In the context of surveillance capitalism, we argue that consumer subjectivity revolves around the experience of fidelity rather than agency. Instead of experiencing genuine autonomy in their digital lives, consumers are confronted with a sense of confinement that reflects their tacit conformity to the behavioural predictions of surveillant market actors. By exploring how that confinement is lived and felt, we theorise the collective affects that constitute a claustropolitan structure of feeling: incompletion, saturation and alienation. These affective contours trace an oppressive atmosphere that infuses consumers’ lives as they attempt to seek fulfilment through digital market-located behaviours that are largely anticipated and coordinated by surveillant actors. Rather than motivate resistance, these affects ironically work to perpetuate consumers’ commitment to the digital world and their ongoing participation in the surveillant marketplace. Our theorisation continues the critical project of re-assessing the consumer subject by showing how subjectivity is produced at the point of intersection between ideological imperatives and affective consequences.

Social Support Predicts Differential Use, But Not Differential Effectiveness, of Expressive Suppression and Social Sharing in Daily Life

While emotion regulation often happens in the presence of others, little is known about how social context shapes regulatory efforts and outcomes. One key element of the social context is social support. In two experience sampling studies (Ns = 179 and 123), we examined how the use and affective consequences of two fundamentally social emotion regulation strategies—social sharing and expressive suppression—vary as a function of perceived social support. Across both studies, we found evidence that perceived social support predicted variation in people’s use of these strategies, such that higher levels of social support predicted more sharing and less suppression. However, we found only limited and inconsistent support for context-dependent affective outcomes of suppression and sharing: suppression was associated with better affective consequences in the context of higher perceived social support in Study 1, but this effect did not replicate in Study 2. Taken together, these findings suggest that the use of social emotion regulation strategies appears to depend on contextual variability in social support, whereas their effectiveness does not. Future research is needed to better understand the circumstances in which context-dependent use of emotion regulation may have emotional benefits, accounting for personal, situational, and cultural factors.

Stage 1 Registered Report: Stress regulation via being in nature and social support in adults - a meta-analysis

This meta-analysis explored whether being in nature and emotional social support are effective in reducing levels of stress through a Registered Report. We retrieved all the relevant articles that investigated a connection between one of these two strategies and various components of stress (physiological, affective and cognitive) as well as affective consequences of stress. We followed a stringent analysis workflow (including permutation-based selection models and multilevel regression-based models) to provide publication bias-corrected estimates. We found [no evidence for the efficacy of either strategy/evidence for one of the two strategies/evidence for both strategies] with an estimated mean effect size of [xx/xx] and we recommend [recommendation will be provided if necessary].

Stress regulation via self-administered mindfulness and biofeedback interventions in adults: A pre-registered meta-analysis

We conducted a pre-registered meta-analysis to appraise available evidence on two stress regulation strategies: Self-administered mindfulness meditation and heart rate variability biofeedback. We used a combination of keywords to find as many experimental and observational studies as possible, all of which highlighted a link between the two strategies and different components of stress (physiological, affective, and cognitive) and affective consequences of stress. To provide publication bias-corrected estimates, we employed multilevel regression-based methods and permutation-based selection models. We found no evidence for the efficacy of either strategy, which is mostly due to the low quality of the literature, high heterogeneity, high risk of bias, and the lack of Registered Reports. We recommend against relying on these interventions prior to obtaining a more reliable evidence base.

Can “Googling” correct misbelief? Cognitive and affective consequences of online search

With increasing concern over online misinformation in perspective, this study experimentally examined the cognitive as well as the affective consequences of online search. Results of the two experiments using widely shared, prejudiced misinformation about an ethnic minority in Japan indicated that (a) online search reduces on average the likelihood of believing the misinformation, (b) the magnitude of the effect is larger among those who are predisposed to believe the misinformation, (c) cognitive correction is observed whether searchers are motivated to achieve a directional goal or an accuracy goal, and (d) online search deteriorates affective feeling toward the target groups of the misinformation. Theoretical implications are discussed in relation to the robustness of confirmation bias in online search and the “belief echo” in which exposure to negative misinformation continues to shape attitudes even after the misinformation has been effectively discredited.

A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Outcome Expectancy Construct in Physical Activity Research

Background Cognition-based theories dominate physical activity (PA) research, and many include a construct broadly defined as “beliefs about the consequences of behavior” (e.g., outcome expectancies, perceived benefits) hereafter referred to as perceived consequences. Purpose With the quantity of available research on this topic, it is important to examine whether the literature supports perceived consequences as a predictor of PA. Methods A meta-analysis examining longitudinal associations between perceived consequences and PA in adults was conducted. Studies were eligible if (a) perceived consequences were measured at a time point prior to PA, and (b) the target behavior was a form of PA. An omnibus meta-analysis estimating the mean effect of all included studies, and separate meta-analyses for perceived consequences content categories were conducted. Results This search yielded 6,979 articles, of these, 110 studies met inclusion criteria. Studies were published between 1989 and 2020, with sample sizes ranging from 16 to 2,824. All studies were evaluated as moderate to high quality. A small positive bivariate association was identified (r = 0.11; 95% CI [0.09, 0.13]) between perceived consequences and PA. Significant associations were identified for time, health, self-evaluative, psychological, and affective consequences. There was no association between perceived weight-related consequences and PA. Conclusions The findings emphasize the variability with which existing studies have examined perceived consequences in the PA literature. Future research might examine whether these are important distinctions for understanding PA. Overall, the results suggest utility in examining perceived consequences as a predictor of PA, but constructs with more robust associations may require priority.