Recent studies have indicated that trait procrastination as a personality factor could lead to mobile phone addiction, however little is known about the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this process. The current study investigated the mediating role of stress in the relationship between trait procrastination and mobile phone addiction, and whether the mediating effect was moderated by gender. A sample including 1,004 Chinese college students completed measurements of trait procrastination, stress, mobile phone addiction, and demographic information. The results showed that trait procrastination was positively related to college students’ mobile phone addiction. Mediation analyses revealed that this relationship was partially mediated by stress. Moderated mediation further indicated that the path between trait procrastination and stress was stronger for male students compared with female students. These findings broadened our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms between trait procrastination and mobile phone addiction, the implications and limitations of this study were discussed.

Emotions are believed to converge both through emotional mimicry and social appraisal. The present study compared contagion of anger and happiness. In Experiment 1, participants viewed dynamic angry and happy faces, with facial electromyography recorded from the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii as emotional mimicry. Self-reported emotional experiences were analyzed as emotional contagion. Experiment 2 manipulated social appraisal as the gaze of expression toward the target. The results showed that there was emotional contagion for angry and happy expressions both in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Experiment 1 indicated an overt mimicry pattern for happy faces, but not for angry faces. Experiment 2 found an influence of social appraisal on angry contagion but not on happy diffusion. The two experiments suggest that the underlying processes of emotional mimicry and social appraisal are differentially relevant for different emotional contagion, with happiness processing following a mimicry-based path to emotional contagion, and anger processing requiring social appraisal.

Objective: The primary objective of this study is to investigate the relationships between perceived social support and mobile phone addiction, as well as the mediating effect of depressive symptoms and the moderating effect of self-compassion. Methods: A total of 874 college students completed questionnaires, including the perceived social support scale, depression–anxiety–stress scale, mobile phone addiction index, and the short form of the self-compassion scale. The participants included 202 males and 672 females, with an average age of 19.54 (SD = 2.16). Results: A moderated mediation analysis was conducted. The results revealed that perceived social support fully mediated the negative relationship between perceived social support and mobile phone addiction. Self-compassion attenuated the mediating effects. Conclusions: The present study indicated that insufficient perceived social support may increase the risk of mobile phone addiction among college students because of the impact of depressive symptoms. However, self-compassion could buffer this adverse effect.

Background: Cyberbullying has become more prevalent, more difficult to detect, and more harmful to the victims. Whereas considerable prior work has investigated predictors and consequences of cyberbullying, additional research is needed to better understand the mechanisms by which these factors relate to cyberbullying perpetration and victimization. The goal of the present study was to examine the extent to which the link between individual differences in moral disengagement and cyberbullying perpetration is mediated by low self-control and, if so, whether this mediation effect varies by individuals’ degree of callous-unemotional traits. Method: To explore these questions, we used cyberbullying, moral disengagement, self-control, and callous-unemotional traits scales and collected online survey data from a sample of 860 Chinese internet users aged 18 years old or older. Result: As hypothesized, a significant positive relation between moral disengagement and cyberbullying emerged that was mediated by individual differences in self-control. Additionally, evidence of moderated mediation was found. That is, the indirect effect varied by degree of callous-unemotional traits, with a significantly stronger mediation effect (and association between self-control and cyberbullying) for individuals who were relatively higher in callous-unemotional traits. Conclusion: We conclude that moral disengagement partially predicts cyberbullying through self-control, while callous-unemotional traits moderate the pathway between self-control and cyberbullying.

Adolescence has frequently been characterized as a period of choice impulsivity relative to adulthood. According to the control-integrated valuation model of inter-temporal choice, this choice impulsivity may be driven partly by an age-related difference in reward processing. We hypothesized that, compared to adults, adolescents would undervalue delayed rewards during reward processing and would thus be more impulsive in inter-temporal choice. To test this hypothesis at the behavioural and neural levels, we first measured the choice impulsivity of 18 adolescents and 19 adults using a delay discounting task (DDT). Then, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from the participants while they were performing the valuation task, in which monetary gains and losses were either immediate or delayed. The behavioural results showed that adolescents were more impulsive than adults in the DDT. The ERP results showed that, whilst both groups valued immediate rewards, implied by a similarly strong feedback-related negativity (FRN) effect associated with immediate outcomes, adolescents devalued delayed rewards more than adults did, as they produced a significantly smaller FRN effect associated with delayed outcomes. As predicted, the mediation analysis revealed that the adolescents’ lower FRN effect of delayed outcomes underpinned their stronger impulsive decision making in the DDT.