The role of personality traits in Facebook and Internet addictions: A study on Polish,Turkish, and Ukrainian samples

Although the relationships between Facebook addiction, Internet addiction and personality have already been investigated. The aim of the present study was to explore whether there were personality traits associated with Facebook addiction and Internet addiction across three different cultures. The participants were 1011 Facebook users from Poland, Turkey, and Ukraine. We administered the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale, the Internet Addiction Test, and the Ten Item Personality Inventory. We found that in the total sample Facebook addiction was positively associated with Internet addiction, while Internet addiction was negatively associated with emotional stability, conscientiousness, and extraversion. The lack of invariance across the countries indicates that the tested links are not the same in each of them, which may suggest the role of cultural factors in this phenomenon. The results are discussed in the light of Facebook addiction and personality literature. The application of culturally sensitive intervention programs in dealing with Facebook addiction is encouraged.     

Liking Obama and Romney (on Facebook): An experimental evaluation of political engagement and efficacy during the 2012 general election

Existing research on the effect of social media use on political behavior has yielded mixed results to date, demonstrating the importance of research examining the effects of varying types of social media communication on political behavior. The experiment reported in this study provides valuable insights into the role of social media in elections. A longitudinal experiment was conducted to assess the effect Facebook use in the 2012 Presidential election had on political information efficacy, external efficacy, and political engagement. Results suggested that while political information efficacy and engagement increased over time, it was not related to following candidates on Facebook.     

Examining the Distinct Antecedents of E‐Mail Habits and its Influence on the Outcomes of a Phishing Attack

While research has linked social media phishing susceptibility to individual Facebook habits, the underlying process by which habits lead to victimization and the extent to which it explains e‐mail‐based phishing remains unclear. The study compared the antecedents and consequences of e‐mail habits and cognitive processing on the outcome of a simulated phishing attack. E‐mail habits were rooted in stable personality dimensions of conscientiousness and emotional stability, while cognitive processing was premised on contextual information adequacy considerations. Interestingly, habits and processing jointly influenced the outcome of the attack: Systematic processing attenuated phishing susceptibility by a small factor; the cumulative effects of heuristic processing and e‐mail habits, however, caused a fourfold increase in likely victimization, overwhelming any advantage from detailed processing.     

Comments on “Viscoelastic studies of human subscapularis tendon: Relaxation test and a Wiechert model” by C. Machiraju, A.V. Phan, A.W. Pearsall, S. Madanagopal, Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine (2006)

Referring to the approach for determining the material parameters for a Wiechert model of the human subscapularis tendon proposed by Machiraju et al. [C. Machiraju, A.V. Phan, A.W. Pearsall, S. Madanagopal, Viscoelastic studies of a human subscapularis tendon: relaxation test and a Wiechert model, Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine (2006), doi:10.1016/j.cmpb.2006.05.004], some comments are made on the basis of the result of an alternative method that is capable of giving more reasonable values for the Wiechart model with the fitting discrepancies minimized by a multi-variable optimization strategy.     

Comment on “A direct approach with computerized symbolic computation for finding a series of traveling waves to nonlinear equations” by Engui Fan and H.H. Dai: [Comput. Phys. Commun. 153 (2003) 17]

Fan and Dai [Comput. Phys. Commun. 153 (2003) 17] have found a series of traveling wave solutions for nonlinear equations by applying a direct approach with computerized symbolic computations. They have claimed that the proposed method, in comparison with most existing symbolic computation methods such as a tanh method and Jacobi function method, not only give new and more general solutions, but also provides a guideline to classify various types of the solution according to some parameters. We show that the claims by Fan and Dai are wrong since some of the solutions do not satisfy the differential equation that they have adopted for the algebraic method.