Browsing by Author "Mylonopoulos, Nikolaos"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Are you keeping your Facebook passions and habit under control? A dual systems perspective on Facebook addiction-like symptoms
    (Taylor and Francis, 2021-07-25) Mylonopoulos, Nikolaos; heoharakis, Vasilis
    After many years of techno-enthusiasm, public discourse has turned to the dark side of technology and notably the dysfunctional consequences (e.g., addiction-like symptoms) of excessive social media use. Recent research in this area draws on dual-system theory and demonstrates that while habit predicts use, it does not directly predict addiction-like symptoms. This is not surprising, since habit lacks valence and its measurement does not discriminate between desirable and undesirable use. To clarify the antecedents of addiction-like symptoms, this paper extends prior research by drawing on the dualistic theory of passions and argues that habit is a manifestation of harmonious and obsessive passions that are anchored in the user’s identity. By applying structural equation modeling on survey responses from 225 U.S.-based users, we first replicate and confirm the main findings of prior studies and then proceed to show that harmonious and obsessive passion drive Facebook habit and use. Moreover, obsessive passion emerges as the exclusive driver of addiction-like Facebook symptoms while the restraining effect of self-control is mediated by the two passions, as well as habit and use. The main finding is that the dual-system explaining Facebook addiction-like symptoms comprises of obsessive passion as the direct driving force and self-control as the indirect preventative restraining force. Our analysis contributes to the debate about mitigating the negative effects of social media and opens up new questions for further research.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Evaluating mobile-based data collection for crowdsourcing behavioral research
    (Springer, 2025-04) Esch, Dennis T.; Mylonopoulos, Nikolaos; Theoharakis, Vasilis
    Online crowdsourcing platforms such as MTurk and Prolific have revolutionized how researchers recruit human participants. However, since these platforms primarily recruit computer-based respondents, they risk not reaching respondents who may have exclusive access or spend more time on mobile devices that are more widely available. Additionally, there have been concerns that respondents who heavily utilize such platforms with the incentive to earn an income provide lower-quality responses. Therefore, we conducted two studies by collecting data from the popular MTurk and Prolific platforms, Pollfish, a self-proclaimed mobile-first crowdsourcing platform, and the Qualtrics audience panel. By distributing the same study across these platforms, we examine data quality and factors that may affect it. In contrast to MTurk and Prolific, most Pollfish and Qualtrics respondents were mobile-based. Using an attentiveness composite score we constructed, we find mobile-based responses comparable with computer-based responses, demonstrating that mobile devices are suitable for crowdsourcing behavioral research. However, platforms differ significantly in attentiveness, which is also affected by factors such as the respondents’ incentive for completing the survey, their activity before engaging, environmental distractions, and having recently completed a similar study. Further, we find that a stronger system 1 thinking is associated with lower levels of attentiveness and acts as a mediator between some of the factors explored, including the device used and attentiveness. In addition, we raise a concern that most MTurk users can pass frequently used attention checks but fail less utilized measures, such as the infrequency scale.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Motivations and passions in m-Facebook use
    (Elsevier, 2019-10-22) Mylonopoulos, Nikolaos; Theoharakis, Vasilis
    Introduction. It is estimated that more than 2.5 billion people globally use social networks (Statista, 2018c), among which Facebook remains by far the largest with nearly 2.3 billion active users (Statista, 2018b), despite the dominance of other social networks in large countries such as China (e.g. WeChat, QQ) and Russia (e.g. Vkontakte). Following a long tradition of technology use models (Davis, 1989; Van der Heijden, 2004), extant literature on social networks focuses on enjoyment (hedonic motivation) and usefulness (utilitarian motivation) as the main perceived benefits motivating people to use social networks such as Facebook (Chang, Hung, Cheng, & Wu, 2015; Cheung, Chiu, & Lee, 2011; Lin & Lu, 2011) Meanwhile, an emergent strand of research draws on the theory of passions (Lemay, Doleck, & Bazelais, 2017; Orosz, Vallerand, Bőthe, Tóth-Király, & Paskuj, 2016; Wakefield & Wakefield, 2016) which posits that user engagement is the result of a psychological process that makes social network use an integral part of the user’s own identity (Vallerand et al., 2003; Vallerand et al., 2007).
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Passion for an activity and its role on affect: does personality and the type of activity matter?
    (Frontiers, 2023-01-04) Mylonopoulos, Nikolaos; Theoharakis, Vasilis
    While personality traits play a crucial role in a person’s general affect, passion for an activity has been shown to partially mediate this relationship, with harmonious passion generally related to positive affect and obsessive passion to negative affect. However, activities are not all the same with some characterized as having “positive” consequences while others as having “negative” consequences. This study examines how passions manifest for two popular activities: physical exercise, an activity with in general “positive” consequences, and social media, an activity with potentially both “positive” and “negative” consequences. We replicate and extend earlier studies which have relied on baskets of heterogenous self-reported activities without distinguishing between activities. We find that, when fully controlling for personality, obsessive passion for physical exercise is positively associated with positive affect while obsessive passion for social media is positively associated with negative affect. However, harmonious passion for either activity has no significant association with any affect. Further, we find that passions for physical exercise relate with conscientiousness while passions for social media with neuroticism.