Scroll-blinded: The association between social media use levels, affective state and decision-making

This research examined the association between social media (SM) use and the relationship between the induced affective state and decision-making. 125 participants assigned to neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant affective induction conditions completed the Iowa Gambling Task. Exploratory regression-based analyses examined SM use as a moderator. Results revealed an interaction during decisions under ambiguity, where unpleasant induction was associated with significantly higher performance at lower SM use levels versus neutral induction. In contrast, at higher use levels, performance was significantly higher following pleasant versus unpleasant induction. Johnson-Neyman analysis identified a 2.97 threshold on the usage scale, below which the relationship between negative affect and performance was significant. Complementarily, another significance threshold was identified at a value of 4.11, above which the pleasant induction was associated with significantly higher performance than the unpleasant one. These findings suggest that the association between prior affective states and decision-making under ambiguity may vary across levels of SM use. At lower levels of SM use, unpleasant affect was associated with higher performance under ambiguity, whereas at higher levels of SM use, performance was higher following pleasant than unpleasant affective induction.