In experimental psychology and behavioral neuroscience, habits are considered stimulus-response (S-R) associations formed through extended reward training. Accordingly, habits are assessed using one o...

The body-specificity hypothesis proposes that people with different bodies should also have different conceptual systems. The test case of this hypothesis has been the association of emotional valenc...

A growing number of self-report measures aim to define interactions with social media in a pathological behavior framework, often using terminology focused on identifying those who are ‘addicted’ to engaging with others online. Specifically, measures of ‘social media addiction’ focus on motivations for online social information seeking, which could relate to motivations for offline social information seeking. However, it could be the case that these same measures could reveal a pattern of friend addiction in general. This study develops the Offline-Friend Addiction Questionnaire (O-FAQ) by re-wording items from highly cited pathological social media use scales to reflect “spending time with friends”. Our methodology for validation follows the current literature precedent in the development of social media ‘addiction’ scales. The O-FAQ had a three-factor solution in an exploratory sample of N = 807 and these factors were stable in a 4-week retest (r = .72 to .86) and was validated against personality traits, and risk-taking behavior, in conceptually plausible directions. Using the same polythetic classification techniques as pathological social media use studies, we were able to classify 69% of our sample as addicted to spending time with their friends. The discussion of our satirical research is a critical reflection on the role of measurement and human sociality in social media research. We question the extent to which connecting with others can be considered an ‘addiction’ and discuss issues concerning the validation of new ‘addiction’ measures without relevant medical constructs. Readers should approach our measure with a level of skepticism that should be afforded to current social media addiction measures.

As you might have heard, PsyArXiv is having some issues with an increase in low-quality submissions, ranging from AI generated manuscripts to inflate citation metrics, incoherent or nonsensical docume...

Descubre toda la información y los detalles sobre el acceso a plazas docentes en la UAM.

Value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC) refers to a process by which a priori neutral stimuli gain attentional priority when associated with reward, independently of goal or stimulus-driven attenti...

A practical introduction

Os reenviamos información sobre el Máster Oficial en Técnicas de Investigación sobre Procesos Psicológicos Básicos de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. La Junta Directiva de la SEPEX ***** Sí…

El XXXV Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Psicología Comparada (SEPC) continúa la tradición de ser una de las principales reuniones europeas para profesionales que realizan investigaci...

Our prior knowledge of what is about to occur, or […]

Du and Haith show that behaviour can become habitual in two different ways, involving response initiation and response preparation.

Human performance is endowed by neural representations of information that is relevant for behavior, some of which are also activated in a preparatory fashion to optimize later execution. Most studies...