演講者：Paul Hu

時間： 8/19 10am

地點：管理一館 315

Examining the Role of Affect in Individuals’ Self-Disclosures on Social Network Sites

Abstract

As social network sites become an important means for socialization, both researchers and practitioners pay growing attention to issues regarding individuals’ self-disclosures online. In general, self-disclosure refers to a person’s voluntary and intentional disclosing to others about himself or herself, such as thoughts, opinions, feelings, or experiences. Self-disclosures have been studied by previous research, mostly from a cognitive perspective. Although the cognitive approach is important, affect represents another essential perspective of analyzing individuals’ decision making and behaviors. We thus postulate that individuals’ self-disclosures in a SN site may not be totally driven by the analytical, rational processing; rather, affect could play an important role as well. From the lens of heuristic affect theory, we combine the affective and cognitive approaches to provide a fuller explanation regarding why people choose to self-disclose in social network sites voluntarily. Specifically, we address the following questions: are individuals’ self-disclosures in a SN site directly driven by affective processing?; can the combination of affective and cognitive processing better explain individuals’ self-disclosures in a SN site and in can affect processing influence a person’s cognitive evaluation?; and what expected benefits/costs play significant role in cognitive evaluation process for self-disclosure?