The purpose of this study is to verify the mediating effect of cognitive flexibility and the moderating effect of negative mood regulation expectancies between life stress and smartphone addiction in university students. The data from 394 undergraduat...
The purpose of this study is to verify the mediating effect of cognitive flexibility and the moderating effect of negative mood regulation expectancies between life stress and smartphone addiction in university students. The data from 394 undergraduate students were used for analysis. And Smartphone Addiction Proneness Scale for Adult(S-scale), Revised Life Stress Scale for College Students(RLSS-CS), Cognitive Flexibility Inventory(CFI), Korean language measure of generalized expectancies for negative mood regulation(NMR-K) are used for measurements. Using the SPSS 22.0 and the PROCESS macro, independent sample t-test, Pearson’s correlation analysis, bootstrapping method based on multiple linear regression model, simple slope test and Johnson-Neyman technique were used to analyze the data.
The results of this study can be summarized at follows: First, in terms of smartphone addiction, university students from an addiction-risk user group accounted for 33.8%(133 people) while university students from a general user group accounted for 66.2%(261 people). According to the data analyzed, the addiction-risk user group was significantly higher than the general user group in terms of life stress. In terms of cognitive flexibility and negative mood regulation expectancies, the addiction-risk user group was significantly lower than the general user group.
Second, life stress showed significant negative correlation with cognitive flexibility and negative mood regulation expectancies but significant positive correlation with smartphone addiction. Also, cognitive flexibility showed significant negative correlation with smartphone addiction but significant positive correlation with negative mood regulation expectancies. And Negative mood regulation expectancies showed significant negative correlation with smartphone addiction.
Third, cognitive flexibility partly mediated the relationship between life stress and smartphone addiction.
Lastly, the conditional effect of life stress on smartphone addiction was significant in the region that the negative mood regulation expectancies score is 56.06 points or more. The result has the meaning that people with high negative mood regulation expectancies are lower smartphone addiction level than with low negative mood regulation expectancies when they experience the same levels of life stress.
Based on the results of this study, the implications and limitations of this study were discussed with the suggestions for the further study.