This study examines the roles of the gratifications sought and of narcissism in content generation in social media and explores the generational differences in motivations and in narcissistic personalities when predicting the usage of Facebook, blogs, and forums. Data were gathered from a probability sample of 596 social media users through a telephone survey in 2010. Factor analysis results sh...

The father-son dyad might be the most socially significant male-male relationship in the life course, yet its negative qualities have been the sole focus in most research on the relationship. One communicative aspect that has received little scholarly attention is the expression of affection between fathers and sons, despite the strong correlation of affectionate communication with positive inv...

Researchers have long theorized that genetic influence on mental health may differ as a function of environmental risk factors. One likely moderator of genetic and environmental influences on psychopathological symptoms is parenting behavior, as phenotypic research shows that negative aspects of parent-child relationships are associated with greater likelihood of mental illness in adulthood. Th...

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Behind every success, there is inspiration or support of at least one person. In my case, it was a group of people including my mentor, my family, and my friends. First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Srinath Ekkad for his guidance, wisdom, and financial support. I do not think many advisors would go to the lab to help his student running an experiment. Whenever I had any ...

Despite its connection with relationship satisfaction, research on physical affection is scarce and fails to disentangle private and public displays of affection. It is important to examine both types if marginalized couples are less comfortable displaying affection publicly. The present study examined whether same-sex couples display less public (but not private) physical affection than differ...

Affection games are ludic experiences in which players are required to express culturally recognized expressions of liking as a primary goal in the game. Interestingly, while the physical world of analog play has many such activities, the digital world has been relatively limited in affording players the ability to express affection as the primary game goal. Affection games in digital play exis...