The Influence Of College Students’ Interpersonal Sensitivity On Social Network Site Use: The Mediating Role Of Social Anxiety And The Moderating Role Of Implicit Theory Of Personality

With the development and popularization of social network sites,it has gradually become an important part of college students’ daily life.Previous studies have found that active and passive use of social network sites may have different impacts on individuals.It is meaningful to study the influencing factors and potential mechanisms of different social network site use.Interpersonal sensitivity is an individual’s perception and sensitivity to others’ behavior and emotion.As a relatively stable personality trait,it may have an impact on the use of social network sites.Based on the cognitive-behavioral model of social anxiety,the social enhancement theory,the social compensation theory and the uses and gratifications theory,this study explored the impact of interpersonal sensitivity on active use of social network sites and passive use of social network sites,and examined the mechanism of social anxiety as the mediating variable and the implicit personality as the moderating variable.In this study,478 college students were surveyed by Interpersonal Sensitivity Scale,Active and Passive Social Network Site Use Questionnaire,Social Anxiety Scale,and Implicit Personality Scale.The descriptive statistics,independent sample t-test,correlation analysis,regression analysis,the mediating effect analyze and the moderating effect analyze are used to test the research hypotheses.The research results are as follows:1.In demographic variables,there is a significant difference in the social anxiety of college students in the place of origin.The social anxiety level of rural college students is significantly higher than that of urban college students.There are significant differences in the active use of social network sites of college students in the place of origin and whether they are only children.The urban college students significantly do more active use of social network sites than rural college students,and the only child significantly do more active use of social network sites than non-only child.2.The interpersonal sensitivity of college students significantly positively predicts social anxiety and passive use of social network sites.Social anxiety significantly negatively predicts active use of social network sites and significantly positively predicts passive use of social network sites.3.Social anxiety plays a mediating role in the influence of interpersonal sensitivity on active use of social network sites.Interpersonal sensitivity positively affects social anxiety,and then decrease the active use of social network sites.Meanwhile,interpersonal sensitivity has a positive effect on active use of social network sites directly.4.Social anxiety plays a mediating role in the influence of interpersonal sensitivity on passive use of social network sites.Interpersonal sensitivity positively affects social anxiety,and then increase the passive use of social network sites.Meanwhile,interpersonal sensitivity has a positive effect on passive use of social network sites directly.5.Implicit theory of personality plays a moderating role in the influence of interpersonal sensitivity on social anxiety.Compare to the entity theorist,interpersonal sensitivity has a more significant impact on social anxiety among the incremental theories.The above research results show that college students’ interpersonal sensitivity will influence social anxiety and then make different effects on the use of active and passive social network sites.For individuals with different implicit theory of personality,the influence of interpersonal sensitivity on social anxiety is significantly different.According to the above research conclusions,in the future,appropriate intervention methods can be considered to reduce the social anxiety of college students with high interpersonal sensitivity in order to let them use social network sites more rationally.