Robin L. Nabi

Depression, anxiety, and stress rank among the most prevalent mental health issues in childhood and adolescence, and are detrimentally associated with health, education, and well-being. In this context, the reliable assessment of internalizing symptoms in childhood and adolescence is critical for early detection and prevention, yet psychometrically validated instruments tailored to developmental stages remain scarce. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales for Youth (DASS-Y) were recently developed and validated in English, Chinese, Serbian, and Persian to provide a developmentally appropriate assessment tool. Importantly, a German version is yet to be developed and validated, which is the main goal of this study. The school-based sample comprised 1,893 Swiss children and adolescents aged 7–14 years. Confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), and bifactor-ESEM were conducted to examine factorial validity, measurement invariance across gender, age, and country, and convergent and predictive validity. All scales showed excellent internal consistency (α/ω ≥ .87). The hypothesized three-factor structure was supported and yielded acceptable model fit. The B-ESEM yielded the best representation, revealing a robust general distress factor alongside specific depression and stress dimensions, whereas anxiety contributed little unique variance. Scalar invariance was established across gender, age, and between Switzerland and an Australian sample. The general factor was consistently related to all well-being factors investigated. Depression uniquely predicted positive emotions, emotional stability, loneliness and self-esteem. Stress was detrimentally associated with resilience, loneliness, positive emotions, and emotional stability; and anxiety with self-esteem. These findings demonstrate that the DASS-YG is a psychometrically sound and developmentally appropriate tool for German-speaking youth.

Can discrete emotions be leveraged to combat privacy powerlessness and motivate privacy protection? Extending theorizing and research that exclusively focus on cognitive processes underlying online privacy decision-making, this study builds on gain/loss framing research and the emotions-as-frames model to understand the effectiveness of emotional appeals (i.e., hope and fear) in generating attitudinal and behavioral change in online privacy. Two online experiments that differed in message topics (Study 1: changing social media privacy settings; Study 2: rejecting website cookies) were conducted with demographically-stratified samples of U.S. adults. Results showed that gain-frame-induced hope consistently led to reduced privacy powerlessness, which was associated with increased privacy protection intention across both topics, whereas loss-frame-induced fear only led to increased protection intention in the social media context. This study advances theorizing on the role that discrete emotion plays in online privacy management from a communication perspective and highlights the novel effect of hope in motivating attitudinal and behavioral change. Findings also help to answer recent calls for remedies to privacy powerlessness and inform message-based intervention designs for consumer empowerment.

Rooted in the emotions-as-frames model (EFM), this research examines how hope, fear, and annoyance are evoked through health news headline scanning, and how these emotions influence perceptions of news and medical science institutions as well as health behavioral intentions. A sample of U.S. adults (N = 327) were assigned to one of four headline framing conditions expected to associate with different emotions (positive future frame-hope; threat frame-fear/anxiety; reversal frame-annoyance; and control-neutral) and then asked about their emotional states, trust in science and news, and health-related behavioral intentions. Overall, health news headlines generated more hope than any other emotion across all conditions, and positive future-framed headlines evoked more hope than other framed headlines. Felt hope, in turn, generated greater trust in news and science, higher expectations of medical breakthroughs and cures, and greater intention to engage in preventative health behaviors. Felt anxiety had marginal positive benefits whereas felt annoyance negatively impacted the outcomes of interest. Notably, felt emotion mediated the headline frame-outcome relationships in the positive future/hope condition. These findings offer some support for the EFM and demonstrate that scanning headlines imbued with specific emotional frames can influence important health-related outcomes through the emotions they evoke. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implication of these findings.

Although talk generated by health messages can spread message content and promote positive behavior change, little is known about what message features may be more likely to prompt conversation. Given theoretical and research support for sequential emotional experiences to increase the intensity of emotion and the extent of engagement with the emotional content - both of which are expected to positively influence talk and persuasion - we examined whether shifts in emotion within a health message influenced these outcomes. In a longitudinal experiment, we compared the effects of two texting while driving prevention messages containing a shift in emotional valence (negative to positive and positive to negative) with two single-valence emotional messages (negative-only and positive-only) on talk and persuasion (N = 333). Results indicated that emotional shift messages generated more talk than single-valence messages because they elicited greater emotional intensity and deeper message processing. These variables also mediated the effect of emotional shift messages on persuasion both immediately following message exposure and one week later, though intentions to avoid texting while driving immediately after message exposure had a greater influence on beliefs and behavior at the one-week follow-up than talk. These findings suggest that talk may play a more important role in spreading message content and reinforcing message-generated change rather than creating change itself.

This research attempts to both replicate initial research on media prescriptions – the assignment of small doses of positively-valenced media for the purposes of reducing perceived stress – and, through the lens of the broaden-and-build theory, shed light on the process through which this effect might emerge. Two longitudinal data sets were collected, one with college students (N = 182) and one with U.S. adults (N = 197), in which participants were assigned to watch either comedic or inspiring media clips every day for 5 days. Findings indicated that both amusement and hope generated by media exposure reduced perceived stress over time. Specifically, inspiring media reduced perceived stress through its effect on felt hope for both samples, whereas comedic media reduced perceived stress via felt amusement for the general adult sample only. Further, as predicted, serial mediation through felt emotion and coping efficacy emerged for amusement in the student sample and for hope in the general sample. Given these data were collected during an inordinately stressful time in both the U.S. and the world with rising rates of COVID-19, a highly contentious political election, and tensions over racial inequity, these findings suggest that media, if harnessed appropriately, could be a useful tool in one’s coping arsenal. A call for better understanding of the process through which media prescriptions have effect and their boundary conditions is advanced.