IAAP JANUARY 2022

FLOURISHING AND METACOGNITION IN SOCIAL NETWORKING

Suruchi Verma and Snehlata Jaswal

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
CHAUDHARY CHARAN SINGH UNIVERSITY, MEERUT
 Social networking
• Currently we have more than 800 million people who
use a social network site via any device at least once
every month
• Earlier media were distant influences, now social media
have intruded our homes, hands, and hearts.
• The focus of the present research is to assess whether
and how far well-being is associated with social
networking.
• Well-being is conceptualized in this research as a
positive state of growth. So the positive psychology
construct ‘flourishing’ captures perfectly what we intend
to study.
 Flourishing
• Flourishing is a state in which one functions well
psychologically and socially. Flourishing is conceptualized in
relation to one’s quality of life as a whole, rather than just
positive emotions, the pursuit of pleasure, or feeling good
about one’s life.
• The “founding father” of positive psychology, Seligman
(2011), links flourishing to building and maintaining the five
aspects of the PERMA model, namely: positive emotions,
engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishments.
• Based on the humanistic tradition, Diener et al. (2009)
designated flourishing as “social - psychological prosperity”
and created an eight item scale, “to complement existing
measures of subjective well-being” (Diener et al., 2009, p.
144).
 Flourishing and social networking
• Intuitively, it would seem that flourishing would be positively
associated with social media use. Vallor (2015) opines that at least on
a surface level, online social media provide reciprocity, empathy, self-
knowledge, and shared life, which are the four key dimensions of
‘friendships of virtue’ which in turn are required for human
flourishing according to the Aristotelian theory of the good life.
Online social media support and strengthen friendships along these
four dimensions, particularly when they are used to supplement
rather than substitute for face-to-face interactions.
• Uysal (2015) examined the predictive roles of social safeness and
flourishing on problematic Facebook use in 229 Turkish university
students using the Turkish version of the Bergen Facebook Addiction
Scale, the Social Safeness and Pleasure Scale, and the Flourishing
Scale. Problematic Facebook use was correlated negatively with social
safeness and flourishing.
 Flourishing and social networking
Aim
•To study whether flourishing was positively associated with social media use,
i.e., social networking.
•A further interest was to assess whether this association was more because
social media provide emotional succour through a platform of social interaction,
or it was because social media have simply become a part of our daily routine
life, or both.
Thus, the scale chosen to assess social media use was the Social Media Use
Integration Scale (SMUIS). It was recently developed by Jenkins-Guarnieri et al.
(2013). It yields scores on two subscales: a) Social integration and emotional
connection (referred to as Emotional Connection in this work) and integration
into social routines (shortened and referred to as Social Routine in this work).
Hypothesis
•Flourishing will be positively associated with social media use.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to assess whether it has similar or different
associations with social media use for social integration and emotional
connection and with social media use for integration into social routine.
 Metacognition
• Some reflection and discussion yielded metacognition as the second
variable used as a predictor in the current research. The germinal
idea was that all people, who experience flourishing, would not use
social media. They probably use social media strategically to their
own advantage and interest.
• Such strategic use of social networking requires a certain amount of
intellect and planning. This implies awareness about one’s own
intellectual capacities and a controlled use of one’s abilities. Schraw
(1998, p.113) emphasized these two as essential components of
metacognition, “there are two aspects of metacognition, knowledge
of cognition and regulation of cognition”.
• Hence, it was surmised that metacognition may be a moderator of
the relationship between flourishing and social networking.
 Metacognition
• The concept of metacognition as understood by researchers today
was introduced by Flavell (1971). He held it to be “knowledge and
cognition about cognitive phenomena” (Flavell, 1979, p. 906). In his
model of metacognition and cognitive monitoring, Flavell (1979)
clearly distinguished four interacting phenomena (a) metacognitive
knowledge, (b) metacognitive experiences, (c) goals (or tasks), and (d)
actions (or strategies).
• Fiedler et al. (2019) conceptualize metacognition as the top executive
of cognitive functioning. They hold that, “metacognition is not
separate from cognition, but integral to all higher-order cognitive
inferences, including explicit learning, skill development, recall of
personal events, communication, decision making, problem solving,
navigation, design, etc. It refers to the superordinate and in a way to
the most responsible level of all cognitive functions. It constitutes the
quality control of one’s own mental functions”.
 The research model
Social networking is the dependent variable, flourishing is taken as
the independent variable, and metacognition is assumed to be a
moderator of the influence of flourishing on social networking.

SOCIAL NETWORKING
FLOURISHING Emotional Connection
Social Routine
 

METACOGNITION
Self reflectivity
Understanding other minds
Critical Distance
Mastery
 
 Sample
• Online study of 307 participants.
• 102 males and 205 females.
• Average age was 26 years (SD = 9.812). Median age= 25
years. The sample was not random to the extent that only
those who had access to the internet could have filled the
Google form, which was used for as the mode of data
collection.
• Ethics approval was obtained from the Research Ethics
Committee, Department of Psychology, CCS University.
• All participants gave informed consent in accordance with the
Declaration of Helsinki in the first part of the online
questionnaire, and then filled the questionnaire comprising all
three scales.
 Tests
• Social media use integration scale (Jenkins-
Guarnieri et al., 2015), which separately
assesses social media use for emotional
connection and for routine uses.
• Flourishing was measured with the Flourishing
scale (Diener et al, 2009)
• Metacognition was assessed with the
Metacognition self-assessment scale (Pedone et
al., 2017). It has four subscales: self-reflectivity,
understanding other minds, critical distance, and
mastery
 Procedure
• Participants were initially contacted through social
media messages or phone calls and were sent a link to
fill a Google form online.
• Out of nearly a thousand people who were contacted,
307 responded and filled the Google form.
• The 10 items of the social media use integration scale, 8
items of the flourishing, and 18 items of the
metacognition self- assessment scale were administered
in the same sequence as mentioned here through the
Google form after obtaining informed consent in the first
part of the Google form.
• The whole process of data collection took about three
months.
 Analyses
• Scoring was done and the data sheet was prepared in MS Excel. SPSS
was used for analyses.
• Initially, frequency distributions were used to check the data for
inconsistencies. Besides calculating descriptive statistics, the data
were also checked for normality.
• T ratios revealed no gender differences on any of the variables. So
further analyses were done on the total sample
• Correlations were calculated.
• This was followed by path analyses. The direct effect of flourishing
on social networking was tested. The indirect effect through
metacognition was also tested. The indirect effect being an index of
mediation, it also showed how metacognition acted as a moderator
of the relationship between flourishing and social networking was
studied.
Path analysis from Flourishing through Metacognition to Social networking
Path analysis from Flourishing through Metacognition subscales to Social networking
 Direct and indirect effects

Effect of↓ On Social On Emotional On Social

Networking Connection Routine
Flourishing .37*** .346*** .308***

Metacognition -.20*** -.27*** .003 (NS)

Indirect effect -.089*** -.122*** -.015 (NS)

*** p<.001
 Indirect effects through subscales of metacognition

On Social On Emotional On Social

Effect through↓ Networking Connection Routine

Mastery -0.065 -0.076 -0.015

Critical Distance -0.050 -0.079 0.011

Understanding
Other Minds -0.049 -0.058 -0.013

Self-Reflectivity 0.074 0.092 0.016

Total -0.091*** -0.121*** -0.001

*** p<.001
 Discussion
• Even if a person is high on flourishing, s/he will not use social
networking sites, particularly for socio-emotional succor, if s/he is
high on metacognition.
• The lack of impact of metacognition on social media use for social
routines is also understandable as this kind of use is more a necessity
rather than choice or preference.
• Metacognition actually restrains people from using social media for
emotional comfort, thus being a protective factor in social media use
by those who are flourishing.
• Earlier research has also suggested metacognition as a moderator in
the effect of other factors in social networking (e.g., Allen et al., 2017;
Balikci et al., 2020; Marino et al., 2019).
• It was established beyond doubt that flourishing leads to greater
engagement and integration of social media into our lives for the
emotional comfort that they provide as well as the necessity of use in
these modern times. The research also demonstrated that
metacognition can hamper the indiscriminate use of social media.
 Conclusion
• The limitations of this research must be acknowledged. The sample
comprised of volunteers and hence was not random. Only those who
had access to smartphones or the internet could have filled the
Google form. Further, data collection happened under the cloud of
COVID restrictions. Despite these limitations, the study did yield
significant and important results.
• Today, people use social networking all the time. It has actually
become the default mode of communication, particularly during
COVID 19. As Timpano and Beard (2020) say, it is time to look beyond
frequency of use of social networking. It is high time researchers and
practitioners think about the strategies and mechanisms of action to
promote the ‘smart’ use of social networking.
• This research, which has shown the importance of metacognition in
social networking, would lead to interventions designed to promote
‘informed’ use of social networking among people of all ages and
particularly among the youth. Aware, informed, conscious, and
mindful use of social media is really what is required for a better life.
Thank you
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 Social Media Use Integration Scale
(Jenkins-Guarnieri et al., 2013)
• The Social media use integration scale (SMUIS) has 10 statements to which the
participant responds on a five point Likert scale ranging from 1(Strongly
disagree) to 5(Strongly agree). The scoring is reversed for the item number
eight.
• Higher scores implies more engaged use of social networking and its
integration into social routine.
• The scale can also be scored for the two subscales. The first subscale is social
media use for ‘social integration and emotional connection’, comprising the
first six items.
• The second subscale measures social media ‘integration into social routines’ on
the basis of the last four items in the scale.
• The scale was initially developed to assess Facebook use. But it was designed
to be adapted to measure other forms of online media as well (Jenkins-
Guarnieri et al., 2013, p. 48). Thus, in the present research, the scale has been
used after substituting ‘social networking’ for ‘facebook’ in all items.
 Flourishing scale (Diener et al., 2009)
• A successor and replacement of the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et
al, 1985), which had only five items, the Flourishing Scale scale has eight
items, such as “I lead a purposeful and meaningful life”.
• All items are phrased as positive statements. No reverse scoring.
• Participants indicate their agreement with items on a seven point scale (1-
strongly disagree to 7- strongly agree). The range of scores is from 8
(lowest possible) to 56 (highest possible).
• A high score represents a person with many psychological resources and
strength.
• Cronbach's alpha reliability is .82.
• It has been validated for use in India by Singh et al. (2017). Confirmatory
Factor Analysis supported the unidimensional structure of the scale.
• Singh et al. (2017) also established the convergent validity for the scale by
correlating it with the Mental Health Continuum and its factors (emotional
well-being, psychological well-being, and social well-being). All variables
were positively related with flourishing.
 Metacognition self-assessment scale (Pedone et al., 2017)
•Metacognition self-assessment scale was developed to evaluate the different functions of
metacognition (Monitoring, Integration, Differentiation, and Decentration) as defined in
the framework of metacognitive multi-function model (Semerari, 2003, 2007).
•MSAS is an 18 item self-report measure specifically developed for the assessment of
metacognition among normal adults. The MSAS is scored using a five-point scale (1=
never, 2= rarely, 3= sometimes, 4= frequently, 5= almost always), which yields a raw score
range of 18 to 90. High scores on the MSAS indicate better self-evaluation of
metacognitive abilities.
•Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out to examine the
dimensionality of the MSAS. The four dimensions were confirmed in these analyses were
Self-Reflectivity, Critical Distance, Understanding others' minds, and Mastery.
•Cronbach’s alpha ranged between 0.72 and 0.87 for all MSAS subscales and for overall
metacognition.
•These dimensions seemed particularly relevant and important in the present research, as
they pertain to the use of cognition in daily social lives of people. Also, these dimensions
are quite distinct from flourishing, on the one hand, and may also be differentially
related to social networking and its dimensions. Further, being a short self-report scale, it
could be used easily with normal adults over the internet.