College students' Facebook stalking of ex-partners.

There are abundant anecdotes and warnings of inappropriate behaviors on social networking sites, particularly about Facebook. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether individuals obsessively monitor or harass their ex-partners on Facebook (related to general "Facebook stalking") and, if so, whether those individuals would also engage in cyber obsessional pursuit (COP) and obsessive relational pursuit (ORI), which are categories of cyberstalking and stalking. A total of 411 valid participants answered questions about the ways they communicated with their ex-romantic partners using Facebook, resulting in three factors: Covert Provocation, Public Harassment, and Venting.

MySpace and Facebook: applying the uses and gratifications theory to exploring friend-networking sites.

The increased use of the Internet as a new tool in communication has changed the way people interact. This fact is even more evident in the recent development and use of friend-networking sites. However, no research has evaluated these sites and their impact on college students.

Extended dating couples decision-making strategies about eating: a comparison to married couples.

Eating is an important component to the courtship stage of relationships. Therefore, the purpose of the current experiment was to identify common decision-making strategies of individuals in extended dating relationships. By doing so, this study was a replication and extension of previous findings by Bonds-Raacke [Bonds-Raacke, J.

Remembering gay/lesbian media characters: can Ellen and Will improve attitudes toward homosexuals?

The purpose of the current research was twofold. First, a pilot study was conducted in which participants were asked to recall any memorable gay or lesbian television or film character and complete a survey about their perceptions of the character. Results indicated that over two-thirds of heterosexual participants recalled either Ellen or Will, and evaluative ratings for these characters were generally positive.

Autobiographical memories of televised sporting events watched in different social settings.

The present study asked 157 men and 154 women to recall their memories of viewing both enjoyed and nonenjoyed televised sporting events from the past year in each of four social circumstances: with friends, with family, with spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend or significant other, and by oneself. For memories of all eight events, participants were asked (1) the number and sex of coviewers, (2) concurrent behaviors and cognitions engaged in while viewing, (3) uses and gratifications sought for enjoyed events, and (4) failed uses and gratifications for nonenjoyed events. Two analyses of variance, one full multiple regression, and one step-wise regression were conducted.