Prosocial or deviant? The mechanism of emotion on cyber social behavior

Previous studies suggested that emotion and social behavior were generally closely correlated in real-world situations, yet the mechanisms of emotion on cyber social behavior still remained unclear. Drawing on mood-congruent theory, we propose that negative and positive emotional fluctuations might influence different cyber social behaviors of college students and further examine the impact of emotions on cyber social behaviors by investigating the moderating effect of locus of control. Data were collected from undergraduates in China. Study 1 (an experiment; n=129) showed that positive emotion positively predicted cyber-prosocial behavior, and negative emotion positively predicted cyber-deviant behavior. Study 2a (n=258), an experience sampling method study, found that at the within-person level, time-varying positive emotion positively predicted time-varying cyber-prosocial behavior, while time-varying negative emotion positively predicted time-varying cyber-deviant behavior. Study 2b (a three-wave survey; n=314) demonstrated that internal locus of control weakened the direct effect of negative emotion on cyber-deviant behavior. The implications for theory, practice, and future research have been discussed.