The COVID-19 pandemic substantially disrupted primary school children’s educational and social routines, but longitudinal evidence on children’s socio-emotional functioning after the return to routine schooling remains limited. This three-wave longitudinal study aimed to explore how children’s self-perceptions of trait Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence changed across one academic year, and whether they were associated with the maintenance or change of anxiety and depression during this period. A total of 171 primary school children completed all three waves of data collection. Among the dimensions of Social Intelligence, an exploratory increase in Social Awareness was observed, although this finding should be interpreted cautiously, whereas Trait Emotional Intelligence decreased significantly. As regards internalizing symptoms, anxiety decreased significantly, whereas depression remained stable. Baseline Social Skills predicted steeper decreases in anxiety over time. These findings suggest differentiated changes in children’s self-perceived emotional and social functioning across one academic year following the return to routine in person schooling and point to social skills as a potentially relevant resource for school-based monitoring and early prevention of scholastic anxiety.
Article 50(4) of the EU AI Act introduces transparency obligations for AI-generated or AI-modified public-interest text while allowing visible disclosure to be omitted in specified cases of human review or editorial control combined with editorial responsibility. This raises a question of calibrated trust: does a ‘human-verified’ statement help readers distinguish reliable from unreliable content, or does it simply increase trust regardless of accuracy? In this Comment, we propose the ‘human-verification premium’ as a testable psychological hypothesis, distinguish origin, verification, and accountability as separate cues, and outline how signal detection theory could be used to test whether verification statements improve sensitivity or merely shift the response criterion. We therefore propose testing whether human-verification claims that specify what was checked and who was responsible improve calibration relative to generic verification claims. Their effectiveness should be judged by improved discrimination between accurate and inaccurate content, rather than by higher average credibility. By separating the effect of a verification cue on overall credibility from its effect on accuracy discrimination, the framework makes the psychological consequences of human-verification claims empirically testable and may inform reader-facing disclosure and editorial policy.
Subjective well-being (SWB) is a core indicator of mental health. Chinese first-year college students suffer increased stress, which negatively impacts their SWB during the critical university adaptation period. Existing research on the Three Good Things (TGT) interventions is mainly rooted in Western culture. Moreover, the moderating effects of autonomy and intrinsic motivation on the TGT intervention have not yet been explored. The present study had two main targets. One is to test the effectiveness of the TGT intervention in improving SWB among Chinese first-year college students. The other is to explore the moderating roles of autonomy and intrinsic motivation in intervention effects. We conducted an experiment with 183 participants, using a 2 (autonomy: autonomous/non-autonomous)×2 (intrinsic motivation: high/low) between-subjects design. The results showed the TGT intervention significantly improved SWB in the intervention group (t = -8.457, p < 0.001), with a significant Time × Group interaction (F = 22.296, p < 0.001). Both autonomy (F = 5.565, p = 0.020) and intrinsic motivation (F = 8.693, p = 0.004) had significant positive main effects on changes in SWB (ΔSWB). A significant interaction between the two factors was also found (F = 4.560, p = 0.035). This study confirms the effectiveness of the TGT intervention among college students in an Eastern culture and stresses the importance of autonomy for boosting intervention effects, especially for students with low intrinsic motivation. Our findings supply empirical support for cross-cultural effectiveness and the personalized design of TGT intervention for college students.
The study analyses the academic literature on fitness applications (fitness apps) using bibliometric techniques to evaluate the consumer journey through a psychological lens. The purpose of this study is to identify the key theoretical frameworks and psychological constructs that explain the different stages of consumers’ journeys in the use of fitness applications. The study is based on a thematic analysis of peer-reviewed publications indexed in major academic databases (Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed) between 2010 and 2025. Bibliometric analysis was conducted using RStudio-based Biblioshiny for the thematic and Sankey maps, and VOS viewer for keyword co-occurrence analysis. The analysis identifies four stages of consumer journey in fitness applications (apps). The first stage, adoption stage, is focused on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) and other technology based psychological frameworks. The second stage, motivation drivers towards engagement stage includes drivers such as social media-based motivation to engage customers and is rooted in the theoretical foundation of Theory of Planned Behaviour, Self-Efficacy and Social Comparison Theory. The third stage, engagement stage, focused on behaviour change in users governed by personalization and user experience. The fourth stage, continuous intention stage focussed on performance measurement of satisfaction and outcomes of continued usage. This stage is dominated by Self-Determination theory. This novel study redefines fitness app usage as a dynamic multi-stage psychological process through a multi-step bibliometric–interpretive approach and shows the transition towards experiential dimension of usage of fitness apps from utility-driven behaviours.
In the context of ongoing nurse shortages in developing healthcare systems, the factors influencing turnover intention are inadequately comprehended, particularly regarding the fairness experiences that affect nurses’ organizational commitment. Drawing on social exchange theory and equity theory, this study examines how distributive, procedural, and interactional justice influence turnover intention among registered nurses in Bangladesh and whether organizational commitment mediates these relationships. Data from 381 registered nurses were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling, supplemented by artificial neural network analysis to assess the relative predictive importance of the three justice dimensions. Results showed that distributive justice (β = −0.147), procedural justice (β = −0.304), and interactional justice (β = −0.334) significantly reduced turnover intention, while all three justice dimensions strengthened organizational commitment. Organizational commitment negatively predicted turnover intention and partially mediated each justice–turnover intention relationship, indicating that fairness reduces withdrawal intentions directly and through stronger organizational attachment. The model explained variance in turnover intention (R² = 0.826), and ANN sensitivity analysis identified interactional justice as the most influential predictor. The study advances justice-based nurse-retention research in an underexamined emerging-economy context and identifies relational and procedural fairness as managerial levers for sustaining commitment and reducing turnover intention.
