{"title":"From iron to diamond: Collaborative behavior development across competitive tiers in League of Legends","authors":"Jimoon Kang, Seongcheol Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108928","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108928","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Understanding how individuals develop collaborative competencies in digital environments has become critical as work, education, and recreation increasingly occur through screens. This mixed-methods study examines collaborative behaviors across competitive skill tiers in <em>League of Legends,</em> analyzing 560,000 matches and conducting expert interviews. Quantitative findings reveal that collaborative behaviors—vision control, strategic communication, and assists—differentiate tiers far more strongly than individual performance. Vision control increased over 200 %, strategic communication increased 169 % with forward-looking signals showing the largest effects, and disruptive behaviors declined five-fold across tiers, while individual combat effectiveness remained flat. Hierarchical regression demonstrated that these dimensions developed as integrated systems, together predicting 87.3 % of tier variance. Expert interviews identified bidirectional selection-socialization processes where collaborative predisposition facilitates advancement and higher-tier environments further reinforce capabilities through stricter norms, peer modeling, and reputational consequences, with threshold effects around mid-tiers indicating qualitative environmental shifts. These findings provide large-scale behavioral evidence supporting Social Identity Theory, team cognition theory, and status characteristics theory in naturalistic digital contexts, demonstrate that teamwork theories require adaptation for fluid-membership environments with standardized communication tools, and reveal collaborative competence as integrated systems requiring holistic development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 108928"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146081671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How digital literacy shapes the conversion of political awareness into participation: A cross-national comparative study of Mongolia and China","authors":"Gavaa Zanabazar , Qaiser Mohi Ud Din , Tao Hong","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108946","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108946","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Political awareness is widely viewed as a foundation for democratic participation. However, many politically aware citizens remain inactive. Existing research has examined political awareness, civic engagement, and digital literacy separately, with limited attention to how these factors interact to shape participation especially in digital environments. This study addresses that gap by examining digital literacy as a conditional factor in the relationship between political awareness and political participation. This research investigates the comparative effects of political awareness, civic engagement, and digital literacy on political participation in Mongolia and China. Drawing on the Civic Voluntarism Model, the study develops a moderated mediation framework and examines it using two-wave survey data collected from 600 respondents: 295 from Mongolia and 305 from China between October and December 2024. Findings indicate that political awareness is positively associated with political participation primarily through the mediating role of civic engagement in both samples. Digital literacy statistically significantly moderates this indirect pathway in the Mongolian sample; however, no statistically significant moderating effect was observed in the Chinese sample, suggesting that in more digitally integrated contexts, digital literacy may function as a baseline capability rather than a differentiating resource. Overall, the cross-national analysis indicates that while the underlying mechanisms are consistent across both countries, the strength and significance of these effects vary according to the digital and participatory landscape in each context.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 108946"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147385740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hippolyte Fournier , Arnaud Fournel , François Osiurak , Olivier Koenig , Flora Pâris , Vivien Gaujoux , Fabien Ringeval
{"title":"Attention hijacked: How social media notifications disrupt cognitive processing","authors":"Hippolyte Fournier , Arnaud Fournel , François Osiurak , Olivier Koenig , Flora Pâris , Vivien Gaujoux , Fabien Ringeval","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108926","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108926","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Digital notifications are ubiquitous in modern life, yet their impact on cognitive performance remains poorly understood. Here, we introduce an ecologically valid paradigm to examine how social media notifications disrupt ongoing task performance. Participants completed a Stroop task while receiving smartphone-style notifications, allowing us to track both behavioral and physiological responses. Notifications triggered a transient slowdown in cognitive processing lasting approximately seven seconds, driven by the combined influence of perceptual salience, learned associations, and relevance appraisal. The magnitude of this disruption was predicted by the inferred relevance of notifications and by individual patterns of smartphone use—specifically, the frequency of interaction (notification volume and checking behavior) rather than total time spent on the device. These findings were mirrored in changes in pupil dilation, a physiological marker of arousal, confirming the convergent impact of notification relevance and smartphone habits. Together, our results show that modern digital cues can hijack attentional resources, even in the absence of explicit personal relevance. They underscore the need to account for notification frequency — not merely screen time — when evaluating the cognitive cost of pervasive digital environments, and raise broader concerns about the long-term impact of habitual device interaction on attentional functioning.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 108926"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147385743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stimulated or saturated? Biometric analysis of augmented sport experiences among young adults: The role of hedonic innovativeness and repeated exposure","authors":"Yongjae Kim , Jin Woo Ahn","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108932","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108932","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The rise of augmented reality (AR) in sport broadcasting represents a promising strategy to counter declining interest among young adult consumers, a demographic characterized by digital fluency yet reduced engagement with traditional sports. This study examines how exposure to AR-enhanced highlights influence young adult's cognitive, affective, behavioral responses, particularly in relation to hedonic innovativeness, sport involvement, and repeated exposure. Two mixed-factorial experimental designs with 156 college students compare AR and non-AR NFL highlights, employing biometric measures (eye-tracking, galvanic skin response, facial expression analysis), self-reports, and Post-Experience Eye-Tracked Protocol (PEEP) interviews. Results show that AR heightened cognitive engagement by directing attention to digital overlays but did not directly enhance affective engagement or behavioral intention. Moderation analyses revealed that sport involvement increased AR's effect on affective engagement, while hedonic innovativeness predicted stronger behavioral intentions. Repeated-exposure analyses further showed clear habituation effects, with both affective and cognitive engagement declining across successive AR sequences, though hedonic innovators maintained relatively higher engagement levels. Heatmaps confirmed novelty decay, as visual attention shifted from AR graphics to core gameplay over time. Findings extend theories of consumer innovation and habituation while offering practical guidance for tailoring AR to young sport audiences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 108932"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147385747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"User cognitive fit in human-AI interaction: Exploring the link between input representation and generative output complexity","authors":"Hechang Cai , Jinlai Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108927","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108927","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed knowledge production into an interactive process in which user inputs actively influence generative outputs. Yet, little is known about how different forms of input representation affect the complexity of generative. Building on cognitive fit theory, this study examines how the characteristics of user input jointly determine output complexity in human–AI interaction. Using a large corpus of over sixty thousand conversations, we adopt a multimethod approach that combines fixed-effects modeling with interpretable machine learning (XGBoost, SHAP, and time-sensitive pattern analysis). The results reveal a nonlinear and dynamic relationship between input representation fit and output complexity, indicating that both low-fit and high-fit inputs can increase output complexity through distinct mechanisms. We further demonstrate that these effects differ according to interaction depth and temporal context, suggesting that representational alignment is not static but dynamically recalibrated during iterative exchanges. The study enhances the cognitive fit theory by conceptualizing fit as an adaptive alignment process in generative environments instead of a fixed match between human cognition and system representation. The findings highlight the necessity for AI systems that support adaptive prompting and context-aware feedback to enhance collaborative generative improvement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 108927"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146081670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corrigendum to ‘Interplay of agenda setters in the digital age: The associative issue network between news organizations and political YouTube channels’ [Computers in Human Behavior 155 (2024), 108169]","authors":"Bumsoo Kim , Lin Han , Yonghwan Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108948","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108948","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 108948"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147385742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking targeting strategies for SMEs: How artificial intelligence and audience breadth drive advertising performance","authors":"Minjeong Ham , Jaeyoung Park","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108930","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108930","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite the proliferation of AI-powered advertising systems promising superior targeting capabilities, empirical evidence comparing their performance to human judgment remains scarce. Drawing on bounded rationality and human-AI complementarity theories, this study examines 400 Facebook advertisements from a European beauty company to investigate when and how AI-powered targeting outperforms traditional approaches. Using a generalized linear model with a binomial family and logit link function, we discover a counterintuitive precision paradox: AI-powered targeting is associated with 88% higher click-through rates (CTR) when combined with broad targeting, yet produces non-significant performance gains when constrained by narrow targeting. The results suggest that effective human-AI collaboration may require a fundamental shift in human roles, from tactical specification to strategic boundary setting. This research contributes to the growing literature on human-AI interaction by identifying boundary conditions for complementarity and providing actionable insights for the digital advertising industry. The findings of this research have broader implications for understanding how advertisers and advertising platforms can effectively deploy AI systems in decision-making contexts where human intuition may conflict with algorithmic optimization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 108930"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147385748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yolande Yunhsiou Yang , Chih-Chien Wang , Pau-Lin Chou , Chieh-Yu Tien , Jia-Ci Wen , Nien-Hsin Chen
{"title":"Evaluating human-based and large language model-based content analysis: A case study on negative word-of-mouth classification in social media","authors":"Yolande Yunhsiou Yang , Chih-Chien Wang , Pau-Lin Chou , Chieh-Yu Tien , Jia-Ci Wen , Nien-Hsin Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108904","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108904","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This main purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of human annotation versus large language model (LLM)-based automated content analysis in classifying negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) on social media. Using ChatGPT as the representative LLM, we evaluated its performance in categorizing comments into five sentiment types: positive, neutral, negative, irony, and boycott. Through three experiments, we compared ChatGPT's classification accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score with human annotators under varying conditions, including the provision of classification definitions and keywords, as well as parameter adjustments such as temperature and Top_p. The findings reveal that while ChatGPT demonstrated strong recall in detecting negative comments, it struggles with nuanced classifications such as irony and boycott, where human annotators exhibit higher precision. Incorporating explicit definitions and keywords significantly enhanced ChatGPT's classification accuracy and consistency, particularly in distinguishing boycott-related comments. However, adjustments to temperature and Top_p yield only marginal improvements. These results highlight the potential of integrating LLMs with human annotation to optimize large-scale content analysis while addressing the limitations of automated sentiment classification. The study provides theoretical and practical insights into AI-assisted content analysis, with implications for social media monitoring, brand crisis management, and influencer engagement strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 108904"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146081669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Personal cancer worry and Systemic Cancer Concern: Pathways to health behaviors via social media and emotional well-being","authors":"Chi-Chin Hsiao , Hsuan-Wei Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108918","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108918","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cancer worry and concern are associated with how individuals engage with and interpret digital health environments, yet existing research has not distinguished between personal worry about individual risk and systemic concerns regarding institutional responses. This study examines how personal worry and systemic cancer concern relate to digital health behaviors through distinct affective and trust-related pathways. Drawing on an integrated theoretical framework, we analyze nationally representative U.S. data (HINTS 6; N = 6252) using structural equation modeling. Personal cancer worry is associated with increased social media engagement and reduced emotional well-being, with emotional vulnerability in particular aligning with greater involvement in harmful behaviors (e.g., smoking), whereas social media engagement shows more selective behavioral associations. In contrast, systemic cancer concern, marked by institutional distrust, corresponds to limited or passive digital engagement and diminished emotional well-being, patterns that relate to lower participation in positive health behaviors. Social media engagement is associated with perceiving less health misinformation, showing modest behavioral associations. Overall, the findings distinguish two forms of cancer-related psychological responses: a pattern of active but emotionally vulnerable engagement associated with personal worry, and a pattern of trust-sensitive, low-engagement interpretation associated with systemic concern. Findings inform psychologically responsive digital health design. Emotion-sensitive features may support users with heightened vulnerability, whereas credibility cues may address institutional distrust.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"178 ","pages":"Article 108918"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146024716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jing Xu , Jianwei Liu , Kee-Hung Lai , Xu Gao , Yahe Yu , Dong Jing
{"title":"Bounty design in online communities: Uneven effects on prosocial behavior across user groups","authors":"Jing Xu , Jianwei Liu , Kee-Hung Lai , Xu Gao , Yahe Yu , Dong Jing","doi":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108922","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.chb.2026.108922","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>User-led bounty design has emerged as a novel mechanism in online communities, enabling users to offer monetary incentives to boost engagement. Nevertheless, as an extrinsic stimulus, bounties can exert complex influences on users' prosocial behavior, affecting the motivation for user participation on online platforms and thereby generating spillover or crowding-out effects. This study employs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine how bounty design affects prosocial behavior across different user groups in online communities. The results reveal a significant decline in overall prosocial behavior, particularly among users with high extrinsic motivation. Conversely, users with high intrinsic motivation exhibit increased prosocial behavior. Additionally, bounty amount and historical comment sentiment significantly moderate these effects. Innovatively, this study focuses on the heterogeneous outcomes of bounty incentives on groups with different motivational levels, indicating that motivational level is a crucial factor influencing the effectiveness of user incentives—users with different motivational levels may even exhibit completely opposite responses to bounty incentives. This study provides insights into the complex mechanisms of bounty design and emphasizes the importance of accounting for different user groups in online community design. These findings may also help inform the optimization of incentive mechanisms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48471,"journal":{"name":"Computers in Human Behavior","volume":"178 ","pages":"Article 108922"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146024717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}