People are known to engage in behaviours aimed at replenishing social connectedness after their sense of belonging is threatened. We explored whether the mental strategy of daydreaming about significant others could have similar effects by acting as an imaginary substitute when loved ones are unavailable. Following a loneliness induction, participants (N = 126) were asked to either daydream abo...

Stigmatization can give rise to belonging uncertainty. In this state, people are sensitive to information diagnostic of the quality of their social connections. Two experiments tested how belonging uncertainty undermines the motivation and achievement of people whose group is negatively characterized in academic settings. In Experiment 1, students were led to believe that they might have few fr...

Online investing has seen a rapid growth. It has provided individual investors with the ability to control their own investments. Individual investors use virtual investment communities (VICs) to seek, disseminate and share relevant information. VICs are one of the largest subsets of virtual communities. Yet, very little is known about what contributes to the success of VICs. This research unde...