Psychological Safety as Determinants of the Belief in Dangerous Online Communities Mediated by General and Online Social Anxiety

Abstract

This study explores the antecedents and outcomes of individual perceived safety in life. After factoring out beliefs and social anxiety, Facebook use was selected as a predictor for related psychological symptoms. A confirmatory factor analysis was applied to 230 email validated samples. Structural equation modeling was used to test the predictions for each construct. The results show that Psychological need of safety was positively correlated to both social anxieties and positively reflected to beliefs in dangerous online communities. The implication is that if the participants have high level of both social anxieties, then they have high levels of belief in dangerous online communities. The implication of these findings in conjunction with a number of discussions and recommendations for future research are provided.