# Phubber's Emotional Activations: The Association between PANAS and Phubbing Behavior
## 2 Aim of the Study and Development of Hypotheses  
Our study aims to fill the gap currently present in the literature regarding the emotional activation of phubber and compare it with that of social media addiction (SMA). Indeed, some works have already studied the emotional correlates of being exposed to phubbing both as a phubbing target (phubbee, [41]) and as a third-party observer of the phubbing dynamics [43]. However, no study so far investigated the emotional activation of the individual that engages in phubbing in terms of well-being. Only the work of [PERSON] and colleagues [44] has explored in a pioneering way the relationship between phubbing and temperament, which, however, was intended by the authors as a biological core of personality and not a component of hedonic well-being. To achieve our aim, it was necessary to take into account previous research that identified two potentially impacting characteristics for phubbing and SMA: sex and age.  
The literature reported how females seem to have higher phubbing scores than males [1; 12; 27; 45]. The same type of relationship was identified in the literature for social media addiction [26; 28; 30; 46]. Regarding the relationship between sex and emotional activation, the results do not appear to be definitive. Indeed, sex differences were not found in the U.S. normative sample [47], while sex-related differences in emotional activation scores were observed in other works [47; 48; 49]. Specifically, where sex differences were detected,females tended to have higher scores than men in terms of the negative affect, but not in terms of the positive affect. Nonetheless, given the contradictory results in the literature findings, the relationship between sex and emotional activation will be explored without producing hypotheses. Regarding age, the research has essentially identified that younger people appeared to be more disposed to phubbing [13; 25; 50]. A lower age seems to also be a significant predictor for SMA [28; 30; 51].  
Although both SMA and phubbing are considered two different constructs, the scientific literature points out that they are strongly correlated with each other [12; 13; 26; 52]. In our study, we expect that this relationship would remain the same and with a similar effect size (i.e., ranging between 0.46 and 0.65 Pearson's r values).  
In line with the scientific literature, we also expect that SMA is associated with lower levels of hedonic affective well-being. In particular, research reported how people with SMA experienced lower levels of positive affect and higher levels of negative affect [30; 31; 32; 33].  
Because of the close relationship between phubbing and social media addiction [12; 13; 26; 52], we expect to find an emotional activation in phubbing in line with the one revealed for social media addiction. As the data on the emotional activation of phubbing are completely absent in the literature, the hypotheses on this aspect are to be considered exploratory.  
Based on the literature evidence, the following hypotheses were formulated for this study:  
**Hypothesis 1 (H1)**. _Females will have higher scores on the phubbing scale._  
**Hypothesis 2 (H2)**. _Females will report higher scores on the social media addiction scale._  
**Hypothesis 3 (H3)**. _Plubbing is negatively correlated with age._  
**Hypothesis 4 (H4)**. _Social media addiction is negatively correlated with age._  
**Hypothesis 5 (H5)**. _Social media addiction positively correlates with phubbing, after controlling for age and sex._  
**Hypothesis 6 (H6a)**. _Social media addiction positively correlates with negative affect (NA) after controlling for age and sex._  
**Hypothesis 6 (H6b)**. _Social media addiction negatively correlates with positive affect (PA) after controlling for age and sex._  
**Hypothesis 7 (H7a)**. _Plubbing positively correlates with NA after controlling for age and sex._  
**Hypothesis 7 (H7b)**. _Plubbing negatively correlates with PA after controlling for age and sex._