McNair Grant Recipient Santiago Vigil Presents Research at Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference

Santiago Vigil is a senior majoring in psychology and planning to graduate in Fall 2024. With funding support from the McNair Research Program, Vigil was able to conduct and present his research, TikTok Use, Flow, and Addictive Behaviors, at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology Convention (SPSP) in San Diego. SPSP is a premier international event for social and personality psychologists, and this was Vigil's first time presenting his research at a conference. When asked about his experience, Vigil states, “The poster session itself went great. My poster generated a lot of interest and some great questions that kept me distracted the entire hour.” He mentioned feeling nervous at first but, “everyone who stopped by was super nice and genuine, I had no problem striking up a conversation and explaining my research.”

By attending SPSP, Vigil was able to gain more experience on how to present at these types of events and also was able to network with other people of similar interests, “I saw everyone exchanging information and trying to form these connections with people doing research in a similar field. I met a lot of people doing really cool stuff and being there definitely helped my social networking skills.” He would like to thank the McNair Research Program for the funding support along with Sarah Castillo, Citlalli Franco Aguilar and Professor Anne Koenig for their mentorship and support throughout his research. After graduating, Vigil plans to attend graduate school and focus on getting a PhD in clinical psychology with a focus in sport psychology.

Read below to learn more about Vigil’s research: 

My research was focused on measuring the correlation between TikTok and the flow state; and its impact on users’ cognitive and emotional states such as anxiety, self-esteem, boredom proneness, addictive behaviors and GPA. 

Flow is commonly defined as an increased state of productivity, being fully immersed in the task at hand, acting based on instinct and individuals can be oblivious to their surroundings. Our study measured flow symptoms experienced from TikTok and Instagram to see if social media can facilitate this immersed state and how this can impact emotional and cognitive states. Instagram was used as the control variable and compared to TikTok to differentiate the impact TikTok’s unique app design can have versus the more common platforms seen in apps like Instagram. Our results demonstrated that Tiktok users had greater anxiety, greater boredom proneness and greater flow symptoms than Instagram. Self-esteem and GPA did not differ.