Advancing the assessment of cultural orientation: A developmental and contextual framework of multiple psychological dimensions and social identities

Contextualizing Bicultural Competence Across Youths' Adaptation From High School to College: Prospective Associations With Mental Health and Substance Use

Bicultural competence, the ability to navigate bicultural demands, is a salient developmental competency for youth of color linked with positive adjustment. This study investigated how discrimination experiences informed developmental trajectories of behavioral and affective bicultural competence across youth's adaptation from high school to college, and how these biculturalism trajectories predicted later adjustment (i.e., internalizing symptoms and binge drinking). Data were collected between 2016 through 2020 and included 206 U.S. Latino youth (Mage=17.59, 64% female, 85% Mexican origin, 11% first and 62% second generation immigrants). Linear latent growth analyses revealed that youth who experienced greater time-varying discrimination demonstrated lower concurrent behavioral and affective bicultural competence. Higher behavioral bicultural competence intercepts were associated with fewer internalizing symptoms in the third college year. No other significant associations emerged for internalizing symptoms or binge drinking. These findings have implications for mental health equity among Latino youth during a critical period of psychopathology onset.

Parental Warmth and Developmental Change in Familism Values: Latinx Adolescents in an Emerging Immigrant Community

This study examined the developmental changes of familism values across adolescence among Latinx adolescents from an emerging immigrant community, and how changes in parental warmth were associated with changes in familism values. The sample included 547 Latinx adolescents. Multilevel model results indicated that familism values showed a linear decline from 6th to 10th grade. Between-person analyses showed that parental warmth was related to the higher initial levels of familism values but unrelated to changes in familism values. At the within-person level, on the occasions when adolescents report higher parental warmth, they also report higher familism values. This work highlights the importance of parental warmth for socializing developmental changes in Latinx adolescents' familism values in an emerging immigrant community context.

Believing and social interactions: effects on bodily expressions and personal narratives

The processes of believing integrate external perceptual information from the environment with internal emotional states and prior experience to generate probabilistic neural representations of events, i.e., beliefs. As these neural representations manifest mostly below the level of a person's conscious awareness, they may inadvertently affect the spontaneous person's bodily expressions and prospective behavior. By yet to be understood mechanisms people can become aware of these representations and reflect upon them. Typically, people can communicate the content of their beliefs as personal statements and can summarize the narratives of others to themselves or to other people. Here, we describe that social interactions may benefit from the consistency between a person's bodily expressions and verbal statements because the person appears authentic and ultimately trustworthy. The transmission of narratives can thus lay the groundwork for social cooperation within and between groups and, ultimately, between communities and nations. Conversely, a discrepancy between bodily expressions and narratives may cause distrust in the addressee(s) and eventually may destroy social bonds.

Bicultural competence and academic adjustment across Latino youth adaptation from high school to college

This study investigated the association between bicultural competence and academic adjustment (i.e., engagement, efficacy, achievement) among 193 Latino youth (65.3% female; 89.1% U.S.-born) followed from their senior high school year (M_age  = 17.58 years, SD = 0.53) to their fifth college semester (2016-2019). Latent growth analyses revealed that youth's overall bicultural competence trajectory was moderately high and stable across this period. Youth who maintained or increased bicultural competence levels over time (slopes) demonstrated greater self-efficacy. Youth with greater high school bicultural competence (intercepts) demonstrated higher engagement but lower achievement. No other associations emerged. This study highlights that the promoting influence of bicultural competence may not extend to all indicators of academic adjustment but may depend upon the contexts and demands they navigate.

Cultural adaptation congruence in immigrant spouses is associated with marital quality

Objective and background

Previous research suggests that cultural adaptation is associated with Mexican-origin couples' marital outcomes, including marital distress and rates of dissolution. However, research on the marital implications of different types of spousal differences in cultural adaptation often omits important dyadic dynamics (i.e., incongruence between couples and with their partners); this, coupled with existing methodological issues, might contribute to the pattern of mixed findings in the literature.

Method

Using data from 273 Mexican-origin couples, we conducted response surface analyses to examine how spousal congruence in four adaptation domains (acculturation, enculturation, English proficiency, Spanish proficiency) is associated with wives' and husbands' marital warmth, hostility and satisfaction.

Results

Higher, versus lower, levels of couple matches (except for enculturation) were associated with better marital quality. Mismatches in American (acculturation, English) and Mexican (enculturation, Spanish) orientations were also associated with higher, and lower, marital quality, respectively.

Conclusion and implication

Our findings highlight the importance of examining couple matching, which has historically been understudied. We also suggest that inconsistencies in prior work can be explained by discrepant associations between mismatches in American versus Mexican orientation and relationship outcomes.

The Influence of Ethnic-Racial Identity Developmental Processes on Global Bicultural Competence Development

This study investigated ethnic-racial identity (ERI) developmental processes (i.e., exploration and resolution) as pathways for adolescents to develop global bicultural competence, or the ability to meet heritage and host cultural demands. The sample included 749 U.S. Mexican-origin youth (30% Mexico-born; 51% male) followed from early-to-late adolescence (M_age  = 12.79-17.38 years). Longitudinal structural equation analyses revealed that youth's sequential engagement in ERI exploration and resolution (from early-to-middle adolescence) promoted global bicultural competence in late adolescence. The findings highlight the benefits of achieving clarity about one's ERI via self-exploration efforts for adolescents' ability to respond effectively to bicultural demands. This study advances mechanisms via which ERI development may support youth adaptation to multiple cultural systems.

Biculturalism and adjustment among U.S. Latinos: A review of four decades of empirical findings

Incorporating both heritage (e.g., Latino) and national (e.g., American) cultural systems into our sense of self (i.e., bicultural identity) and developing the ability to successfully respond to demands associated with each of these systems (i.e., bicultural competence) have been theorized to be central to the development and positive adjustment of U.S. Latinos, a group that represents a large segment of the country's population. In this comprehensive review, we examined empirical research on biculturalism among U.S. Latinos spanning four decades (1980-2020), with a focus on synthesizing the field's understanding of antecedents and consequents associated with biculturalism and identifying directions for future research. Our review of 152 empirical articles revealed that this literature was characterized by multiple approaches to the conceptualization (i.e., dual-cultural adaptation, dual-cultural identity, bicultural identity integration, and bicultural competence) and subsequent operationalization of biculturalism. Although each conceptualization has different implications for the conclusions that can be drawn regarding an aspect or facet of biculturalism and potential influence on adjustment, a significant majority (78%) of studies, across conceptualizations, provided evidence supporting a positive association between biculturalism and Latinos' adjustment. In addition, a relatively small body of qualitative work was identified, and findings largely informed potential antecedents of biculturalism. We review this literature with attention to: the aspects of biculturalism that are associated with Latinos' adjustment (i.e., psychosocial and physical health), how sample characteristics may limit the generalizability of this work, and important directions for future research both in terms of conceptualization and study design.

Becoming more egalitarian: A longitudinal examination of Mexican-origin adolescents' gender role attitudes

The current study examined the trajectory of gender role attitudes of 471 Mexican-origin adolescents (236 girls, 235 boys) from 5th grade (Mage = 10.86 years) to 11th grade (Mage = 16.75 years), investigating how situating identities (i.e., gender, nativity, SES), ethnic identity (i.e., ethnic pride), and familial context (i.e., parents' attitudes) contributed to adolescents' gender role attitudes across time. Participant interviews were conducted every other year, resulting in 4 waves of data. Most parents (96%) were Mexico natives, with an average immigration age of 18.16 years for fathers and 14.01 years for mothers. Results revealed linear and quadratic trends in gender attitude traditionality for all adolescents, characterized by a linear decline through age 16 years that leveled off through age 18 years. Although both girls and boys trended toward egalitarian gender role attitudes across adolescence, girls endorsed more egalitarian attitudes than did boys. Adolescents from higher-SES backgrounds endorsed more egalitarian attitudes than those from lower-SES backgrounds. Significant within-person effects of ethnic pride surfaced, such that children with higher levels of ethnic pride at any given time also reported more traditional gender role attitudes. Significant between-person effects of mothers' and fathers' attitudes were found, such that parents with more traditional gender role attitudes tended to have children with relatively more traditional gender role attitudes. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of studying gender development in conjunction with situating identities, cultural identities, and the broader context, particularly when children are embedded in multiple cultures with contrasting gender role expectations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Cultural development and psychopathology

Culture plays a pivotal role in adaptive and maladaptive development. However, culture remains disconnected from theory, research, training, assessment, and interventions in developmental psychopathology, limiting our understanding of the genesis and epigenesis of mental health. Cultural development and psychopathology research can help overcome this limitation by focusing on the elucidation of cultural risk, protective, and promotive factors, at the individual and social levels, that initiate, derail, or maintain trajectories of normal and abnormal behavior. The goal of this Special Issue is to showcase research on the association between culture, development, and psychopathology that investigates equifinality and multifinality in cultural development, the interplay between culture and biology, cultural assessment and interventions, and cultural differences and similarities.