The role of family expressiveness in American and Chinese adolescents' emotional experiences

Family Emotional Expressiveness and Adolescents' Cyberbullying Bystanders: The Mediating Role of Empathy

Background

The significant influence of family emotional expressiveness (FEE) on adolescents' face-to-face social interactions is well-established. However, there has been limited investigation into potential links between FEE and adolescents' online social behaviors, especially cyberbullying bystander behaviors, which are pivotal in cyberbullying incidents. This study aimed to assess the relative importance of different aspects of FEE (positive FEE vs. negative FEE vs. the Positive-to-Negative ratio) in predicting adolescents' cyberbullying bystander behaviors, and the mediating roles of affective and cognitive empathy in these relationships.

Methods

A sample of 1,952 adolescents (Mage = 14.18, SD = 1.33) completed questionnaires, including the Family Emotional Expressiveness Questionnaire, Basic Empathy Scale, and Cyberbullying Bystander Behavior Scale. SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.3 were used for analysis.

Results

(1) Positive FEE exhibited a positive association with protective behavior and a negative association with indifferent behavior. Conversely, negative FEE showed positive associations with reinforcing and indifferent behaviors. However, the Positive-to-Negative ratio did not exhibit significant associations with any of the three bystander behaviors. (2) Negative FEE emerged as relatively more significant than both positive FEE and the Positive-to-Negative ratio in predicting reinforcing and indifferent behaviors. (3) Affective empathy mediated the relationship between positive FEE and reinforcing behavior, while cognitive empathy mediated the relationship between positive FEE and protective and indifferent behaviors. Moreover, cognitive empathy exerted a more influential role than affective empathy in this mediation process.

Conclusion

Various aspects of FEE demonstrated distinct relationships with three cyberbullying bystander behaviors, with affective and cognitive empathy playing an important mediating role in the association. This finding holds substantial implications for the development of cyberbullying prevention strategies. Such strategies could target the reduction of negative emotional expression within adolescent families and the cultivation of both cognitive and affective empathy.

Mothers' emotional expressivity in urban and rural societies: Salience and links with young adolescents' emotional wellbeing and expressivity

This research aims to investigate the salience of mothers' emotional expressivity and its links with adolescents' emotional wellbeing and expressivity in an urban society endorsing more individualism and a rural society ascribing to more collectivism. By comparing Chinese urban (N = 283, M age = 14.13) and rural (N = 247, M age = 14.09) adolescents, this research found that urban mothers' expression of positive-dominant and positive-submissive emotions (PD and PS) were more common while expression of negative-dominant (ND) emotions was less common than rural mothers'. PD and PS had significant links with urban and rural adolescents' increased emotional expressivity and self-esteem, however, only significantly related to urban adolescents' decreased depression but not with rural adolescents'. ND had significant links with both urban and rural adolescents' expression of negative emotions, however, only significantly correlated with urban adolescents' less level of self-esteem and rural adolescents' more expression of positive emotions. No significant difference was found in the salience of urban and rural mothers' expression of negative-submissive (NS) emotions, which positively related to both urban and rural adolescents' depression and emotional expressivity. Moreover, we found that adolescents' emotional wellbeing (i.e., self-esteem and depression) mediated the relationship between mothers' emotional expressivity and adolescents' expressivity in both societies. Overall, the study findings document that the salience of mothers' emotional expressivity and its relations with adolescents' emotional adjustment differ between urban and rural societies.

Commonality and Specificity in Chinese Parental Emotion Socialization and Adolescents' Psychological Functioning: A Bifactor Approach

Understanding of the conceptual relations among different parental emotion socialization processes (i.e., whether and how they are distinct or share common components) and their developmental implications for adolescents is limited, especially within Asian cultural contexts. Guided by the parental emotion socialization framework, this study aimed to: (1) investigate a conceptual model that delineates general and specific components in parental emotion socialization with both adolescents and parents within a contemporary Asian cultural context-Beijing, China, and (2) examine whether the common and specific processes predicted adolescents' psychological functioning six months later for both informants. Participants included 1486 Chinese adolescents (M_age = 15.11 years; 52.6% males) and their primary caregivers (M_age = 44.93 years; 44.9% males). Both adolescents and parents self-reported on parental emotion socialization and adolescents completed a measure of their psychological functioning at two time-points. We evaluated the fit of one-factor, first-order factor, and bifactor models for both informants separately. Results indicated a good fit of the bifactor model with a proposed general factor of parent meta-emotion philosophy and specific factors of parental reaction and emotional expressivity, with partial factorial invariance of the parental reaction factor across informants. The common and specific factors uniquely predicted adolescents' psychological functioning. Findings inform the parental emotion socialization framework, particularly our conceptual understanding of the different processes with Asian samples, and have practical implications for the design and implementation of comprehensive and culturally relevant parenting interventions in support of adolescent psychological functioning.