Shu-wen Wang

Cultural differences in daily support experiences.

Previous research has suggested that Asian Americans (AAs) are less likely to mobilize social support, and find support to be less helpful, when compared with European Americans (EAs). In a 10-day daily diary study of AA and EA college students, we hypothesized that AAs would activate support less frequently than EAs for both stressful and positive events, a cultural difference that would be mediated by group harmony values. We also predicted that AAs would find support to be less helpful, and we explored differences in the sources of support used. Results confirmed that cultural differences in support use were partially mediated by the value of maintaining group harmony through emotional restraint. AAs also perceived received support to be less helpful and more frequently used discretionary rather than kinship support sources. Findings suggest that naturalistic support experiences differ markedly for these groups, with implications for help-seeking behavior and mental health services.

Adult health in the context of everyday family life.

BackgroundCharacteristics of family life are linked both cross-sectionally and prospectively to adult mental and physical health.PurposeThis paper discusses social and biological processes that may explain how families influence the health of their members.MethodsWe review naturalistic studies of short-term biopsychosocial processes as they unfold within the family.ResultsDay-to-day fluctuations in stressors, demands, and social and emotional experiences in the family are reflected in short-term changes in adult members’ affect and in the activity of biological stress-response systems, particularly the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis.ConclusionsTo learn how family environments are linked to health, researchers should study the interlacing of different aspects of the everyday lives of family members, including their physiology, emotions, behavior, activities, and experiences.

Employment and Parenting

SYNOPSIS A diverse set of research literatures address how parenting and child development may be influenced by a parent’s employment status, and by the stable occupational characteristics and daily work experiences of parents who hold jobs.

Mutual and Non-Mutual Social Support Cultural Differences in the Psychological, Behavioral, and Biological Effects of Support Seeking

Social support seeking is not uniformly beneficial for different cultural groups, and in fact, is experienced as less helpful and more distressing for Asians and Asian Americans compared with European Americans. However, relationship factors that may attenuate this cross-cultural difference are little understood. We examined the effects of mutual (i.e., interdependent) and non-mutual support on psychological, biological, and behavioral stress responses to support seeking using a laboratory stressor paradigm. Findings show that across all three distress indicators, East Asian Americans were more benefited when they construed support as mutual versus non-mutual, whereas European Americans’ response did not differ by support condition. Furthermore, the data support previous research showing that Asian Americans are more likely to seek support from discretionary (i.e., peers) than obligatory ties (i.e., parents). Our discussion addresses cultural differences in the priority placed on mutuality, interdependence, and harmony in relationships, and their implications for how people construe their relationships. Future areas for research are discussed.

Children’s emotional expressivity and teacher perceptions of social competence A cross-cultural comparison

Previous research suggests that adult perceptions of children’s social competence may vary depending on the socialization goals in a given cultural context. There is also ample evidence of cultural differences in values concerning emotional display, with East Asian collectivistic contexts favoring restraint and Western individualistic contexts favoring open expression of internal states. The present study examined an individualistic versus collectivistic comparison in the links between children’s emotional expressivity and teacher evaluations of their social competence. A sample of 127 Korean, Asian American (AA) and European American (EA) preschoolers participated in emotion eliciting tasks and were rated by their teachers on three dimensions of social competence (peer acceptance, prosocial behavior, and antisocial behavior). Moderation analyses revealed that for Korean children, sadness and happiness expressivity were associated with higher antisocial behavior scores, but these associations were reversed or not significant for EAs. For AA children, anger display was associated with lower ratings of peer acceptance and prosocial behavior, but this link did not hold for their EA counterparts. Overall, there was some support for the hypotheses that expressivity was related to lower teacher perceptions of child social competence for a collectivistic group (AA and Korean) but not for an individualistic group (EA). Thus, these findings indicate cultural group differences in teacher perceptions and values of children’s emotion expressivity.