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

Abstract

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 (Mₐgₑ = 15.11 years; 52.6% males) and their primary caregivers (Mₐgₑ = 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.