Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
J Youth Adolesc. 2020 Oct;49(10):2003-2019. doi: 10.1007/s10964-020-01303-0. Epub 2020 Aug 27.
In Western society, there has been a history of perceiving adolescence as a time of "storm and stress," during which youth may go through heightened negative experiences such as conflict with parents, disengagement from school, and emotional dysfunction. Despite increasing attention to positive youth development, such negative stereotypes of adolescence may be held by youth themselves, which undermine their behavioral and neural development. However, youth's stereotypes of teen emotionality in particular (i.e., beliefs that teens typically experience greater emotionality than younger children) and the role of such stereotypes in youth's emotional functioning have not been examined. This longitudinal study investigated the reciprocal relations between youth's negative stereotypes of teen emotionality and their emotional functioning (i.e., emotional expressivity and emotion regulation) in Hong Kong and Mainland China, two regions in China sharing Chinese cultural traditions but differing in the extent of exposure to Western influence (N = 1269; 55% girls; M age = 12.86 years). Although youth in Hong Kong saw the teen years as a time of heightened emotionality more than did their counterparts in Mainland China, such stereotypes predicted youth's greater emotional expressivity and less emotion regulation over the 7th grade in both regions. Moreover, in both regions, youth's negative expressivity reciprocally predicted their stronger stereotypes of teen emotionality over time. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the role of youth's stereotypes of teen emotionality in shaping their emotional expressivity and emotion regulation during early adolescence, and also the role of youth's negative expressivity in reinforcing their stereotypes. Moreover, these findings highlight the relevance of the Western-popularized perception of adolescence as a time of "storm and stress" in non-Western regions in a world of increasing globalization and societal change.
在西方社会，人们一直将青春期视为“风暴和压力”时期，在此期间，年轻人可能会经历更多的负面经历，例如与父母冲突、对学校的参与度下降以及情绪功能障碍。尽管越来越关注青年的积极发展，但年轻人自己可能持有这种对青春期的负面刻板印象，从而破坏他们的行为和神经发育。然而，年轻人对青少年情绪的刻板印象，特别是（即相信青少年通常比年幼的孩子经历更大的情绪波动）以及这种刻板印象在年轻人的情绪功能中的作用尚未得到检验。这项纵向研究调查了香港和中国大陆（两个共享中国文化传统但受西方影响程度不同的中国地区）年轻人对青少年情绪的负面刻板印象与其情绪功能（即情绪表达和情绪调节）之间的相互关系。（共有 1269 名参与者，其中 55%为女孩，平均年龄为 12.86 岁）。尽管香港的年轻人比中国大陆的同龄人更认为青少年时期是情绪波动加剧的时期，但这些刻板印象预测了两个地区 7 年级时年轻人的情绪表达增加和情绪调节减少。此外，在两个地区，年轻人的负面表达都随着时间的推移预测了他们对青少年情绪的更强负面刻板印象。综上所述，这些发现表明了年轻人对青少年情绪的刻板印象在塑造他们的情绪表达和情绪调节方面的作用，也表明了年轻人的负面表达在强化他们的刻板印象方面的作用。此外，这些发现强调了在全球化和社会变革日益加剧的世界中，将青春期视为“风暴和压力”时期的西方流行观念在非西方地区的相关性。
