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Cultural differences in desirable emotions powerfully impact brain activation and responses to specific stimuli. However, how people from different cultures process emotions in social contexts similarly and differently have not been adequately studied. Therefore, the present study examined cross-cultural differences in emotional processing of positive emotions in social contexts by using event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavior measurements. A total of 29 Chinese and 23 white Caucasians participants were recruited. A 2 (culture) X 2 (stimuli type) ANOVA was employed for both the neuro and behavioral data. The results showed P2 amplitudes were larger for Chinese than for Caucasians in the positive emotion in the social context condition. There were no significant differences in P2 amplitudes when processing positive emotion and neutral stimuli. For Chinese, the amplitudes of LPP 600-1000 of Chinese positive emotion in the social context stimuli were larger than positive emotion stimuli. For Caucasians, there was no significant difference among different stimuli. The higher P2 and LPP 600-1000 amplitudes suggested the salience and significance of positive emotions in social contexts for Chinese. Findings indicated that neural activation occurring during the processing of different positive emotions is moderated by participants' own cultural background. Further implications were discussed., Author(s): Xinmei Deng [sup.1] [sup.2] , Sieun An [sup.3] , Yuanyuan You [sup.1] [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.263488.3, 0000 0001 0472 9649, School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, , 518060, Shenzhen, [...]

The current study identified career-development profiles in a sample of 4815 Chinese adolescents (M[subscript age] = 16.19 years, SD = 0.67) and examined their associations with academic self-efficacy and academic motivation. The latent profile model was built on four facets of career development (career feeling, career belief, career exploration, and career planning). The results identified three profiles: "high career exploration and planning" (N = 225, 6.00%), "low career development" (N = 907, 22.13%), and "average career development" (N = 3224, 71.91%). Those showing "high career exploration and planning" showed significantly higher levels of academic self-efficacy and academic motivation than those showing the other two profiles. The results indicated non-monotonous patterns and asynchronous associations and developmental trajectories among the facets of career development among adolescents. Important implications for career education can be drawn based on the findings from the relations among career-development profiles, academic self-efficacy, and academic motivation.

Social avoidance refers to active non-participation in social activities, which is detrimental to healthy interpersonal interaction for emerging adults. Social rejection is a kind of negative social evaluation from others making people feel social pain. However, how socially avoidant emerging adults process social feedback information after experiencing social rejection has received less attention. The current study aimed to explore the differences in social interaction feedback processing after social rejection between a socially avoidant group (n = 16) and a comparison group (n = 16) in a human-to-human interaction context. Computer game tasks with two types of interaction (cooperation and competition) were used to record the event-related potentials when receiving social interaction feedback in two conditions (social rejection and control condition). The results showed that (1) the socially avoidant group had lower reward positivity amplitudes than the comparison group when receiving social feedback; (2) the socially avoidant group presented larger P300 amplitudes in the social rejection condition than in the control condition, but the comparison group did not; and (3) social rejection evoked more negative N1 amplitudes in the socially avoidant and comparison groups. The findings suggest that socially avoidant emerging adults may have flaws in reward sensitivity during interpersonal interaction, and they might also exert more attentional and emotional resources to social feedback after social rejection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have suggested that academic stress has negative impact on adolescents' psychological function, few of those studies, however, considered whether and how the impact of stress on adolescents' emotional states is moderated by corresponding regulation. This study aimed to examine the fluctuation of emotional states before and after the mid-term examination and the influence of different emotional regulatory strategies. In the present study, 72 adolescents aged 12-18 reported their emotional states and corresponding regulation before and after mid-term examination up to six times over a period of two weeks. Results showed that: (a) On the sampling day, the participants reported increasingly emotional states as time went by. Improvement of adolescents' daily emotional states was more significant after the mid-term examination. Participants reported decreasingly positive emotional states and increasingly negative ones as time went by before mid-term examination. (b) Adolescents who used down-regulation at a certain sampling moment reported more pleasant emotional states at the subsequent sampling moment than those who used up-regulation. Adolescents who used more up-regulation in a negative emotional event reported more negative emotional states at the subsequent sampling moment after the mid-term examination.

There is growing interest in understanding how beliefs about emotion regulation are related to individual emotional experiences. Extant studies have mainly focused on explicit beliefs about emotion regulation among individuals in Western societies. The current study examined implicit emotion regulation and explored their contributions to emotional outcomes in 147 Chinese adolescents. Participants were tested on their implicit beliefs about emotion regulation and their negative emotion experiences. Results showed that the down-regulation was implicitly evaluated as more positive than up-regulation. Moreover, positive implicit beliefs about down-regulation increased with age. Among younger adolescents, those who evaluated down-regulation more positively had less negative emotional experiences. These results suggest that down-regulation may have important implications in Chinese culture.

The current study identified career-development profiles in a sample of 4815 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 16.19 years, SD = 0.67) and examined their associations with academic self-efficacy and academic motivation. The latent profile model was built on four facets of career development (career feeling, career belief, career exploration, and career planning). The results identified three profiles: high career exploration and planning (N = 225, 6.00%), low career development (N = 907, 22.13%), and average career development (N = 3224, 71.91%). Those showing high career exploration and planning showed significantly higher levels of academic self-efficacy and academic motivation than those showing the other two profiles. The results indicated non-monotonous patterns and asynchronous associations and developmental trajectories among the facets of career development among adolescents. Important implications for career education can be drawn based on the findings from the relations among career-development profiles, academic self-efficacy, and academic motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little neurological evidence linking sensation seeking and emotion regulation in adolescence, which is characterised as an emotionally fluctuant period. The present study examined the relationship between sensation seeking and emotion regulation in adolescents. Electroencephalograms were recorded from 22 high sensation‐seeking adolescents (HSSs, Mage = 12.36) and 24 low sensation‐seeking adolescents (LSSs, Mage = 12.84) during the reactivity and regulation‐image task. Group differences in event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) associated with the regulation of negative and neutral stimuli were analysed. The results showed that (a) the P2 of HSSs were larger than LSSs during emotion regulation; (b) in down‐regulation conditions, the LPP in all time windows were smaller than no‐regulation in LSSs. However, there was no significant difference in HSSs; (c) the LPP 300–600 and LPP 1000–1500 of down‐regulation were smaller in LSSs than HSSs; (d) for LPP 600–1000, HSSs induced larger LPP than LSSs in the negative down‐regulation and negative no‐regulation conditions. The results provide neurological evidence that higher sensation seeking is related to the high reactivity to emotional stimuli and poor cognitive control during the regulation of emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]