Adulthood status and its associations with stress and well-being among Chinese emerging adults: A person-centred approach.

With the implementation of China's one-child policy and the increasing living costs, a large number of young people are expected to postpone reaching adulthood. However, little research has explored the patterns of Chinese young people's transition to adulthood. Using a person-centred approach, the current study examined the commonly accepted markers of adulthood status endorsed and attained by 1203 Chinese emerging adults aged 18-29 years. We further compared the distinct adulthood statuses with regard to perceptions of stress and well-being. Latent profile analysis identified four adulthood status profiles: diffused (16.0%), moratorium (45.3%), transitional (23.3%) and achieved (15.4%). Females, those who had no job or came from low family socioeconomics, were more likely to be in the moratorium status. Compared to the other two profiles, participants in diffused and moratorium profiles reported higher levels of perceived stress and lower well-being. These results suggest that there are distinct profiles of Chinese emerging adults on the transition path to adulthood, with a large proportion of them not yet reaching adulthood, and that different statuses of adulthood may be associated with different psychological outcomes.

Links between parental autonomy support and psychological control and Chinese emerging adults' conceptions of adulthood.

Framed through family life course theory, two studies were conducted to examine the relationship between parenting and Chinese emerging adults' conceptions of adulthood. Study 1 identified five important adult criteria among 763 participants (Mage  = 23.13; 54.8% girls) through exploratory factor analysis. In Study 2, 616 participants (Mage  = 22.51; 71.6% girls) completed measures of parental autonomy support (PAS) and psychological control (PPC), subjective adult status, and adult criteria. Results showed that PAS was positively associated with subjective adult status and endorsement of almost all adult criteria, whereas PPC was both positively and negatively associated with different adult criteria. Findings reveal the influence of family factors on youth transition to adulthood in the Chinese context and may have implications for family based interventions.

Teacher's Emotional Display Affects Students' Perceptions of Teacher's Competence, Feelings, and Productivity in Online Small-Group Discussions.

Teacher's emotions have been shown to be highly important in the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning. There is a recognized need to examine the essential role of teacher's emotions in students' academic achievement. However, the influence of teacher's displays of emotions on students' outcomes in small-group interaction activities, especially in the online environment, has received little attention in prior research. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between teacher's different emotional displays and students' perceptions of the teacher's competence, as well as students' collaborative feelings and productivity in online small-group discussions. Using a three-level between-subjects design, 74 participants were randomly divided into four-member groups comprising a teacher and three other participants. All the groups were asked to discuss an open-ended realistic problem using online software, during which the teacher's display of emotions varied (positive vs. negative vs. neutral). The participants' self-reported questionnaire data (perception of the teacher's competence, students' feeling of pleasure, collaborative satisfaction, and willingness to continue collaborating) and productivity (number of effective ideas expressed within a given time) were measured to compare the participants who were exposed to different emotional displays. As expected, the results showed that the participants who received the teacher's positive emotional display reported that they experienced higher levels of pleasure during the task. However, in contrast to our expectations, those under the negative emotional display condition showed a significantly higher level of productivity in the group task. In addition, compared to emotional display, the participants' perceptions of the teacher's competence were rated significantly higher under the neutral condition, and they reported higher levels of collaborative satisfaction and greater willingness to continue collaborating with their group. The findings have the potential benefit of informing educational practice on whether teachers should display their emotions in a small-group discussion or how they should display emotions following adjustment for the relative aim of the teaching activities.