Perceived parental warmth, emotional awareness, and positive adjustment profiles in Chinese and Italian early adolescents: A person-centered approach

Abstract

Introduction: Although previous research has documented wide cross-cultural variations in early adolescents'; adjustment problems, less is known about positive outcomes and their contextual and individual correlates among youth from societies emphasizing cultural values of independence/individualism and interdependence/collectivism. The current study used a person-centered approach to explore positive adjustment profiles among Chinese (n = 115, 54.8% girls) and Italian (n = 115, 57.4% girls) early adolescents aged between 10 and 13 years, and examined whether perceived parental warmth and emotional awareness were independently or interactively associated with such profiles in the two cultural groups.

Methods: Participants completed self-report measures of psychosocial adjustment and perceived parental warmth, and responded to a series of structured vignettes assessing emotional awareness.

Results: Latent profile analysis revealed three profiles: "academically competent," "socially accepted," and "well-adapted." Chinese adolescents were overrepresented in the academically competent and well-adapted profiles, whilst Italian adolescents were overrepresented in the socially accepted profile. Results of multinomial regression analysis indicated that youth reporting higher parental warmth and more emotional awareness were more likely to be members of the well-adapted profile. Furthermore, culturally specific associations were found. For instance, the positive link between parental warmth and the well-adapted profile was significant at high levels of emotional awareness in the Chinese group, and at low-to-medium levels of this variable in the Italian group.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that youth's positive adjustment profiles reflect broader societal expectations and that the beneficial effect of parental warmth on such outcomes varies as a function of both emotional competence and cultural background.

Keywords: culture; early adolescence; emotional awareness; latent profile analysis; parental warmth; psychosocial adjustment.