Ethnic Identity, Acculturation, Parenting Beliefs, and Adolescent Adjustment: A Comparison of Asian Indian and European American Families

Currently, little is known about how child-rearing beliefs change as immigrant families adapt to the host culture and about the extent to which these beliefs begin to approximate the American mainstream. This study examined how parents’ child-rearing beliefs were associated with the psychological well-being of 360 (180 Asian Indian and 180 European American) adolescents. Asian Indian adolescents reported higher family conflict, ethnic identity achievement, and anxiety, and their parents endorsed training and shaming child-rearing beliefs more than did European American families. Asian Indian parents who had an integrated or assimilated acculturation style approximated the European families’ family conflict ratings and their child-rearing beliefs. With exposure to situations that challenge their ways of thinking, immigrant parents develop child-rearing beliefs that allow them to function in both cultures and have positive effects on their adolescent children’s psychological adjustment

You Are What You Read: The Belief Systems of Cyber-Bystanders on Social Networking Sites

The present study tested how exposure to two types of responses to a hypothetical simulated Facebook setting influenced cyber-bystanders’ perceived control and normative beliefs using a 4 cyberbully-victim group (pure cyberbullies, non-involved, pure cyberbullied victims, and cyberbullied-victims) × 2 condition (offend vs. defend) experimental design. 203 Hong Kong Chinese secondary school and university students (132 females, 71 males; 12 to 28; M = 16.70; SD = 3.03 years old) were randomly assigned into one of two conditions. Results showed that participants’ involvement in cyberbullying significantly related to their control beliefs about bully and victim assisting behaviors, while exposure to the two different conditions (offend vs. defend comments) was related to both their control and normative beliefs. In general, the defend condition promoted higher control beliefs to help the victims and promoted higher normative beliefs to help the victims. Regardless of their past involvement in cyberbullying and exposure to offend vs. defend conditions, both cyber-bullies and cyber-victims were more inclined to demonstrate normative beliefs to help victims than to assist bullies. These results have implications for examining environmental influences in predicting bystander behaviors in cyberbullying contexts, and for creating a positive environment to motivate adolescents to become “upstanders” in educational programs to combat cyberbullying