Smartphone addiction and cross-cultural adjustment among overseas Chinese students: The role of emotion regulation beliefs and strategies

Abstract

BackgroundFew studies have focused on the cross-cultural adjustment of Chinese students studying in Belarus with the size of this group increasing in recent years. The current study aimed to map the process of cross-cultural adjustment onto various factors including childhood emotional neglect, emotion regulation beliefs, emotional regulation strategies, and smartphone addiction in the international students. Emotional regulation strategy and emotion regulation beliefs could perform as key parts in adapting into overseas life from social learning perspective. Furthermore, smartphone addiction could precipitate a failed adjustment process.Materials and methodsA total of 356 Chinese students in Belarus completed a self-administered questionnaire including the Chinese versions of the 12-item general health questionnaire (GHQ-12), sociocultural adaptation scale, mobile phone addiction tendency scale for college students, emotion regulation questionnaire, emotion and regulation beliefs scale, and childhood trauma questionnaire-short form. Correlation analysis, regression analysis and T-tests were used to explore the relationship between the variables. Structural equation modeling was carried out to test the hypotheses for association.ResultsEmotion regulation beliefs of international students mediated the effect of childhood emotional neglect on cross-cultural adjustment through expression suppression and smartphone addiction. While, in another chain mediation model, childhood emotional neglect affected cross-cultural adjustment only through emotion regulation beliefs and smartphone addiction. Cognitive appraisal independently influenced adjustment through smartphone addiction.LimitationsLimitations include its cross-sectional design and self-reported survey methodology. In the future, we can combine experimental manipulations to explore the mechanisms by which various emotion beliefs act on smartphone addiction and cross-cultural adjustment in different situations.ConclusionThis study displays the correlation between emotion regulation beliefs to smartphone addiction and cross-cultural adjustment, as well as the harmful effects of childhood emotional neglect; these components should be further addressed in future studies.

The effect of emotion regulation strategies on nomophobia in college students: The masking role of resilience

“…This finding suggests that university students, regardless of the emotion regulation strategy used, regulate their emotions by seeking help from their mobile phones when encountering difficulties. A recent study found that those who tend to use cognitive reappraisal strategies have higher levels of smartphone addiction [ 59 ]. They suggested that this may depend on environmental changes and individual coping preferences, as well as the fact that cognitive reappraisal strategies rationalise mobile phone use and lead to addiction [ 59 ].…”

“…A recent study found that those who tend to use cognitive reappraisal strategies have higher levels of smartphone addiction [ 59 ]. They suggested that this may depend on environmental changes and individual coping preferences, as well as the fact that cognitive reappraisal strategies rationalise mobile phone use and lead to addiction [ 59 ].…”

“…Although people with high resilience tend to choose adaptive emotion regulation strategies, expressive suppression seems not always maladaptive. Some scholars have suggested that expressive suppression plays a relatively positive role in collectivist cultures [ 59 ]. Specifically, the social goal of a collectivist culture is interpersonal harmony, and this emotion management strategy effectively promotes interpersonal harmony.…”