Chong Man Chow

Eastern Michigan University | EMU · Department of Psychology

Firearm-related injury is a major public health concern in the U.S. Experience of racism and discrimination can increase the risk of minority group members engaging in or being victims of firearm-related violence. Given the increased racism endured by Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative to understand firearm-related behav...

Few studies have used longitudinal approaches to consider the cumulative impact of COVID-19-related stressors (CRSs) on the psychological adjustment of mothers and children. In the current study, we tracked changes in maternal depressive symptoms and children’s behavioral problems from approximately 2 years before the pandemic (T1) to May through A...

Purpose Disordered eating behaviors are prevalent and problematic in adolescent girls. Given that disordered eating has been linked to attachment insecurity and emotion dysregulation, the current study used an emotion regulation model of attachment theory to investigate pathways to disordered eating among adolescent girls. While past research has e...

PurposeThis study examined the association between anti-fat attitudes (fear of fat, dislike of fat, willpower) and dietary restraint within the mother–daughter relationship.Methods Mother–adolescent daughter dyads (Npairs = 100) were recruited from a Midwestern community to participate in a study together. They completed self-report measures of ant...

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine the influence of mother–daughter communication about their bodies on adolescent girls’ and mothers’ body shame.Methods The Actor–Partner Interdependence Model was utilized to estimate relationships between individuals’ body surveillance and their own body shame (actor effect), individuals’ body survei...

Purpose Mothers serve as a primary socializing figure among adolescent girls at a time when they are at high risk of body image concerns and disordered eating behavior, and this influence may vary by weight status. Body talk may be one mechanisms of influence in this relationship. The current study utilized an observational measure of body talk to...

Purpose This study examined whether engagement in negative body talk would moderate the association between fear of fat and restrained eating among female friend dyads. Methods Female friends (Npairs = 130) were recruited from a Midwestern university in the United States. The dyadic data were examined with an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model...

Purpose The current study examined the interactive role of weight status and fat talk on body dissatisfaction among women friends. Method Sixty pairs of women friends completed a measure of body dissatisfaction and engaged in an observed fat talk interaction with their friend. Results Women’s weight status was related to their own, but not their...

The present study investigated how eating pathology and depressive symptoms were related to the dyadic dynamics of fat talk in mother-daughter relationships during adolescence. The current sample included 100 mother-daughter dyads who completed a survey on their fat talk disclosure, eating pathology, and depressive symptoms. The Actor-Partner Inter...

The current study aimed to investigate the moderation effects of coping strategies on the association between perceived peer victimization and psychological distress including loneliness and depression. Applying the person-context fit developmental model, this research hypothesized that adaptive coping strategies, which are normative in Taiwan's cu...

This study examined the role of congruity in couples' social support behaviors on relational outcomes. Participants (N=123 couples, Mage=26.91, SD=8.46) completed surveys on relationship satisfaction and discord. Positive and negative behaviors were then observed during supportive interactions. Results revealed that the detrimental effect of negati...

The current study examined how attachment styles of parents and adolescents may jointly influence the quality of their relationship. Parent-adolescent (N dyads = 77) pairs were recruited from a Midwestern town in the United States. The mean of adolescents' age was 16.25. Both members reported their attachment styles, relationship closeness, and rel...

This study examined whether engagement in body talk would interact with weight status (body mass index; BMI) to predict pathological eating behaviors among romantically involved adults. Adults (N = 137, females = 86.86%, average age = 23.50) involved in a romantic relationship were recruited to complete an online survey about their body image, diet...

The current study examined the link between early childhood emotional feeding and adolescent girls' emotional eating, using maladaptive coping styles as the underlying mechanisms mediating these associations. We examined adolescent girls' and mothers' retrospective reports of emotional feeding during childhood, as well as adolescent girls' current...

Co-rumination is a dyadic tendency in which two members excessively discuss and revisit problems while focus-ing on negative feelings. Co-rumination is more prominent among female friends than male friends, which helps to account in part for gender differences in depressive symptoms. The current study adopted a socioemotional perspective to examine...

The current study examined the reciprocal associations between friendship attachment and relational experiences. Data came from a longitudinal study that assessed adolescents (N ¼ 223, 108 girls) in the 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grades. Cross-lagged models were fitted with structural equation modeling. Results showed that attach-ment avoidance was c...

Friendships play an important role in the development of school involvement and academic performance during adolescence. This study examined the interdependence of depressive symptoms, school involvement, and academic performance between adolescent same-sex friends. Using cross-sectional data, we examined whether the link between depressive symptom...

This study examined (1) whether individuals' depressive symptoms are related to their own and their friends' perceptions of friendship discord and (2) whether similarity or complementarity of two friends' depressive symptoms are related to both individuals' perceptions of friendship discord. Young adult same-sex friends (N = 209 pairs) completed se...

Successfully managing and navigating romantic relationships is a key developmental task of emerging adulthood. While researchers increasingly use statistical analyses to accommodate the interdependent nature of romantic relationship data, there are very few applications and primers for comprehensively investigating moderation effects, especially in...

Background: The formation of romantic relationships and friendships in adolescence is a defining milestone in the progression toward social maturity. Thus, examining adolescents’ friendship and romantic experiences serves a vital role in understanding their psychological adjustment. Aims: The main purposes of the current study were to examine (a) w...

Successfully managing and navigating romantic relationships is a key developmental task of emerging adulthood. While researchers increasingly use statistical analyses to accommodate the interdependent nature of romantic relationship data, there are very few applications and primers for comprehensively investigating moderation effects, especially in...

This study examined the associations among weight status, body dissatisfaction, and negative body talk with a sample of young adult male friends (N = 55 pairs). Actor–Partner Interdependence Model revealed that individuals’ body dissatisfaction was positively associated with their own body mass index, but was negatively associated with their friend...

This study examined whether the association between stress and emotional eating was mediated by eating dysregulation. Young adults (N = 345) reported their stress levels, eating dysregulation, and emotional eating. This study found that eating dysregulation mediated the association between stress and emotional eating. Experience of stress was relat...

Although friendships and romantic relationships represent important social relationships during emerging adulthood, problems stemming from these relationships may also pose a threat to emerging adults' psychological functioning (Collins and Madsen in Handbook of personal relationships. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 191-209, 2006; La Grec...

To identify whether changes in pubertal status and self-efficacy for diabetes management are associated with longitudinal declines in parental responsibility for diabetes, and to determine whether these factors moderate associations between declining parental responsibility and deteriorating adherence across adolescence. Adolescents (N = 252; 53.6%...

This study employs a dyadic approach and examines how two partners' interpersonal coping styles may independently and jointly predict their relationship quality. Hypotheses were derived on the basis of dyadic coping theory focusing on how similar versus complementary styles of interpersonal coping may be useful in explaining couples' relationship q...

The current study addressed whether attachment, rumination, and trait depression were predictive of co-rumination in dyadic friendships. The final sample consisted of 205 pairs of same-sex friends (Mage = 18.93 years, SD = 1.31) and 135 (66%) of the dyads were female. Results revealed that an individual's attachment avoidance was significantly rela...

The current study examined whether interpersonal behaviors and perceptions could be conceptualized and measured as relationship-general versus relationship-specific tendencies. To address this goal, we examined (1) the similarities (or concordance) in support-seeking across individuals’ social relationships and (2) how support-seeking may be relate...

This study examined whether engagement in fat talk would moderate the association between weight status (body mass index) and depression between female friends. Individuals' body mass index was significantly related to their own (actor effect) and friend's (partner effect) depression. For low-fat-talk friends, higher actor's body mass index was ass...

This study integrated the investment model and attachment theory to examine: (1) whether the link between friendship attachment and commitment would be mediated by relationship features of satisfaction, quality of alternatives, and investment size; and (2) whether these mediation processes would function at the intrapersonal (actor) and interperson...

The current study examined the effect of empathy on friendship quality in the context of dyadic same-sex friendships, and how such an effect might be mediated by interpersonal competence. A special version of the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) was used to examine this hypothesis in 146 same-sex friend dyads in 10th grade. Results showed...

We introduced a 3 × 3 Coping—Support Interdependent Matrix for conceptualizing and investigating dyadic coping and support-giving among friends. By integrating attachment theory with the literatures on coping and support, we identified three prototypic patterns of coping (distance, utilize support, overwhelmed) and three prototypic patterns of supp...