Hongjian CAO

Professionally, I identify myself as a family psychologist and a developmental psychologist. My studies seek to understand human development in the context of family systems. Broadly, my primary research interest centers on a wide array of topics, including: (a) maternal adaptation (e.g., perinatal psychopathology) during the transition to parenthood and its implications for child development and parents’ well-being over the lifespan; (b) early parental emotion socialization (especially their responses to children’s distress and positive emotions) and its implications for child development from infancy through early adolescence; (c) exposure to early childhood adversities (especially psychological maltreatment and extreme [economic] deprivation) and subsequent adjustment over the life course from a developmental cascades perspective; (d) (newlywed) couples’ relationship well-being and its key predictors, especially in historically underrepresented, non-Western family systems; as well as (e) parent-child and couple relationships within socially disadvantaged/marginalized family systems, particularly LGBTQ+ families. In addition, I also conduct some research on: media use and child development (e.g., child and adolescent screen time, problematic cellphone use, problematic Internet gaming); the implications of family transitions for child development (especially parental divorce/separation); the implications of parental navigation of work-family issues for their psychological well-being and parental functioning; career development guidance (e.g., career-related parenting) during adolescence et al.

Cao, H., †Wang, S., Zhou, N., & †Zhang, M. (2025). Delineating Temporal dynamics for the linkage between anxiety symptoms and problematic media use among Chinese adolescents. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 97, 101761. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2025.101761 †Fang, S., Zhou, N., Tornello, S. L., Guo, L., & *Cao, H. (2025). Linking intradyad coparenting stressor and extradyad heterosexist discrimination stressor with Chinese sexual minority mothers’ couple relationship quality: The moderating role of internalized homophobia. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000809 Cao, H., †Wang, S., Zhou, N., & Liang, Y. (2025). From childhood real-life peer victimization to subsequent cyberbullying victimizatio