Lixian Cui

Lixian Cui is an Associate Professor of Psychology, and a Global Network Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology, NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He holds a Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University, a M.S. from Sun Yat-sen University, and a B.S. from Southwest China Normal University (now Southwest University).

Professor Cui’s research focuses on child and adolescent social and emotional development in various contexts, with a focus on emotion socialization in familial, school, peer, and cultural contexts. Particularly, Cui is interested in studying affective dynamics during social interactions by integrating behavioral and physiological measures of stress and emotion (e.g., emotion expression, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, cardiac output, skin conductance, heart rate, cortisol). A second line of Cui’s research concerns mental health and family dynamics among LGBT youth and young adults. His work has appeared in prestigious scientific journals such as Biological Psychology, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Development and Psychopathology, Developmental Science, Emotion, Journal of Family Psychology, Parenting: Science and Practice, and Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology.

Cui is an Assistant Editor for Journal of Adolescence and will be an Associate Editor for Journal of Research on Adolescence starting in 2025. He is also ad hoc reviewer for American Psychologist, Child Development, Developmental Science, Development and Psychopathology, Biological Psychology, Developmental Psychobiology, Infant and Child Development, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, among others. He is a member of Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA), Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), and International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD). Cui's work has been funded by Cyrus Tang Foundation, Save the Children (China), Pujiang Talents Program of Shanghai, Society for Research on Adolescence, among others. He won the "Outstanding Scholarly Contribution to Adolescence in the Majority World Award" from SRA in 2023.

Select Publications

• Abubakar, A., Costa, A. B., Cui, L., Koller, S. H., Nwafor, C. E., & Raval, V. V. (2024). Towards a decolonial developmental science: Adolescent development in the Majority World taking center stage. Journal of Research on Adolescence. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12956 
• Yang, R., Gu, Y., Cui, L., Li, X., Way, N., Yoshikawa, H., Chen, X., Okazaki, S., Zhang, G., Liang, Z., & Waters, T. E. A. (2024). A cognitive script perspective on how early caregiving experiences inform adolescent peer relationships and loneliness: A 14-year longitudinal study of Chinese families. Developmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13522 
• Guan, Y., & Cui, L. (2023). Adverse childhood experiences and Chinese young adults’ sleep quality: Moderation of resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 184, 12–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.12.003
• Cui, L., Sun, Q., Way, N., Waters, T. E. A., Li, X., Zhang, C., Zhang, G., Chen, X., Okazaki, S., & Yoshikawa, H. (2023). Prospective within-family bidirectional effects between parental emotion socialization practices and Chinese adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment. Development and Psychopathology, 35(4), 1956–1967. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095457942200061X
• Cui, L., Tang, G., & Huang, M. (2022). Expressive suppression, Confucian Zhong Yong thinking, and psychosocial adjustment among Chinese young adults. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 25(4), 715–730. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12529
• Cui, L., Sun, Q., Yu, F., Xu, J., & Wang, H. (2021). Exploring emotional dynamic within-person concordance across laboratory tasks: Moderation of between-person SES and sexual orientation. Biological Psychology, 161, 108055. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108055
• Cui, L., Zhang, X., & Han, Z, R. (2021). Perceived child difficultness, emotion dysregulation, and emotion-related parenting among Chinese parents. Family Process, 60(4), 1403–1417. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12638 
• Cui, L., Criss, M. M., Ratliff, E., Wu, Z., Houltberg, B. J., Silk, J. S., & Morris, A. S. (2020). Longitudinal links between maternal and peer emotion socialization and adolescent girls’ socioemotional adjustment. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 595-607. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000861
• Cui, L., Zhang, X., Houltberg, B. J., Criss, M. M., & Morris, A. S. (2019). RSA reactivity in response to viewing bullying film and adolescent social adjustment. Developmental Psychobiology, 61(4), 592–604. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21835
• Cui, L., Colasante, T., Malti, T., Ribeaud, D., & Eisner, M. P. (2016). Dual trajectories of reactive and proactive aggression from mid-childhood to early adolescence: Relations to sensation seeking, risk taking, and moral reasoning. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 44(4), 663-675. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-0079-7 
• Cui, L., Morris, A. S., Harrist, A. W., Larzelere, R. E., Criss, M. M., & Houltberg, B. J. (2015). Adolescent RSA responses during an anger discussion task: Relations to emotion regulation and adjustment. Emotion, 15(3), 360-372. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000040
• Cui, L., Morris, A. S., Harrist, A. W., Larzelere, R. E., & Criss, M. M. (2015). Dynamic changes in parent affect and adolescent cardiac vagal regulation: A real-time analysis. Journal of Family Psychology, 29(2), 180–190. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000067
• Cui, L., Morris, A. S., Criss, M. M., Houltberg, B. J., & Silk, J. S. (2014). Parental psychological control and adolescent adjustment: The role of adolescent emotion regulation. Parenting: Science and Practice, 14(1), 47–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295192.2014.880018 

Education

• PhD, Human Development
  Oklahoma State University
• MS, Applied Psychology
  Sun Yat-sen University
• BS, Psychology
  Southwest Normal University