UC Santa Barbara

The current dissertation is made up of four parts. Parts I and II are based on a single one year, three-wave longitudinal study, but data was separated into two data sets. Students who completed only one or two of the three-wave study (i.e. “non-completes) were analyzed in Part I, whereas students who completed all three waves of the study (i.e. “completes”) were analyzed in Part II. Part I provides initial evidence of differences in emotional profiles between first- and continuing-generation students. Specifically, continuing-generation freshmen showed greater emotional fit with the “majority” college culture (that of continuing-generation upperclassmen) compared to first-generation freshmen. However, Part II showed no evidence for emotional acculturation; there was no evidence of change in emotional fit scores for either first- or continuing-generation students over the course of the one-year study. Part III is an additional cross-sectional study that found that emotional accuracy may be more important than emotional fit in terms of student outcomes such as stress, ability uncertainty, and identity overlap with college. Finally, Part IV empirically distinguished between social and academic belonging to determine the implications of different combinations of belonging on student outcomes.