Overall, the findings of this project will inform development of educational and intervention programs that enhance the skills of caregivers in supporting cancer patients, thereby facilitating positive adjustment for both patients and caregivers.

• Offer prospective evidence on the biological basis of the social cognitive and supportive processes and adjustment outcomes in Chinese cancer caregivers.
• Test the hypothesis that higher empathic accuracy of caregivers will contribute to higher perceived effectiveness of social support and in turn to higher relationship quality and lower anxiety and depressive symptoms of caregivers as well as patients.
• Introduce caregiving engagement to the existing cancer caregiving literature as a novel behavioral outcome measure.

• The biological basis of empathic accuracy in the course of caregiving: Associations with relationship quality, affective symptoms, and perceived engagement among Chinese caregivers of people with colorectal cancer.
• The first year of cancer caregiving: change in social support effectiveness mediates the association between the change in empathic accuracy and that in psychosocial adjustment outcomes.
• The matching in perceived social support effectiveness between Chinese caregivers and people with colorectal cancer depends in part on caregivers’ collectivistic orientations and recipients’ support seeking tendency.
• The reciprocity between support seeking tendency and perceived support effectiveness in the year after diagnosis: An investigation among Chinese people with colorectal cancer.
• Higher caregiving engagement during treatment predicts higher affective symptoms and lower physical and social functioning among Chinese caregivers in a one-year follow-up.
• Assessing empathy accuracy among Chinese caregivers of people with colorectal cancer: A multi-method approach.

Wai Kai Hou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological Studies. His research aims to develop frameworks for integrating social, psychological, and biological levels of analysis of human resilience and adaptation to stress. His research utilizes a variety of methods, ranging from implicit association test and self-report questionnaires to physiological measures and neuroimaging.

Dr. Hou works on three specific areas: emotion, psychobiology of stress and resilience, and adaptation to chronic medical conditions.