Daily Interpersonal Conflict And Emotional Adaptation In Adolescents

Emotional health is of great significance to human lifespan development.The emotion during adolescence has been regarded as a "stormy period" traditionally,which means during this period emotions are particularly prone to fluctuations.Studies have documented that adolescents who suffer from negative emotions for a long time may be more likely to develop psychopathological problems.Therefore,paying attention to adolescent emotional adaptation has important theoretical and practical significance.As the Chinese government called on in the "Healthy China Action:Action Plan for Mental Health of Children and Adolescents(2019-2022)",the mental health of Chinese adolescents should be noted and studied,including emotional adaptation.Among the factors that influence adolescent emotion,interpersonal conflict is one of the stressful factors that cannot be ignored.Previous studies have confirmed that adolescents' high-conflict interpersonal relationships in family and school can lead to problems in adolescents' emotional adaptation on a macro timescale.In addition,due to the rise of the daily diary method,researchers have been able to investigate the relationship between interpersonal conflicts and adolescent emotion on day-to-day scale.However,few studies include interpersonal conflicts in different situations at the same time to comprehensively examine the relationship between conflict and emotion.Therefore,the present study employed the daily diary to investigate whether interpersonal conflicts in different situations related to their end-of-day negative and positive emotion(Research Question 1).In addition,little is known about the mediation and moderation mechanisms of this within-person process.Therefore,based on the cognitive-contextual framework and cognitive evaluation theory of emotion,the present study examined the mediating role of two cognitive evaluation factors(threat evaluation and self-blame attribution)between interpersonal conflict and emotion(Research Question 2).Based on the risk and resilience framework,organism environment interaction and conservation of resources,the present study examined whether two protective factors(social support and psychological capital)moderate the paths between daily interpersonal and end-of-day emotion(Research Question 3 and 4).The present study employed random cluster sampling and selected 262 adolescents from two junior high schools in Nanjing and Suzhou,Jiangsu Province,of which boys accounted for 49.24%;the 7th graders accounted for 46.56%,and the 8th graders accounted for 53.44%(Mage=13.19,SD=0.71).Participants reported basic demographic information and psychological capital questionnaire in the pre-test,and then reported interpersonal conflicts,situational appraisals,end-of-day emotion before going to bed in 14 consecutive days.Well-trained data collectors hand out questionnaires before school every day,and return the questionnaires after school the next day.This study uses multi-level path analysis in Mplus for the main analysis.After controlling for a series of covariates,the present study found that:(1)Adolescent interpersonal conflict significantly and positively predicts negative emotions of the day,and negatively predicts positive emotions of the day;(2)Interpersonal conflicts positively related to threat evaluation,which in turn positively related to self-blame attribution,and finally positively related to the negative and positive emotions of the day;(3)Social support moderated the residual direct path of interpersonal conflict and the end-of-day positive emotions,showing an reverse risk-buffering pattern;(4)Psychological capital moderated the residual direct path of interpersonal conflict and the end-of-day positive emotions,showing an reverse risk-buffering pattern.The results of the present study reveal the relationship between multi-situational interpersonal conflicts and adolescent emotion of the day from a micro perspective,and addressed the gap of previous studies which were on a macro perspective.By investigating the mediating role of situational appraisals,our results deepened the understanding of the within-person developmental process between interpersonal conflict and end-of-day emotions.This results verified the cognitive-contextual framework and extended it to other contexts.In addition,the results of the moderating role of social support and psychological capital indicate that even adolescents with different resources will still be adversely influenced by interpersonal conflicts to varying degrees in the short period.In summary,to our knowledge,the present study is the first to provide information about the moderated mediation mechanisms between adolescents'interpersonal conflict and the end-of-day emotion,which helps researchers identify whether there is heterogeneity in this within-person development process,and provide guidance for practitioners to formulate precise prevention and intervention.