The Relationship Between Emotion Malleability Beliefs and School Adaptation of Middle School Boarders: A Chain Mediating Effect of Psychological Resilience and Peer Relationships

Middle school boarders are more prone to maladjustment to school due to a lack of parental accompaniment and long school hours. Focusing on this specific group, this study explored the effects of emotion malleability beliefs on their adjustment to school and their influential pathways, and constructed a hypothetical model with resilience and peer relationships as chain mediators. The Implicit Theories of Emotion Scale, the Adaptation to School Scale for Middle School Students, the Adolescents Resilience Scale, and the Peer Relationship Assessment Scale were applied to measure 511 middle school boarders. The results showed that there were significant positive correlations between emotion malleability beliefs, resilience, peer relationships, and adaptation to school. Emotion malleability beliefs directly influence adaptation to school and are indirectly associated with adaptation to school through the chain mediation of resilience and peer relationships. Our study emphasized the important influence of emotion malleability beliefs on boarding students' adaptation to school, which also hinted to us that interventions targeting emotion malleability beliefs may help enhance resilience and peer relationships, thereby supporting school adaptation.