Influence of teacher-student closeness on interpersonal emotion regulation in graduate students: Evidence from behavioral and hyper-scanning studies

The relationship between graduate students and their advisors is regarded as the core relational bond within the educational ecosystem, and serves as a crucial factor influencing the mental health of graduate students. Communication between graduate students and advisors not only facilitates the intergenerational transfer of knowledge but also embodies dynamic interpersonal emotion regulation. As a cornerstone of relational harmony, individual mental health, and collective well-being, interpersonal emotion regulation aligns with Social Baseline Theory, which posits that emotional and behavioral regulation operate more smoothly and require fewer psychological resources when individuals are surrounded by familiar and predictable others. This study recruited 62 teacher-student dyads to examine the interaction between graduate students and teachers and explored the impact of teacher-student closeness on the effectiveness of graduate students' interpersonal emotion regulation and underlying neural mechanisms. Higher levels of teacher-student closeness were associated with stronger interpersonal emotion regulation in graduate students when using both cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression strategies (F(1, 60)=4.28, p=0.04<0.05, η_p²=0.07). Hyper-scanning revealed that when the teacher-student closeness was high, the interpersonal brain synchronization in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was significantly enhanced (F(1, 39)=7.22, p=0.01<0.05, η_p²=0.16). Moreover, it positively predicted the effectiveness of interpersonal emotion regulation (R²=0.18, Beta=0.43, t=2.12, p=0.048). These findings provide support for both the behavioral and neural underpinnings for the interpersonal emotion regulation mechanisms in teacher-student interactions, thereby offering theoretical and practical insights for building mental health support systems for graduate students.