Teacher-Student and Student-Student Relationship Quality in Relation to Adolescents’ Defending Behaviors: A Moderated Polynomial Regression With Response Surface Analysis

This study aims to investigate the unique and joint effects of teacher-student and student-student relationship quality on adolescents’ defending behaviors. Participants were 1,639 Chinese adolescents (52.51% girls, M age = 14.49 years, SD = 1.11). They completed questionnaires on demographics, teacher-student relationship quality, student-student relationship quality, and psychological resilience at Time 1. After 7 months, they completed the defending behaviors measure at Time 2. Results indicated that both teacher-student and student-student relationship quality were positively and significantly associated with adolescents’ defending behaviors. Additionally, along the line of congruence (LOC), adolescents’ defending behaviors were higher when both teacher-student and student-student relationship quality were simultaneously high rather than low. Along the line of incongruence (LOIC), adolescents with high teacher-student relationship quality and low student-student relationship quality exhibited fewer defending behaviors compared to those with the opposite pattern. Furthermore, psychological resilience moderated the pattern along the LOC linking teacher-student and student-student relationship quality to defending behaviors, such that the positive association between simultaneously high relationship quality and defending behaviors was significant only among adolescents with high psychological resilience, but not among those with low psychological resilience. Psychological resilience did not significantly moderate the pattern along the LOIC. In conclusion, this study identifies distinct patterns along the LOC and LOIC of teacher-student and student-student relationship quality in relation to adolescents’ defending behaviors, with psychological resilience playing a moderating role in the pattern along the LOC.