Abstract

Against the backdrop of Chinese parents often suppressing interparental conflicts until after their children’s college entrance exams to avoid disrupting academic performance, unresolved interparental conflict may impair adolescents’ psychological well-being and academic engagement. Grounded in the Cognitive-Contextual Theory and the Emotional Security Theory, this study aimed to investigate the impact of Chinese high school students’ perceived interparental conflict on their academic engagement, with a focus on the mediating roles of positive and negative academic emotions and the moderating role of emotional intelligence. A total of 257 high school students from City G, Province S of China were recruited as participants, and hierarchical regression analysis was employed to test the proposed mediating and moderating hypotheses. Results showed that perceived interparental conflict had a significant negative impact on academic engagement; both positive and negative academic emotions partially mediated the relationship between perceived interparental conflict and academic engagement; emotional intelligence weakened the negative impact of perceived interparental conflict on positive academic emotions, and mitigated the positive impact of perceived interparental conflict on negative academic emotions. This study confirmed the negative impact of perceived interparental conflict on high school students’ academic engagement, revealed the mechanism by which family interparental conflict influences academic engagement, and put forward targeted measures and practical suggestions for schools and families to prioritize students’ academic emotional regulation and enhance their emotional intelligence.

Keywords: Perception of interparental conflict, Academic engagement, Academic emotions, Emotional intelligence, High school students