The relationship between academic involution and university students' social-emotional skills: A moderated mediation...

While prior studies have examined academic involution in relation to university students' mental health, evidence concerning its association with social-emotional skills remains limited. This study recruited 2018 undergraduates in China to examine the associations among academic involution, peer vicious competition, and social-emotional skills, together with the moderating role of teacher support. Ordinary least squares and quantile regression were used to examine the overall and heterogeneous associations between academic involution and social-emotional skills. Mediation analysis examined the indirect association through peer vicious competition, and a moderated mediation model evaluated the conditional role of teacher support. Results showed that academic involution was negatively associated with social-emotional skills. Notably, the negative associations were only significant at medium-to-high conditional quantiles and non-significant at lower quantiles. Peer vicious competition was a significant mediator of this association. Teacher support attenuated both the positive association between academic involution and peer vicious competition and the negative association between peer vicious competition and social-emotional skills, weakening the negative indirect association between academic involution and social-emotional skills. This study extends research on academic involution beyond mental health to include social-emotional skills and offers empirical insights for universities seeking to address academic involution.