关键词: 学业焦虑, 亲密同伴, 纵向研究, 高中生

Abstract: State-like academic anxiety can have a detrimental effect on academic performance of students, as well as their physical and psychological well-being. Although considerable research attention has been devoted to the conceptualization, antecedents and outcomes of academic anxiety, the contagion of state-like academic anxiety among intimate peers has received surprisingly little, if any, empirical attention. To address this problem, we investigated the effect of state-like academic anxiety of one’s most intimate friends on the occurrence and development of his or her state-like academic anxiety. In addition, we hypothesized that the observed contagion of academic anxiety among intimate peers may differ depending on their peer acceptance levels. A total of 107 dyads of intimate peers were assessed daily for a whole week (five days). The repeated MAOVE analysis shows no significant different in state-like academic anxiety among different measurement points, indicating that high school students show a stable state-like academic anxiety over a short period. Most correlations between study variables are significant (p < .05) and in the expected direction. It is important to note that the correlations among state-like academic anxiety measured at different times range from .26 to .40, indicating that there may be a substantial intra-individual variability in state-like academic anxiety over the study period. We tested our hypotheses with multilevel analyses. As expected, the results show that after controlling for some important individual- and dyad-level variables, such as trait anxiety, academic stress, and academic control, the actor’s academic anxiety at the previous day can have a significant effect on his or her own academic anxiety at the next day (γ = .11，t = 2.91, p < .05), as well as his or her partner’s academic anxiety at the next day (γ = .14，t = 4.05, p < .05). There is a comparable contagion effect of state-like academic anxiety among close friends, regardless of their peer acceptance. A better understanding of the emotions of significant others on students’ state-like anxiety is of theoretical and practical importance, and contributes to the development of more effective interventions to prevent negative emotions from spreading around in the classroom. This study has provided important managerial implications for dealing with state-like academic anxiety. It becomes clear from our study that one’s state-like academic anxiety is important not only for themselves, but also for those students with whom they interact frequently. This emphasizes the importance for school administrators to take proactive steps to develop positive academic emotions on the one hand and prevent negative academic anxiety on the other hand.

Key words: Academic anxiety, intimate peers, longitudinal study, high school students.