Patterns of Interpersonal Conflict and Psychological Crisis in Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Psychological Pain

Guo Yueyan; Li Huanhuan; Sun Fang; Wei Shijie

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250123

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2025, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (1) : 242-251. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250123

Clinical Psychology & Consulting

Patterns of Interpersonal Conflict and Psychological Crisis in Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Psychological Pain

Guo Yueyan, Li Huanhuan, Sun Fang, Wei Shijie

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Abstract

Interpersonal conflict is the most common stressor on campus for adolescents. School bullying has characteristics that are different from daily interpersonal conflicts, repeatability, persistence and concealment. Therefore, school bullying has a more serious negative impact on the physical and mental health of adolescents compared to daily interpersonal conflicts.
At present, most studies focus on the relationship between school bullying or daily interpersonal conflicts and the psychological crisis in adolescents, but few studies examine whether there are different classes of bullying victimization and daily interpersonal conflicts in adolescents, and whether these classes have a covariant relation with the level of psychological crisis. Thus, this study aims to reveal different classes of interpersonal conflict (including daily interpersonal conflicts and school bullying) among adolescents and their relations with psychological crisis. Moreover, the aim of the present study is to explore the roles of painful feelings and pain avoidance in the relationship between interpersonal conflict and psychological crisis among adolescents based on the three-dimensional psychological pain model.
In this study, 2249 middle school students were recruited, and the latent class analysis (LCA) was used to explore different latent classes of interpersonal conflict. The study also investigated the covariant relation of different latent classes and psychological crisis, as well as the mediating role of psychological pain between interpersonal conflict and psychological crisis.
The results showed that (1) there were 3 latent classes of school bullying and daily interpersonal conflict, which were the low bullying victimization - low conflict class (75.01%), low bullying victimization - high conflict class (22.56%) and high bullying victimization - high conflict class (2.43%). (2) There is a covariant relation between the latent classes and psychological crisis, showing that the high bullying victimization - high conflict group has the highest level of psychological crisis, and the low bullying victimization - low conflict group has the lowest level of psychological crisis. (3) Painful feelings and pain avoidance play a significant mediating role in the relationship between different latent classes and non-lethal crisis state (CS), as well as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Only pain avoidance plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between different latent classes and suicide attempt (SA).
The results suggested that interpersonal conflict is a relatively common phenomenon. However, the existence of low victimization-high conflict class indicates that daily interpersonal conflict and school bullying don’t necessarily occur at the same time, bullying is a special form of interpersonal conflict. In addition, bullying can cause high level of negative emotional experience in middle school students, so that individuals take crisis behavior to avoid and reduce negative emotional experience. Compared with daily interpersonal conflicts, bullying will lead to stronger psychological imbalance of victims and more serious impact on mental health. Moreover, bullying victimization and daily interpersonal conflict will affect individuals in a cumulative way. Therefore, when middle school students experience more environmental risks, they will have higher levels of psychological crisis. Therefore, the high bullying victimization - high conflict class have the highest level of non-lethal crisis and fatal psychological crisis. Finally, only pain avoidance mediated the latent classes of interpersonal conflict and SA, suggesting that unlike NSSI, the high level of pain feeling induced by school bullying is not necessarily the trigger factor for suicidal behavior, and the pain avoidance motivation is more closely related to SA.
The study provides some implications for the crisis intervention, which should focus on those students who suffer from dual pressures of bullying and daily interpersonal conflict. In addition to dealing with interpersonal conflict and stressful events, cognitive intervention strategies can also help alleviate the adverse effects of psychological crisis by reducing adolescents’ pain feelings and pain avoidance motivation.

Key words

interpersonal conflict / psychological pain / the latent class analysis / psychological crisis / adolescent

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Guo Yueyan, Li Huanhuan, Sun Fang, Wei Shijie. Patterns of Interpersonal Conflict and Psychological Crisis in Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Psychological Pain[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2025, 48(1): 242-251 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250123

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