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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1536951
This article is part of the Research Topic Protective vs Risk Factors for Stress and Psychological Well-being in Academic University Contexts View all articles
Risk and Protective Factors in Academic Burnout: Exploring the Mediating Role of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in the Link with Social Support
Provisionally accepted- 1 Deparment of Human and Social Sciences, Mercatorum University, Rome, Italy
- 2 Department of Engineering and Science, Mercatorum University, Rome, Italy
Interpersonal Emotion Regulation (IER) may serve as a critical link between the established roles of social support and emotion regulation in mitigating academic burnout. This study explored the hypothesis that IER influences academic burnout through its impact on social support. 156 undergraduate students were involved in the study, with measures assessing academic burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory -Student Survey), IER (Difficulties in Interpersonal Emotion Regulation), and social support (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support). Results confirmed the protective role of social support and revealed distinct effects of different IER forms. Specifically, reassurance-seeking emerged as a protective factor, positively predicting social support and indirectly reducing burnout levels. Conversely, venting was found to exacerbate burnout both directly and indirectly, by diminishing social support.
Keywords: Interpersonal-Emotion-Regulation, Social-support, Venting, Reassurance-seeking, academic-burnout, students-mental-health
Received: 29 Nov 2024; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Messina, Rossi, Maniglio, Loconsole and Spataro. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Irene Messina, Deparment of Human and Social Sciences, Mercatorum University, Rome, Italy
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