Supportive Interpersonal Interactions and Affective Experiences during Exam Periods

Abstract

Examinations, a salient stressor for undergraduates, arouse negative emotions that can hinder performance. Supportive social relationships may be advantageous during exam periods given that social baseline theory proposes that strong social relationships help one manage stressors effectively and efficiently. This experience sampling study examined the roles of two facets of supportive relationships, emotional closeness and interpersonal emotion regulation (ER), in daily affect around exam days and in perceived exam performance. A sample of 191 Canadian undergraduates completed baseline measures and daily prompts for one month. Baseline measures gauged emotional closeness and interpersonal ER; daily prompts assessed perceived emotional closeness, negative affect (NA), positive affect (PA), and perceptions of performance. Students demonstrated a pattern of worse affect when exams approached and an improvement of affect in the days that followed exams. Specifically, they reported higher daily NA on the two days before exam days compared to days with no recent or upcoming exams. Further, students reported lower daily NA post-exams compared to before exams. Additionally, we found lower self-reported daily PA on the two days before exams compared to days with no recent or upcoming exams, and higher daily PA post-exams compared to before exams. Notably, trait use of some interpersonal ER strategies interacted with exam period: students who reported higher use of these strategies demonstrated smaller differences in PA across the days before and after exams (e.g., smaller dip in PA before exams) compared to students who reported lower use of these strategies. We found some evidence of interpersonal ER serving a more limited role in NA during exam periods. Furthermore, most interpersonal ER strategies at baseline and emotional closeness before an exam predicted perceiving exam performance less negatively. The present findings suggest that prosocial interpersonal processes may help students better manage their subjective experiences during stressful midterm exam periods.