How School Burnout Affects Depression Symptoms Among Chinese Adolescents: Evidence from Individual and Peer Clique Level

The impact of peer clique school burnout norms on adolescents’ emotional adaptation is becoming increasingly prominent, but its underlying mechanisms remain unclear, especially in China where academic achievement is highly valued. The present study examined how clique burnout norms impact the relationship between school burnout, negative cognitive bias, and depressive symptoms. A total of 904 Chinese adolescents (57% boys; M_age = 12.73, SD = 0.43) participated in a two-wave longitudinal study (initiated in 2015, with approximately a 2-year interval). The results of multilevel models indicated that only in low clique burnout norms, adolescents with high school burnout at T1 would exhibit more negative cognitive bias and suffer from more depressive symptoms at T2, whereas the moderating effect was only observed in all-boys cliques. These findings reflect that a decrease in the overall level of burnout within a peer clique does not necessarily benefit every student, and the adaptation issues of students experiencing burnout still require attention even in a relatively healthy context.