Effects of Peer and Teacher Support on Students' Creative Thinking: Emotional Intelligence as a Mediator and Emotion Regulation Strategy as a Moderator.

This study aimed to explore the relationships among peer and teacher support, emotional intelligence, and creative thinking. A total of 335 middle school students in grade seven were surveyed in China, including boys 187 (55.8%) and girls 148 (44.2%), aged from 11 to 14 years (M = 12.5; SD = 0.5). Results of the partial least square structural equation modeling showed that emotional intelligence was a positive mediator in the processes from peer and teacher support to middle school students' creative thinking, and emotion regulation strategies moderated these processes from emotional intelligence to creative thinking. Specifically, both peer and teacher support had an indirect effect on creative thinking through emotional intelligence. Moreover, the four dimensions of emotional intelligence bore different mediating powers. Among them, emotion regulation exhibited the greatest mediating power, and self-emotion appraisal is the least. In addition, both reappraisal and suppression positively moderated the impact of emotional intelligence on creative thinking. Moreover, reappraisal had stronger moderating power than that of suppression. Interestingly, the direct effects of both peer and teacher support on creative thinking were not observed. This study offers knowledge about the mechanisms of peer and teacher support and students' creative thinking, and implications for practitioners were also discussed in this study.