Do perceived helpfulness and competition in classroom contexts moderate or mediate the association between perceived stress and socio-emotional strengths and difficulties from early to middle adolescence?

Abstract The highly competitive educational context of modern Western societies increases students' workload and their willingness to compete with others to acquire specialized knowledge and skills that support lifelong learning, which often goes along with higher perceived stress and socio-emotional and behavioral difficulties. However, less is known about whether helpfulness and competition function as potential moderators or mediators in the association between perceived stress and socio-emotional strengths and difficulties considering potential gender differences. Based on questionnaire data from a longitudinal study with 1088 students (Time 1: M age  = 13.70, SD  = 0.53; Time 2: N  = 845, M age  = 15.32, SD  = 0.49) in German secondary schools the results of latent moderated structural equations (LMS) showed that perceived helpfulness and competition do not function as moderators. In turn, the structural equation modeling with indirect effects showed that perceived helpfulness in class fully mediated the association between perceived stress and prosocial behavior, whereas helpfulness and competition partially mediated the association between perceived stress and problems with peers for both girls and boys from early to middle adolescence.