A longitudinal study of perceived social support from friends and hope in adolescents: emotional intelligence as the mediator

Hope has been identified as an important contributor to adaptive coping and overall wellbeing. However, there are mixed results regarding the relation between friend social support and hope in adolescents. The current study aimed to extend prior work by examining not only the direct effect of friend social support and adolescents' levels of hope, but also the indirect effect via multiple dimensions of emotional intelligence. The longitudinal relations between friend social support, hope and emotional intelligence were analysed using cross-lagged models. The sample was 910 adolescents with a mean age of 13.86 in Hong Kong, a special administrative region in China. Findings of this study showed that friend social support predicted hope in adolescents, and this relationship was partially mediated by self-emotion appraisal, use of emotion, and regulation of emotion. This study contributed by providing an additional explanation on the psychological mechanism between social support and hope for adolescents in the Chinese context. The results also have practical significance by implying interventions focused on increasing social support and emotional intelligence to enhance levels of hope in adolescents.