Abstract
<p>Background: Students' emotions are shaped both by the structure of their peer relationships and by the affective context of the classroom. Two features of a student's position in the classroom network may matter: being sought out by peers (in-degree centrality), indexing social acceptance, and reaching out to many peers (out-degree centrality), indexing the breadth of active peer engagement. Classroom emotional climate, the aggregated activated affect of the class, may further shape these associations. Yet few studies have examined how a student's network position and the surrounding climate jointly relate to emotional experience.Aims: We examined how in-degree and out-degree centrality relate to students' emotions across four dimensions (positive and negative, activated and deactivated) and whether classroom emotional climate (aggregated positive or negative activated affect) moderates these relationships.Sample: Data were collected from 1,284 high school students (50.5% female, Mage = 16.26, SD = 0.88) nested within 56 classrooms.Methods: We used multilevel structural equation modelling.Results: Higher out-degree centrality was associated with lower positive activated and lower positive deactivated affect. Higher in-degree centrality was associated with higher positive deactivated affect and with lower negative activated and lower negative deactivated affect. Classroom emotional climate moderated several of these associations: a positive climate attenuated the negative association between out-degree centrality and positive affect, whereas a negative climate weakened the protective association between in-degree centrality and lower negative affect.Conclusions: Students' network positions were differentially associated with their emotions, and these associations depended on the classroom's emotional climate.</p>