Associations between interpersonal contexts, positive emotions, and related experiences in school students: A systematic review of experience sampling studies

Studies investigating students’ social interactions and related experiences have mostly relied on retrospective methodologies–techniques known to be subject to recall bias that threaten ecological validity. This article is the second part of a systematic review of experience sampling studies on students’ social interactions. This article focuses on exploring associations between interpersonal contexts, positive emotions, and related experiences assessed by intensive repeated measurement techniques in naturalistic environments. A systematic literature search was conducted for experience sampling studies between 1996 and 2020. Details of the literature search process and results were reported in the companion (Part I) of the study (Mölsä et al., 2022; Frontiers in Psychology 2022; 13: 844698). Using a narrative synthesis, the associations of interpersonal contexts and positive emotionality in school students were analyzed. Findings suggest that school students experience higher levels of positive emotions during peer, teacher, and family interactions than when they are not being with someone. The overall findings indicate that positive emotionality in children and adolescents is dependent on the characteristics of the interpersonal contexts, although the multilevel associations vary. This review contributes to experience sampling research on students’ social interactions. The systematic review concludes with discussion of the main findings, theoretical implications, and an analysis of limitations.