Emotional contagion: A cross-cultural exploration of how teachers’ enjoyment facilitates achievement via students’ enjoyment

We investigated whether perceived teacher enjoyment of teaching predicted student achievement via students’ enjoyment across Eastern and Western contexts. Data came from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 focusing on the reading domain. The respondents were 84,017 adolescents (51% girls) with a mean age of 15.17 years old from both the West (US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand) and the East (Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, Taipei, Singapore, Japan, and Korea). The results show that perceived teachers’ teaching enjoyment and reading enjoyment predicted reading achievement in both the Western and Asian students. Perceived teacher enjoyment related to student enjoyment demonstrating emotional contagion, and the association between perceived teacher enjoyment and student achievement was mediated by student enjoyment. We did not find cross-cultural differences in the strength of emotional contagion demonstrating cross-cultural universality. Implications for education and cross-cultural research are discussed.