Academic involution behavior, perceived academic involution climate, and English learning intention among college students: the indirect role of psychological distress.

Background: Academic involution may be experienced both as students' own excessive competitive behavior and as their perception that peers engage in such behavior. This study examined how academic involution behavior and perceived academic involution climate were concurrently associated with English learning intention, and whether psychological distress formed a negative statistical indirect association within the proposed model. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was completed by 1,683 students from nine universities in Chongqing, China. Academic involution behavior, perceived academic involution climate, psychological distress, and English learning intention were assessed using four self-report instruments; the English learning intention instrument was a researcher-developed contextual brief measure. A four-factor structural equation model was estimated using diagonally weighted least squares, with age, gender, and education level included as covariates. Five direct-association hypotheses and two negative statistical indirect-association hypotheses were evaluated. Results: Academic involution behavior was positively associated with psychological distress (β = 0.207) and English learning intention (β = 0.284), and perceived academic involution climate was positively associated with psychological distress (β = 0.162) and English learning intention (β = 0.137). Psychological distress was negatively associated with English learning intention (β = -0.356; all focal paths Conclusion: The findings show contemporaneous positive direct associations alongside smaller negative statistical indirect associations, a pattern consistent with the proposed inconsistent mediation model. Because the data were cross-sectional and self-reported, the results do not establish temporal ordering, causal mediation, or intervention effects.