ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1564240
This article is part of the Research TopicProtective vs Risk Factors for Stress and Psychological Well-being in Academic University ContextsView all 9 articles
Strengths mindset of university students and psychological stress: The roles of basic psychological need satisfaction and university identification
Provisionally accepted
- Quzhou College of Technology, Quzhou, China
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How to reduce undergraduate psychological stress is a critical question for educators and undergraduates. The current study aimed to investigate whether undergraduate strengths mindset contributes to lowering psychological stress from the perspective of self-determination theory, and considered the mediating effect of basic psychological need satisfaction (BPNS) and the moderating effect of university identification on this relationship. Using a three-wave research design, this study collected a total of 281 samples from one Chinese university.Multiple regression with bootstrapping analyses showed that undergraduate strengths mindset has a positive relationship with BPNS, and BPNS acts as a significant mediator in the strengths mindset-psychological stress linkage. In addition, this research also found that identification with university not only lowers the direct relationship between undergraduate strengths mindset and BPNS but also the indirect relationship between strengths mindset and psychological stress via BPNS. This study provides a new perspective for reducing undergraduates' psychological stress and extends the effectiveness of strengths mindset.
Keywords: Basic psychological need satisfaction, identification with university, psychological stress, strengths mindset, undergraduate
Received: 21 Jan 2025; Accepted: 30 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yufang Wu, Quzhou College of Technology, Quzhou, China
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