ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1593555
This article is part of the Research TopicNovel Intervention Models Transcending Borders for Stress Management - Volume IIIView all 15 articles
Perceived Stress and Life Satisfaction Among University Students: The Mediating and Moderating Roles of Coping Strategies and Personality Traits
Provisionally accepted
- Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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The transition to university is often accompanied by significant stress, which can adversely affect students' life satisfaction. This study investigates the relationship between perceived stress and life satisfaction among university students, with a focus on the mediating role of coping strategies and the moderating effect of personality traits. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 520 university students (M = 21.5 years, SD = 2.3) using validated psychological measures, including the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), Brief COPE Inventory, and Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2). Analyses were performed using PROCESS macro regression modeling (Models 4 and 1). Perceived stress showed a significant nonlinear (cubic) association with life satisfaction (R² = .263, p < .001). Overall, higher stress was consistently linked to lower life satisfaction, with scores declining from low to high stress levels (e.g., SWLS = 26.4 at −1 SD; SWLS = 24.8 at mean; SWLS = 21.9 at +1 SD). Moderation analyses revealed that Agreeableness (β = −0.0486, p < .001), Conscientiousness (β = −0.0436, p < .001), and Openness (β = −0.0538, p < .001) significantly moderated this association, whereas Extraversion and Negative Emotionality were nonsignificant. Mediation analyses further indicated that adaptive coping partially buffered the negative impact of stress (β = 0.22, p < .01), while maladaptive coping exacerbated it (β = −0.29, p < .001). These findings underscore the importance of fostering adaptive coping mechanisms and tailoring stress management interventions to students' personality profiles to enhance well-being and academic success.
Keywords: perceived stress, life satisfaction, coping strategies, personality traits, university students
Received: 14 Mar 2025; Accepted: 01 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Abd Ellatif Elsayed. 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: Hala Abd Ellatif Elsayed, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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