BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1650231
The relationship between belief in a just world and learning burnout in Chinese junior high school students: A moderated mediation model
Provisionally accepted
- Ludong University, Yantai, China
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We proposed a moderated mediation model to investigate the relationship between belief in a just world and learning burnout in junior high school students as well as the mediating effect of perceived discrimination and the moderating effect of self-efficacy. A total of 797 students (399 males and 398 females; age ranged from 11 to 15 years old, mean age was 13.3, SD was 1.61) from Shandong province, China completed the Belief in a Just World Scale, Questionnaire of Perceived Discrimination, General Self-Efficacy Scale, and Learning Burnout Scale. SPSS 23.0 and PROCESS macro 4.1 (Model 7) were used to test the moderated mediation model. The findings of this study proved that belief in a just world was significantly and negatively related to learning burnout, and perceived discrimination played mediating role between them. Self-efficacy moderated the mediating path, the effect being weaker for students with high level of self-efficacy. These findings demonstrated that perceived discrimination is the critical link between belief in a just world and learning burnout, and high self-efficacy helps prevent perceived discrimination and learning burnout.
Keywords: Belief in a just world, learning burnout, perceived discrimination, self-efficacy, junior high school students
Received: 27 Jun 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Wei, Zhang, Zou and Zhang. 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: Xuefeng Wei, xuefengwei99@163.comm
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