ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Mindfulness
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1692295
Enhancing Academic Resilience Through Mindfulness Training: An Experimental Study with Chinese Undergraduates and the Mediating Role of Psychological Flexibility
Provisionally accepted
Ming Yuan1
Zhe Hu2*- 1Ziyang College of Dental Technology, Ziyang, China
- 2Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, China
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This study investigates the impact of mindfulness on academic resilience among university students, with a particular focus on the mediating roles of self-compassion and psychological flexibility. Using a post-test-only control group experimental design, 200 undergraduate students from a Chinese university were randomly assigned to either an intervention group, which received a four-week mindfulness training program, or a control group. Data were collected after the intervention using validated self-report instruments and analyzed through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that mindfulness significantly enhanced both self-compassion and psychological flexibility, which in turn positively predicted academic resilience. Parallel mediation analysis confirmed that both self-compassion and psychological flexibility independently mediated the relationship between mindfulness and academic resilience, with stronger effects observed in the intervention group. Multi-group analysis further demonstrated significant differences in structural path strengths between the two groups, confirming the effectiveness of the mindfulness intervention. These findings offer theoretical support for process-based models of resilience and emotion regulation and provide practical insights into scalable, low-cost interventions for enhancing student well-being in higher education. In addition, the study highlights culturally grounded evidence from a Chinese higher education context, addressing the relative scarcity of experimental investigations on mindfulness and resilience in non-Western settings. Limitations include the reliance on self-reported data, the use of a single-institution sample, and the short intervention period, which may constrain generalizability and long-term inference. Nevertheless, the findings support the relevance of mindfulness-based training as a culturally adaptable and resource-efficient approach to strengthening academic resilience in university populations.
Keywords: mindfulness, self-compassion, Psychological flexibility, Academic resilience, university students, intervention, PLS-SEM, experimental design
Received: 25 Aug 2025; Accepted: 16 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yuan and Hu. 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: Zhe Hu, hzhuzhe@zufe.edu.cn
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