The Effect Of Individual's Belief System On Graduates' Stress Appraisal

Graduates' stress is continually increasing in the current social situation. In the development of stress theory, transactional model has become the dominant one; on the other hand, it has been an important trend to assess the role of multiple personality variables in stress process. Therefore exploring the cooperation of multiple personality variables in transactional model has great theoretical and practical value in stress research.Focused on three kinds of beliefs: philosophies of human nature, self-esteem and locus of control, the study explored the possible mechanism of the cooperation of these personality variables in graduates' stress appraisal. Interview study, questionnaire designing and pre-survey were administrated to get the formal questionnaire; via investigation on more than 300 graduates in 13 colleges, the main conclusions were as below:1. Graduate life that impacts students most is composed of seven categories of key events. Graduate events haven't caused severe stress among students, and the level of self-esteem and internal locus of control in the sample is rather high in all.2. There is significant positive correlation between stress outcomes and graduate events or stress appraisal, while the correlation between the outcomes and stress appraisal is stronger than the former.3. The mediating and moderating effects of locus of control:"Chance' locus of control has mediating effect between family events and each dimension of stress appraisal, 'powerful others' locus of control is a mediator between family events, interpersonal events, accident events, the average score of graduate events and each dimension of stress appraisal. There is no moderating effect of any dimension of locus of control on the relationship between graduate events and stress appraisals.4. 'Powerful others' locus of control moderates the mediating and moderating effects of philosophies of human nature:When 'powerful others' is high, philosophies of human nature have mediating effect between many graduate events and stress appraisal, while when 'powerful others' is low, no mediating effect exists. When 'powerful others' is low, philosophies of human nature have moderating effect on the relationship between many graduate events and stress appraisal, while when 'powerful others' is high, no moderating effect exists.5. Internal locus of control moderates the mediating and moderating effects of self-esteem: When internal locus of control is high, self-esteem has mediating effect between graduate events and each dimension of stress appraisal, while when internal locus of control is low, no mediating effect exists. When internal locus of control is high, self-esteem has moderating effect on the relationship between graduate events and each dimension of stress appraisal, while when internal locus of control is low, moderating effect can only be found on the relationship between love events and 'bearing burden' appraisal.