The Effect And Intervention Of Positive Emotion And Perceived Social Support On College Students’ Life Satisfaction

Many college mental health educators are strongly advocating positive mental health education in the context of the new era,paying more attention to the well-being needs of all students and devoting themselves to providing college students with more positive emotional experiences and social support strengths.It has been shown that positive emotions and social support are important factors influencing people’s overall well-being,and individuals’ life satisfaction level will be increased with their perceived positive emotions and social support.Since positive emotions,perceived social support,and life satisfaction are all important factors in the development of college students’ mental health,it is necessary to explore the relationship between these three factors and to explore an effective way to enhance the experience of positive emotions in group counseling.This paper consists of two studies:Study 1,a questionnaire survey was conducted among 752 randomly selected undergraduate students in a university in Wuhan,China,to understand the current status and demographic variables of positive emotions,perceived social support and life satisfaction among college students by analyzing relevant data,to investigate the relationship between the three variables,and to examine whether there is a mediating effect of positive emotions between perceived social support and life satisfaction.Study 2,we designed a group counseling program with the theme of "embracing positive emotions" and selected 20 university students,10 subjects in the experimental group and 10 subjects in the control group,to conduct eight consecutive 90-minute group counseling sessions for the experimental group and no intervention for the control group.The experimental group was given eight consecutive 90-minute group counseling sessions,while the control group received no intervention,to investigate whether the group counseling could enhance college students’ ability to perceive social support by enhancing their positive emotional experiences and thus promote life satisfaction.From the above study,the following conclusions were drawn:(1)College students’ positive emotion,perceived social support,and life satisfaction are in the middle to high level,and there are significant differences in positive emotion by gender and grade;significant differences in perceived social support by birthplace;and significant differences in life satisfaction by grade,birthplace,and being an only child or not.(2)There is a significant correlation between positive emotion,perceived social support and life satisfaction among college students,and perceived social support has a significant positive predictive effect on both positive emotion and life satisfaction,and positive emotion also has a significant positive predictive effect on life satisfaction.(3)Positive emotion plays a partly mediating role between perceived social support and life satisfaction,i.e.,perceived social support can directly influence life satisfaction,and can also indirectly influence life satisfaction through positive emotion.(4)The levels of positive emotion,perceived social support and life satisfaction of college students were significantly improved after eight sessions of group counseling,indicating that the eight-week group intervention was effective in enhancing positive emotion,perceived social support and life satisfaction of college students,and that the group counseling program with the theme of "embracing positive emotion" was practicable.The program is practicable.