Hardiness Protects College Students' Mental Health And Its Mechanism

With the rising of stressor, the mental health problems of college students have been becoming standout in these years. Kobasa(1979) and Maddi(2002) proposed the concept of hardiness as an aspect of personality which buffers the effects of stress on health. More and more research results suggested that hardiness can protects the mental health of those who experiencing high stress.Hardiness comprises three interrelated components: commitment, control, and challenge. Individuals strong in commitment believe in the truth and value of who they are and what they are doing. They have a sense of meaning and purpose in work and relationships and are deeply involved rather than alienated. The component of control reflects a belief that one can influence the course of life events within reasonable limits, rather than feels powerless. The term challenge reflects an outlook on life that enables an individual to perceive change as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat to one's sense of security or survival. Change rather than stability is seen as the normative mode of life.This research studies the cross-cultural validity of hardiness and investigates the mechanism of hardiness on mental health.The research results are the following:1. Hardiness and its components can predict the psychological symptom of college students. The composite of hardiness, control, commitment can accounts for 16.5-34.1% variance of symptoms in male. They can account for 6.6-24.6% variance of symptoms in female. Comparatively, hardiness predicts mental health better in male than that's in female.2. Hardiness can moderate stress-health relation. The interaction between composite of hardiness, commitment, control and stress can account for 1.3-2.0% variance of psychological symptoms in male. 3.3% variance of symptoms is accounted for by challenge × stress in female.3. Although the hardiness measures predict coping style, for both men and women, positive and negative coping strategies do not mediate the relationship between hardinessand psychological symptoms. Hardiness has no indirect effect on mental health.4. Except for commitment, there is no gender difference in the score of hardiness composite, control and challenge. It is also true that no gender difference in the score of coping strategies, SCL-90 composite and its subscales.