Research On Psychological Conflicts Mechanism Affecting Adaptability Of College Students

The issue of students' adaptation has drawn increasing attention from collegesand universities and been one of the puzzling problems for educators. Changes instudies, campus life and environment bring about much stress and challenges forindividuals, thus inducing more and more problems of emotion and psychology.That's why a great number of college students suffer from various kinds of adaptationproblems. Previous researches focus mostly on stressors and part of mediatorsaffecting college students' adaptability. However, few has been found to studyempirically the psychological mechanism affecting students' adaptability levels.This paper incorporates General Strain Theory proposed by Agnew in the studyof crime psychology in the field of social science, into the study of college students'adaptability, makes further study about conflicts resulting from individual strain (akind of inconsistent pressure) and explores the functions of self-esteem in influencingcollege students' adaptability levels. The purpose of the paper is to explore thepsychological conflicts mechanism that may influence college students' adaptabilityand therefore offer some answers to the following questions: What conflicts may exertany influence on college students' adaptability? What is the conflicts mechanism?What is the real picture of today's college students' psychological adaptability? Whatare the functions of self-esteem in influencing college students' adaptability?Based on the present study, the results show that: (1) Three questionnairesdeveloped by author to investigate three main components of college students'psychological conflicts, namely, value conflicts, conflicts between wishes and reality, relative deprivation, are of good reliability and validity; (2) There exist genderdifference, students resources difference, family background difference, gradedifference and subject difference about college students' psychological conflicts and adaptability; (3) The effect of four psychological conflicts, namely, collegestudents' conflicts between wishes and reality, relative deprivation, shortage of copingstyles and low coping efficacy on their adaptability level is significant; (4)Self-esteem as one element of the college students' psychological conflicts is asignificant moderator in influencing adaptability.