The Influence Of Stress On The Loneliness Of College Students: Self - Differentiation And Self - Construction

Stress and loneliness is widespread in college students experience, at the same time, the pressure itself is one of the important factors affecting the loneliness. With the expansion of the stressors that university students may face, the resulting loneliness mood will be more serious,which will lead to severer emotional and behavioral problems such as depression and self harm behavior, So it is necessary to explore the influence of students’ stress on loneliness.The relationship between stress and loneliness,the answer of how does it happen as different individuals will experience different level of loneliness is still in an exploration stage. The important role of differentiation of self as an mediating variable between the relationship of stress and negative emotions, adaptive behavior has already got researchers attention and exploration. According to the comprehensive conclusion of previous research,this study firstly introduced the concept of differentiation of self to explain the influence of stress on loneliness and the relationship among these three factors. At the same time, the findings in cross-cultural studies revealed the fact that the function of self-differentiation differed,for those who valued individual autonomy and self independence,the regulating effect of self-differentiation on the relationship between stress and psychological health performanced better than those who didn’t. This study then introduced the concept of self-construal,and established a moderated mediating model to discuss the influence of stress on the loneliness in a more systematically way, in order to improve the function of differentiation of self of college students,as well as reduce the negative influences of stress and loneliness.Purposes:(1) The first purpose of this study was focus on college students, and explored their pressure, loneliness, differentiation of self and self-construal and the overall situation in the aspects of gender, professional category, grade and family structure.(2) The second purpose of this study was based on the discussion of the relationship among college students stress, loneliness, self differentiation, self-construal. Firstly this study inspected the mediating role of students’ differentiation of self between stress and loneliness; following by an investigation of the moderating role of self-construal between differentiation of self and loneliness.(3) The second purpose of this study was focus on the moderated mediating effect of self differentiation, self-construal between college students’stress and loneliness,in order to improve the college students’ self-differentiation functions and to provide a theoretical basis for reducing college students’ sense of stress and loneliness in practice application fields.Object and method:This study used stratified random sampling method, taking college students of several colleges in Xi’an area as the research objects, using several questionnaires to survey.Conclusion:(1) The student’s stress loneliness, differentiation of self and self-construal existed significant differences in characters of different demographic variables.In terms of stress, female college students’overall stress was significantly higher than that of male college students, and there was a signigicant difference in academic stress on the variable of Professional category; In terms of loneliness, female college students’ overall loneliness and emotional loneliness was significantly higher than that of male college students, only-child students’ general loneliness and social loneliness was significantly higher than the students with siblings; In the aspect of self differentiation,female college students’ self differentiation were significantly lower than that of male college students, only child’s self differentiation were significantly lower than those with sibilings; In terms of self construal, there were signifacantly difference both on sex variable and perfenssional category.(2) Both the stress and differentiation of self of the college students could significantly predict loneliness.(3) The college students’ differentiation of self had a mediating effect between the relationship of stress and loneliness.(4) The independent self-construal had a moderating effect on the relationship between college students differentiation of self and loneliness.(5) There was a moderated mediating effect of differentiation of self and independent self-construal on college students stress and loneliness.This research focused on the influence of the stress on loneliness, and constructed a moderated mediating effect model to explain the influence mechanism, providing a new perspective so as to improve the college students’ self-differentiation function, and to release the negative effects of stress and loneliness.