Correlation Between Optimism And Academic Stress Response:A Research On Mediation Of Perceived Academic Self-efficacy And Sandplay Therapy Intervention

In the1980s, since the positive psychology gradually rose as a branch of western psychology, more and more psychological research has shifted the focus to how to let the positive side work better to weaken the negative thinking and cognition. The optimism, as a core concept in positive psychology, is attracting more attention. Optimism is a relatively stable persistent personality variable, optimistic individual attends to have a positive attitude to the reality and the future, which will have a profound impact on cognition, emotion and behavior of the individual.Perceived academic self-efficacy is an individual ability belief, and means an evaluation of degree of confidence made by the learner as to whether they can complete the study task using the ability or skill on his/her own, and it also is a subjective judgment made by the individual as to their ability to control his/her learning behavior and learning ability. Academic stress response is the negative reaction in the physical, psychological and behavioral respects for the student which is generated during the learning process by continuous effect of the academic internal and external environment requirements posing a threat to the coping capacity or himself/herself and can be sensed by the subject.Research has shown that positive emotions have protective functions and can reduce the influence of pressure on individuals. Self-efficacy and learned helplessness are two opposite concepts; training of optimistic interpretation style can reduce the learned helplessness. In school students with high self-efficacy in academic situations have a more positive attitude and emotions and less anxiety.As sandplay therapy gradually matures, more and more schools are starting to accept such an easy and fun way of consulting. Sand table games can provide students with a free and protected space, and make the students fully express themselves in a relaxed environment; on the one hand, it can promote students’understanding of the self, on the other hand, it can improve the effect of counseling.On the basis of referring to research results at home and abroad, this study adopts the method of combining the investigation and experiment to explore correlation of optimism, academic self-efficacy and stress response in junior high school students. On this basis, use group sand table games technology to intervene optimism, the independent variable in the hope that students’academic self-efficacy can be improved and the academic stress response can be reduced through intervention of optimism.Research mainly includes two parts:Part one is a study for which907junior high school students from Guangxi, Shandong, Henan are subjects;"optimism questionnaire","the academic self-efficacy questionnaire" and "junior middle school students academic stress reaction questionnaire" are used for investigation to explore the differences of demographic variables of optimism, academic self-efficacy, academic stress response in junior high school students, and to learn the intermediary role of academic self-efficacy for optimism and academic stress response in junior middle school students. Part two is a optimistic group sandplay therapy intervention experiment; on the basis of part one, ten subjects of a middle school in Guilin are selected and randomly divided into experimental group and control group; group intervention is conducted on the group members of the experimental group for2months, and for the experimental group, there is no processing; through the scale, conduct before and after tests on the subjects to evaluate the effect of group intervention.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Optimism does not have significant difference in different genders of junior middle school students; optimism does not have significant difference in junior middle school students of different grades; optimism does not have significant difference for key middle school and ordinary middle school students; optimism has significant differences for junior middle school students with different academic grades; optimism has significant differences for junior middle school students in rural and urban areas.(2) For academic stress response of junior middle school students, there is no significant difference in genders; in the academic grades and grades, there are significant differences; there are significant differences for rural and urban junior middle school students; there are significant differences for key middle school and ordinary middle school students.(3) For academic self-efficacy of junior middle school students, there is no significant difference in genders; in the academic grades and grades, there are significant differences; there are significant differences for rural and urban junior middle school students; there are significant differences for key middle school and ordinary middle school students.(4) Optimism, academic self-efficacy and academic stress have correlation with each other. The optimism and academic stress response have significant negative correlation; academic self-efficacy and academic stress response have significant negative correlation; optimism and academic self-efficacy have significant positive correlation.(5) Optimism has significant prediction on academic stress response; academic self-efficacy has significant prediction on academic stress response; optimism has significant prediction on academic self-efficacy.(6) Academic self-efficacy has partial significant mediation effect for optimism and academic stress response.(7) The intervention of group sand table games has significant effect to improve the level of optimistic of junior middle school students, and it also has significant effect to improve the level of academic self-efficacy, while the academic stress response decreases significantly.