Psychological mechanisms of stress on achievement motivation in college students—the mediating effect of psychological resilience

Objective To explore the psychological mechanism of perceived stress on achievement motivation (including motivation to pursue success and avoid failure) in medical college students, and to verify the partial mediating effect of psychological resilience in this relationship. Methods A total of 2,691 medical college students in Jining were investigated by random whole cluster sampling, and assessed with Achievement Motivation Inventory (AMS), Chinese Perceived Stress Scale (CPSS) and Connor-Davidson Psychological Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10). The mediating effect was tested by Model IV of PROCESS plug-in in SPSS 27.0. Results (1) Achievement motivation had no significant difference in demographic characteristics; psychological stress had significant differences in grade, gender, major preference and family annual income ( p < 0.05); psychological resilience had significant differences in all demographic characteristics ( p < 0.05). (2) Achievement motivation was significantly negatively correlated with psychological stress ( r = –0.419, p < 0.001), and positively correlated with psychological resilience ( r = 0.492, p < 0.001); psychological stress was significantly negatively correlated with psychological resilience ( r = –0.655, p < 0.001). (3) Psychological resilience played a partial mediating role between stress and achievement motivation: the mediating effect accounted for 59.52% of the total effect on motivation to pursue success and 17.24% on motivation to avoid failure. Conclusion Perceived stress is directly negatively associated with college students’ achievement motivation, and is also indirectly associated with it via the reduction of psychological resilience. Enhancing psychological resilience may buffer the negative association between stress and achievement motivation.