Introduction Junior high school teachers increasingly face occupational stressors linked to heightened anxiety and attrition, underscoring the urgency to identify psychological resources that sustain wellbeing and professional commitment. While psychological capital (PsyCap), comprising self-efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism, is recognized as a buffer against burnout, prior studies often treat it monolithically, neglecting subdimensional dynamics and contextual moderators. Methods A total of 1, 271 junior high school teachers participated in this study. They completed a 26ᵢtem PsyCap scale, the 15ᵢtem PERMA Questionnaire (measuring positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment), and a 16ᵢtem Professional Commitment (PC) Questionnaire. Network analysis was employed to examine the interrelationships among PsyCap subdimensions, wellbeing components, and professional commitment. Results Network analysis revealed that positive emotion demonstrated the highest strength centrality, suggesting its central position within the network structure. Selfₑfficacy and resilience also played important roles as key psychological resources linking psychological capital and teacher wellbeing. Hope exhibited high bridge centrality, connecting goalₒriented pathways to career commitment, whereas optimism showed limited bridging roles, potentially reflecting cultural inclinations toward pragmatic hope over abstract optimism. Node strength demonstrated moderateₜoₕigh stability (CScoefficient = 0. 749), but betweenness centrality declined in subsampling analyses (50% subsampling: r = 0. 45), revealing contextdependent fragility. Discussion These findings advance a subdimensionₛpecific framework, emphasizing that dynamic interactions, rather than aggregate PsyCap scores, drive educators' vocational resilience. Methodologically, network analysis outperformed traditional latent variable models in capturing nonₗinear dynamics. Culturally tailored interventions prioritizing hope and resilience, rather than generalized optimism, are recommended to optimize teacher support systems. This study highlights the critical role of contextₛensitive, networkᵢnformed approaches in occupational health research and policy design.
Zhang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.