Psychological shields in times of risk: the moderating mechanism of psychological capital on anxiety and procrastination among adolescents

To explore the impacts of risk perception on anxiety and procrastination of adolescents and the moderating effect of psychological capital, a survey was conducted on 663 secondary school students using the risk perception questionnaire, the adolescent psychological capital questionnaire, the anxiety self-assessment scale, and the pure procrastination scale. The results were as follows: (1) The level of risk perception of adolescents has a significantly positive predictive effect on anxiety; (2) Psychological capital is significantly negatively related to both anxiety and procrastination; (3) Psychological capital has a noticeably negative moderating effect between risk perception and anxiety. The above results suggest that for high school students, high risk perception leads to high anxiety, but high psychological capital is accompanied by lower anxiety and procrastination, and high psychological capital weakens the positive predictive effect of risk perception on anxiety.