ArticleBMC psychology2025
How career adaptability affects university students' job search behavior and subjective well-being: the role of career choice optimistic bias.
Article in BMC psychology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Leisure time management mediates the relationship between job search anxiety and career planning.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The relationship between career adaptability, job search self-efficacy, and EFL college students' employment anxiety: the perspective of proactive personality.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The double-edged nature of multidimensional perfectionism: career adaptability in employment stress among college students.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Association between perceived school climate and employment anxiety among medical undergraduates: the mediating role of intentional self-regulation and the moderating role of perceived employability.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- From career exploration to experiencing well-being: the psychological mechanisms of university students' career development.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeAlthough an increasing number of studies have found that career adaptability is beneficial to individual career development, research on the mechanisms by which career adaptability affects job search behavior and subjective well-being among university students is relatively scarce. Based on the career construction model of adaptation and career construction theory, two studies were conducted to explore how career adaptability influences job search behavior and subjective well-being, and under what conditions these influences occur.
methodsStudy 1 conducted a behavioral experiment with 224 Chinese university students to examine how career adaptability and career choice optimistic bias affect job search behavior and subjective well-being. Study 2 employed a multi-wave questionnaire survey of 404 college seniors to test a moderated mediation model.
resultsThe results showed that career adaptability directly affects their job search behavior and indirectly affects their subjective well-being by influencing their job search behavior. Students with high career adaptability had higher levels of subjective well-being than those with low career adaptability, regardless of their optimistic or pessimistic biases. In addition, students with high career adaptability engaged in more job search behavior when they had optimistic or not excessively pessimistic bias (no bias and low pessimistic bias). Furthermore, the mediating effect of job search behavior in linking career adaptability to subjective well-being was stronger with increased career choice optimistic bias.
conclusionThis study explores the influence mechanism of career adaptability on university students' job search behavior and subjective well-being from the perspective of career construction. Moreover, career adaptability affects university students' job search behavior and subjective well-being differently under varying levels of career choice optimistic bias. These findings contribute to the integration of positive psychology into career psychology.
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