ArticleFrontiers in psychology2026
Shifting resource dominance in career decision-making difficulties: a competitive mediation model of resilience and general self-efficacy among Chinese university students.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- When Less Confidence Reaps More AI Benefits: A Compensatory Pattern Through Future Work Self-Salience.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Machine learning-based analysis of key factors and mediating mechanisms of career decision-making difficulties among higher vocational college students.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In contemporary labor markets characterized by heightened uncertainty and structural constraints, career decision-making difficulties (CDD) have become a salient psychological challenge for university students. Drawing on an integrated framework of future-oriented cognition and psychological resources, the present study examined how future work self clarity (FWSC) is associated with CDD through two distinct psychological resources-resilience and general self-efficacy (GSE)-and whether these resources operate in competing directions. A sample of 1,498 Chinese undergraduate students completed measures of FWSC, resilience, GSE, and CDD. Multiple mediation analyses were conducted using PROCESS Model 6 with bootstrapping procedures. Results showed that FWSC was directly and negatively associated with CDD. At the indirect level, FWSC exerted opposing effects on CDD through parallel mediators: resilience positively mediated the association between FWSC and CDD, whereas GSE served as a negative mediator. Due to the countervailing directions of these two indirect paths, the total indirect effect was nonsignificant, despite both specific indirect effects being statistically reliable. In addition, a significant serial indirect effect emerged, indicating that FWSC increased resilience, which in turn enhanced GSE and subsequently reduced CDD. These findings suggest that the influence of future-oriented cognition on career decision-making is not uniformly adaptive but depends on the configuration of psychological resources through which it is translated. Specifically, resilience may amplify decisional strain under conditions of high goal clarity and contextual constraint, whereas general self-efficacy provides a more stable protective pathway. By demonstrating a competitive multiple-mediation structure, this study highlights the differentiated functions of psychological resources in career decision processes and underscores the importance of considering resource configurations when addressing career decision-making difficulties among university students.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.