Career Decision-Making Difficulties and Mental Health: The Joint Moderations of Proactive Coping and Future Time Perspective

Coping with career decision-making difficulties is a significant developmental challenge for undergraduates. Although proactive coping is often emphasized by counselors and educators as important for career preparation, its role in the career decision-making context remains unclear. The current study examined how proactive coping and future time perspective (valence and connectedness) moderated the relationship between career decision-making difficulties and mental health (anxiety, depression, and stress) among 1204 undergraduates from 19 universities located in thirteen districts in China (52.6% female, M age = 20.59, SD = 1.30). Hierarchical regression revealed a significant three-way interaction among the career decision-making difficulties, proactive coping, and connectedness (but not valence) across all mental health outcomes. Conditional moderation analysis further showed that: (1) proactive coping did not significantly buffer the effects of career decision-making difficulties on anxiety, depression and stress when connectedness was high; (2) proactive coping exacerbated the associations between career decision-making difficulties and anxiety, depression, stress under low levels of connectedness. These findings suggest that proactive coping may not always be beneficial in career decision-making contexts.