The relationship between self-esteem and happiness of college students in China:A moderated mediation model

ABSTRACTABSTRACTThe objective of the study is to explore the influence of self-esteem on the happiness levels of college students and the mediating roles of social avoidance and loneliness. 1021 college students between 18 and 24 years of age completed the Self-esteem Scale, General Well-being Scale, Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, UCLA Loneliness Scale and Interpersonal Trust Scale.And descriptive statistical analysis and correlation analysis, structural equation model analysis were conducted. The result turns out that Self-esteem negatively predicted the happiness levels of college students. Self-esteem indirectly predicted happiness through three paths: mediating the roles of social avoidance, mediating the roles of loneliness and the chain-mediated roles of social avoidance and loneliness in college students.Interpersonal Trust moderated the relationship between loneliness and happiness.The higher the self-esteem levels of the college students, the less happiness they experienced.KEYWORDS: Self-esteemHappinessSocial avoidanceLonelinessInterpersonal trust AcknowledgmentsWe would like to extend our sincere gratitude for the constructive comments and suggestions made by the reviewers and editors. And we also would like to thank all participants who participated in this study.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Author's contributionYe Yuan and Zhengkun Yang: Designed the study and helped to data collection, analysis and interpretation.Zihan Zhou: Searched the literature and wrote the first draft of the manuscript.Yumeng Wang: Helped analyse the data.Huiqing Shen and Yayan Song: Helped amended the manuscript.Yali Zhang and XiWen: Helped amended the manuscript.Ke Zhao: Gave suggestions.Ke Jiang: Designed the study and supervised the whole research process and revised the draft.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Fund of Educational Science planning program of Zhejiang Province [grant numbers: 2023SB099], the National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Traning Program for College Students [grant number: 202110343067S] and undergraduate student scientific research project of Wenzhou Medical University [grant number: wyx2022101118]. The funding sources had no such involvement in the study design, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication