Cultivating Academic Buoyancy in a High-Pressure Confucian Context: Testing Adaptive Beliefs About Failure as a Longitudinal Mediator of Self-Compassion Among Chinese Adolescents.

Abstract

While self-compassion buffers stress, the longitudinal cognitive mechanisms supporting academic buoyancy under high-pressure educational systems remain unclear. A three-wave design tracked 856 Chinese adolescents (mean age = 15.43 years, SD = 0.62, 51.9% female) from nine Hong Kong secondary schools. A random-intercept cross-lagged panel model partitioned traits from within-person fluctuations. At the between-person level, stable individual differences in self-compassion, adaptive beliefs about failure, and academic buoyancy were positively correlated. At the within-person level, temporary positive deviations in self-compassion prospectively predicted increased adaptive beliefs about failure, which sequentially predicted enhanced academic buoyancy. These findings suggest that naturally occurring within-person fluctuations in self-compassion are associated with adaptive setback evaluations, supporting cognitive reframing.