Exploring the Relationship between Academic Challenge Stress and Self-Rated Creativity of Graduate Students: Mediating Effects and Heterogeneity Analysis of Academic Self-Efficacy and Resilience

In the 21st century, creativity is a core competence and key thinking quality. Researchers and educators have been interested in exploring the effects of different stressors on individual creativity for decades. Using structural equation modeling and quantile regression, this study investigated the relationship between academic challenge stress and self-rated creativity of graduate students among 1210 Chinese graduate students. The study separately tested the mediating effect of resilience, the mediating effect of academic self-efficacy, and the chained mediating effect of both. This study analyzed the heterogeneity of the effects of academic challenge stress, academic self-efficacy, and resilience on self-rated creativity of different students. The research results showed that academic challenge stress had a direct positive effect on graduate students’ self-rated creativity. The mediating effect of resilience and academic self-efficacy and the chain mediating effect were established. The quantile regression revealed a decreasing marginal benefit of academic challenge stress and resilience for self-rated creativity and an inverted U-shaped relationship between academic self-efficacy and self-rated creativity.