Psychological Development and Education ›› 2015, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (4): 451-458.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2015.04.09

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Goal Striving and Hopelessness in The College-to-career Transition: The Role of Gender and Social Support

SUN Ling1, NING Caifang1, HUANG Silin1,2, DOU Donghui1, ZHANG Hongchuan1, ZHANG Mei1   

  1. 1. Department of Psychology, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China;
    2. Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University 100875, Beijing, China
  • Online:2015-07-15 Published:2015-07-15

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Abstract: Graduation is an important transition in life for college students. What they feel about their personal goals and social support has a great influence on the feeling of hopelessness for future. The present research recruited 192 senior college students and investigated the autonomy of personal goals by adopting the target-measurement approach and further evaluated social support and hopelessness for future by using questionnaires. The results showed that (1) Students who have a settled destination showed remarkably higher hopeless feeling than others. (2) The higher the goal autonomy, the lower the degree of hopelessness for future would be. (3) The more social support they felt, the lower the degree of hopelessness would be. (4) The influence of goal autonomy on the feeling of hopelessness is greater for male students than for female students. The result indicates that when facing significant transition in life during Emerging Adulthood, one can adjust its pessimistic expectation to future by constructing autonomous individual goals and improving social support; what's more, the emphasis of education should be distinguished between genders.

Key words: goal striving, social support, hopelessness, gender, emerging adulthood

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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