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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1515671
The Impact of Aesthetic Education on University Students' Psychological Wellbeing: Exploring Mediating and Moderating Effects
Provisionally accepted- 1 College of Cabin Crew, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin, China
- 2 School of Economics and Management, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin, China
- 3 Beijing Information Science and Technology University, Beijing, China
With rising psychological concerns among college students, educators and scholars are increasingly emphasizing mental health. As a key component of university curricula, aesthetic education plays a significant role in enhancing the psychological wellbeing of college students. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which focuses on three fundamental psychological needs-autonomy, competence, and relatedness-this study explores how aesthetic education influences the psychological well-being of university students. Specifically, aesthetic education fosters autonomy through self-expression, enhances competence by promoting creative development, and nurtures relatedness by facilitating social interaction in collaborative artistic activities. The study examines the mediating role of basic psychological needs and the moderating effects of gender and age. A total of 513 college students from China were surveyed using convenience sampling. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, hierarchical regression and mediation analysis were conducted using SPSS 26.0 to assess key variables, including aesthetic education, basic psychological needs, and psychological well-being. The results reveal significant positive correlations between aesthetic education, students' psychological wellbeing, and the fulfillment of basic psychological needs. Furthermore, aesthetic education significantly predicts the psychological well-being, with the satisfaction of basic psychological needs partially mediating this relationship. Gender and age were found to moderate the relationship between aesthetic education and psychological wellbeing to varying extents. These findings elucidate important associational pathways between aesthetic education, college students' psychological wellbeing, and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, contributing both to the understanding of SDT and to practical applications in the context of university-level aesthetic education. 1 lan ye 18/2/25 3:37 PM 已删除: the Psychological Wellbeing of lan ye 18/2/25 3:42 PM 已删除: Against the backdrop of increasingly 77 prominent psychological issues among college 78 students, there is growing attention from educators 79 and scholars regarding the importance of college 80 students' mental health. …s a crucial
Keywords: psychological wellbeing, Basic psychological needs, aesthetic education, self-determination theory, Collage students
Received: 23 Oct 2024; Accepted: 03 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ye, Li and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lan Ye, College of Cabin Crew, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin, China
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