Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between life stress, ego-resilience, and subjective well-being, and examine the moderating effect of ego-resilience on the relationship between life stress and subjective well-being of college students in order to provide valuable information for improving quality of life of college students. The participants were 326 college students (183 females) living in Seoul and suburbs, whose ages ranged from 17 to 33, and average was 20.08 (SD=2.45). The various psychological tests were used to measure life stresses, ego-resilience, life satisfaction, subjective happiness, negative/positive emotion, life motivation, and life satisfaction expectancy. Life stress of college students were closely correlated with traditional variables of well-being. Ego-resilience accounted independently more variance of subjective well-being than life stress, and additional accountability of ego-resilience for variances of subjective well-being variables with life stress was significant as well. Although it was failed to find the moderating effect of ego-resilience on life stress and traditional variables of subjective well-being, whereas moderating effect of ego-resilience on life stress and life expectancy was found. Students in stressful circumstances had significant lower level of life expectancy than those in less stressful circumstance. But this was only for students with lower ego-resilience. The present study reiterates roles of life stress and ego-resilience on subjective well-being, suggests buffering effect of ego-resilience on relationship between life stress and life satisfaction expectancy. (Korean J Str Res 2009;17:379∼387)

• Keywords: Stress, Ego-resilience, Subjective well-being, Life satisfaction, Happiness;