Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 15, 2026

The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
Perceived Academic Stress Predicts State Anxiety via Self-Compassion in High-Achieving Junior School Students: A
Junyao Zhou1, Yunhan Cao1, Xuehua Deng2
1School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
Background:
Previous research has demonstrated the association between perceived academic stress and anxiety. However, the relationship and mechanism between daily self-compassion and daily state anxiety in adolescents, especially high-achieving students, remains unclear.
Methods:
This study employed a 21-day daily diary design and multilevel modeling to explore whether and how daily perceived academic stress is associated with daily state anxiety. Data were collected from 2025. A total of 106 high-achieving ninth-grade students whose academic achievement ranked in the top 8.68% (59 males, 47 females; ages 14-17 years, M = 15.02, SD = 0.59) completed daily measures of perceived academic stress, self-compassion, and state anxiety across 21 consecutive days.
Results:
Multilevel regression analysis showed that daily perceived academic stress significantly positively predicted daily state anxiety (b = 0.68, p < 0.001). Furthermore, the 1-1-1 multilevel mediation analysis indicated that daily self-compassion mediated the relationship between daily perceived academic stress and daily state anxiety (within-level: b = 0.05, 95% CI = [0.036, 0.074], between-level: b = 0.31, 95% CI = [0.118, 0.528]).
Conclusion:
The results of this study suggest that interventions aimed at enhancing self-compassion, such as Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), may help reduce state anxiety in adolescents.
Related Concept Videos
Psychological Responses to Stress
Self-Discrepancy Theory
Stress Prevention and Stress Management Techniques I
Conscientiousness
Conscientious individuals tend to be organized, responsible, and disciplined. They prioritize completing tasks and following structured routines,...
General State of Stress
Specifically, consider a tetrahedral element where one face, labeled XYZ, is perpendicular to the line OA, and the remaining faces align with the coordinate axes with point O as the origin. At any point, such as point O, the stress tensor can be used to determine the stress...
Sources of Self-Esteem III: Social Comparison
Self-Discrepancy and Its Effects
