The antecedents and profiles of postgraduate students’ academic procrastination: examining the role of mindset-based meaning system
研究调查了固定型思维如何通过学业自我效能感和失败恐惧的中介作用影响研究生学业拖延，并识别出三种学生类型：成长导向型、脆弱易感型和防御驱动型。
Despite the established importance of mindset in education, its specific role in postgraduate contexts remains underexplored, particularly concerning how a fixed mindset influences the mechanisms of academic procrastination. Guided by the mindset-based meaning system framework, this study investigated whether a fixed mindset predicts academic procrastination among postgraduate students through the sequential mediation of academic self-efficacy and fear of failure. A sample of 811 postgraduate students was surveyed and analyzed using both variable-centered and person-centered approaches. The variable-centered SEM analysis confirmed that a fixed mindset indirectly increased procrastination through lower self-efficacy and higher fear of failure. The person-centered LPA analysis identified three distinct subgroups: Growth-oriented, Vulnerability-prone, and Defense-driven profiles. The Growth-oriented profile, characterized by low fixed mindset, high self-efficacy, and low fear of failure, reported the lowest levels of academic procrastination. Contrary to the Vulnerability-prone profile, the Defense-driven profile exhibited the highest level of academic procrastination despite high fixed mindset when coupled with high academic self-efficacy, underscoring the importance of considering holistic patterns rather than isolated characteristics to comprehend the intricacies of the mindset-based meaning system. These findings highlight the need for educational institutions to develop comprehensive interventions targeting postgraduate students’ mindset-based meaning systems to foster adaptive behaviors and mitigate academic procrastination.