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Abstract

The novel coronavirus pandemic has made life significantly more stressful for large populations of people. As one such demographic, university students worldwide have experienced a sudden shift toward the provision of socially distanced online education, often in the absence of a coherent institutional plan. The mechanisms of stress appraisal and response differ between individuals in part determined by personality. With a sample of 293 undergraduate students at a Japanese university operating under prohibitions relating to face-to-face education, this article examines the impact of personality on the affordance of socially distanced online education mediated through generalized life stress and online learning stress appraisal. A retrimmed structural model returned an acceptable goodness of fit accounting for 31.6% of the criterion variance. The model indicates that conscientiousness (positive) and neuroticism (negative) hold a significant mediated impact on the affordance of socially distanced online education through generalized life stress and online learning stress appraisal. Moreover, and in the absence of face-to-face social interaction, the model shows that extroverted students experience greater online learning stress appraisals than neurotic students. Neurotic students were, however, negatively impacted by appraisals of generalized life stress but not online learning stress. Informed by personality characteristics and stress appraisals, the outcomes are discussed in relation to educational improvements and appropriate pedagogies for the delivery of socially distanced online education.

۱٫ Introduction

The novel coronavirus pandemic has exerted a profound impact on public mental health contributing to an increase in depression, anxiety, insomnia, and stress appraisal [1–۵]. As a defensive physiological, psychological, and behavioral reaction, stress can be understood as the disruption arising from a perception that threat demands exceed one’s adaptive mitigation capacity [6]. The transactional stress theory [7, 8] contends that stress as an objective variable is present neither within the individual nor the environment but rather is emergent via an abstract relationship wherein “the separate person and situation elements are joined together to form a new relational meaning” ([۹]: ۲۹۴). The mechanisms of stress appraisal and coping are known to differ significantly between individuals [10] and are at least partially determined by personality [11–۱۳]. Personality “not only affects the appraisal of and coping with stress, but it is also crucial with regard to the selection and shaping of stressful situations” ([۱۴]: ۳۳۵). Certain individuals are therefore more predetermined to experience and respond to stress based on personality characteristics [15, 16].

Prior to the novel coronavirus pandemic, a declassified Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report contextualized education within an emergent volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous global environment [17]. The pandemic has exacerbated these concerns and situated education as a stressful domain for various stakeholders including students. In the context of Japanese society, a recent Japan Times (2021, February 28) [18] article entitled “COVID-19 pushes 1,300 Japanese university students to drop out” documents how many students have quit university due to an inability to pay tuition fees, loneliness and isolation, and an inability to make friends through online education, factors which also had a negative impact upon motivation to study. Beyond Japan, a plethora of recent studies have highlighted increases in stress among students brought about by conditions surrounding the pandemic [13, 19–۲۷]. These studies are important as mental health problems among students are associated with reduced academic performance, substance abuse, poor physical health, increased dropout rates, and avoidance-based coping strategies [28–۳۳].