| Fatalistic belief is defined as the tendency of individuals or groups to believe that their destiny is ruled by an unseen force,rather than controlled by their will.People who hold a fatalistic mindset are more likely to explain unexpected life events in terms of factors such as fate,God,luck,chance,just rewards and punishments,which are often considered immutable(Abraído-Lanza,2007;Maercker,Ben-Ezra,Esparza,& Augsburger,2019).Interpreting human behaviour in terms of the Divine Order means conveying mostly denial,conformity or passivity(Lyratzopoulos et al.,2015),which can hinder people’s creativity and affect the development process of society.As a special group of students at a transitional stage in their development,their fatalistic belief deserve even more attention.In the past,most researchers have studied the factors influencing fatalistic belief based on individual demographic factors or family factors that cannot be easily changed.The aim of this study is to examine the influence of attributional and coping styles on fatalistic belief and to explore the mediating role of coping style in the relationship between attributional style and fatalistic belief,so as to propose and implement reasonable intervention programmes for fatalistic belief to reduce the level of fatalistic belief among university students.This research consists of three studies.In Study 1,we examined the mediating role of negative coping styles between uncontrollable attributions and fatalistic belief using a cross-sectional design with 403 university students.Based on this,in Study 2,we recruited 344 university students,which were randomly divided into three groups,to further examine the directionality of the stability between the two variables of attribution,coping style and fatalistic belief through a longitudinal follow-up design with three cross-lags over a period of eight months.Based on Study 1 and Study 2,in Study 3,we designed a group counselling intervention for university students’ fatalistic belief and selected first-year students from a university as the study participants.28 students were selected as members of the experimental group and 27 students were selected as members of the control group.The effectiveness of the fatalistic belief intervention was evaluated by using the design of comparative group with pretest and post-test.The conclusions are as follows:(1)The cross-sectional results indicate that college students’ negative coping style plays a mediating role between uncontrollable attribution style and fatalistic belief,suggesting that uncontrollable attributions can increase the tendency to cope negatively and thus be more receptive to fatalistic belief.(2)The longitudinal results show that college students’ uncontrollable attribution style positively predicts their fatalistic belief after 8 months,negative coping style positively predicts their fatalistic belief after 8 months,and uncontrollable attribution style positively predicts their negative coping style after 8 months.This result supports study 1,namely,the mediating effect is established.That is,it demonstrates that university students who tend to adopt an uncontrollable attribution style can influence the formation and acceptance of a predestination perspective by influencing the formation of their negative style.(3)The data from the intervention study shows that after the intervention of college students’ attribution style,the scores of uncontrollable attribution of the experimental group were significantly lower than those of the control group;the scores of negative coping style were significantly lower than those of the control group,and the level of fatalistic belief was significantly lower than that of the control group.In summary,the group counselling intervention programme of attribution style significantly reduced the level of university students’ uncontrollable attribution,which in turn reduced their levels of negative coping style and fatalistic belief. |
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