Due to the increasing academic pressure, it is almost impossible for college students to flourish without seeking any help from others. Yet, how individuals’ beliefs about stress impact help-seeking and its outcomes lacks adequate attention. Despite a growing recognition of help-seeking, less is known about whether help-seeking always benefits students under pressure, and how different stress mindsets motivate help-seeking in different ways. We adopt the two-dimensional theory of help-seeking to highlight how stress mindsets influence academic behaviors via help-seeking. A three-wave survey of 488 students in China revealed that: (1) Autonomous help-seeking (AHS) enhances academic engagement and inhibits academic burnout, whereas dependent help-seeking (DHS) exacerbates academic burnout and weakens academic engagement. (2) Stress-is-enhancing mindset (SIEM) drives AHS, and stress-is-debilitating mindset (SIDM) drives DHS. (3) SIEM contributes to academic engagement via AHS, and SIDM contributes to academic burnout via DHS. By examining the distinctive drivers of two-dimensional help-seeking and the differential impact of help-seeking on academic behaviors, our study seeks to build on previous research by using help-seeking to develop a new theoretical model of stress mindsets and academic behaviors, theorizing and testing multiple antecedents and consequences associated with the bright and dark sides of help-seeking. In doing so, our research reveals the paradoxical mediation effects of help-seeking between stress mindsets and academic behaviors, providing a more in-depth depiction of the nature of help-seeking that advances the understanding of the existing literature.

Guangxia Guo is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Education at Beijing Institute of Technology, China.  Her current research interests are creativity and help-seeking.