The Relationship between the Parental Psychological Control Perceived by University Students and Delay Behavior: The Mediating Effect of Learned Helplessness

The purpose of this study is to identify the mediated effect of learned lethargy in the impact of psychological control of parents perceived by college students on delayed behavior. To verify the research problem, posted a survey link on the university student community site available through school certification, along with snowball sampling for university students attending four-year college in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Gangwon. With this data, the correlation with mediator effect was analyzed by SPSS PROGRAM 25.0 ver. After the confirming the correlation of each variable, the regression analysis method proposed by Baron and Kenny and sobel test were conducted to confirm the mediating effect. The following is the results identified in this study. First, correlation analysis between key variables showed that a static correlation among parental psychological control, learned lethargy, and delayed behavior exists. Second, a mediating effect of learned inertia in the relationship between the psychological control of parents and delayed behavior that college students perceive is confirmed. This suggests that college-aged students are also affected by parental control of the psychological field, leading to delayed actions that put off their work by making them learn the lethargy of not being able to escape from such an inconvenient situation. Based on these results, implications for the actual counseling practice and suggestions for susequent research were discussed.