Exploring the relationship between performance anxiety and subjective well-being in music performance students: the role of psychological resilience and perfectionism

Background Music performance students frequently encounter high-evaluation training and performance contexts, yet the conditional associations among performance anxiety, psychological resilience, perfectionism, and subjective well-being remain insufficiently understood. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 946 university music performance students in China. PROCESS Model 4 examined the indirect association through psychological resilience, while Model 72 examined the separate and joint moderating roles of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. Results Performance anxiety was negatively associated with subjective well-being. A significant indirect association was observed through psychological resilience. Adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism each moderated the performance anxiety-resilience association, whereas their three-way interaction was not significant. Both perfectionism dimensions also moderated the positive resilience-well-being association. The three-way interaction on this association was significant and negative, while the resilience-well-being association remained positive across all examined combinations of perfectionism. Conclusion Psychological resilience statistically accounted for part of the association between performance anxiety and subjective well-being, while adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism showed distinct separate and joint conditional patterns across the two focal associations.