Shifting resource dominance in career decision-making difficulties: a competitive mediation model of resilience and general self-efficacy among Chinese university students

In contemporary labor markets characterized by heightened uncertainty and structural constraints, career decision-making difficulties (CDD) have become a salient psychological challenge for university students. Drawing on an integrated framework of future-oriented cognition and psychological resources, the present study examined how future work self clarity (FWSC) is associated with CDD through two distinct psychological resources—resilience and general self-efficacy (GSE)—and whether these resources operate in competing directions. A sample of 1,498 Chinese undergraduate students completed measures of FWSC, resilience, GSE, and CDD. Multiple mediation analyses were conducted using PROCESS Model 6 with bootstrapping procedures. Results showed that FWSC was directly and negatively associated with CDD. At the indirect level, FWSC exerted opposing effects on CDD through parallel mediators: resilience positively mediated the association between FWSC and CDD, whereas GSE served as a negative mediator. Due to the countervailing directions of these two indirect paths, the total indirect effect was nonsignificant, despite both specific indirect effects being statistically reliable. In addition, a significant serial indirect effect emerged, indicating that FWSC increased resilience, which in turn enhanced GSE and subsequently reduced CDD. These findings suggest that the influence of future-oriented cognition on career decision-making is not uniformly adaptive but depends on the configuration of psychological resources through which it is translated. Specifically, resilience may amplify decisional strain under conditions of high goal clarity and contextual constraint, whereas general self-efficacy provides a more stable protective pathway. By demonstrating a competitive multiple-mediation structure, this study highlights the differentiated functions of psychological resources in career decision processes and underscores the importance of considering resource configurations when addressing career decision-making difficulties among university students.