Chinese college students’ optimism and social creativity mediated by creative self-efficacy and hope

We explored the impact of optimism on social creativity and the mediating roles of hope and creative self-efficacy (CSE) in this relationship. Participants were 766 college students at 8 universities in China, who completed the Social Creativity Questionnaire for College Students, the Life Orientation Test-Revised, the Adult Dispositional Hope Scale, and the Short Scale of Creative Self. The results showed that optimism was not a significant predictor of the social creativity of college students, but its effect could be indirectly predicted through the individual mediators of CSE and hope, as well as the chain mediating effect of CSE and hope. Thus, we can conclude that optimism, CSE, and hope influence the social creativity of Chinese college students.