The Effect of Resilience on Stress and Anger Levels among Senior College Students in India: A Simple Linear Regression Analysis

Description

Riya Kulkarni¹ and Anuja Brahme² (Department of Psychology, Sir Parashurambhau (SP) College, Pune, Maharashtra¹ and Department of Psychology, SP College, Pune, Maharashtra²)

Recent studies identify Resilience as a buffer that helps mitigate the effects of stress and anger among college students, where decreased resilience is associated with greater stress and anger expression (Mandal & Roy, 2024; Pooja & Dhanaraj, 2025). Considering the increasing stress and emotional challenges faced by young adults, the current study examined the interconnection between stress, anger and resilience among students pursuing undergraduate or postgraduate degrees in India. A cross-sectional design was adopted, and standardised quantitative tools were used to collect data: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) (Cohen & Willamson, 1988), Novaco Anger Scale (NAS-25 items) (Novaco, 2003), and Resilience Scale (RS-30-items) (Laxami & Narain, 2017). Participants were recruited through snowball sampling. The findings demonstrated a statistically significant positive relationship between stress and anger (r = 0.374, p < .001), suggesting that students experiencing greater levels of perceived stress tend to exhibit elevated anger responses. On the contrary, there was a statistically significant inverse relationship between resilience and stress (r = -0.431, p < .001), as well as anger (r = -0.304, p <.002), suggesting that students with greater levels of resilience reported lower levels of stress and anger. Further linear regression indicated that resilience significantly predicted lower stress and anger levels. The statistically significant R2 value of 0.186 implies that resilience accounts for 18.6% of the variation in the Perceived Stress. Similarly, the statistically significant R2 value of 0.093 implies that resilience contributes to 9.3% of the variation in Anger levels in this analytical framework. These results highlight the crucial role of resilience in helping students navigate emotional difficulties and maintain emotional stability, and recommend integrating resilience-enhancing strategies into student wellness programs.