Abstract

This study tried to identify the psychological mechanisms that middle and high school students can adaptively solve various problems, and to identify differences according to gender and school level. To this end, the growth mindset was set as an independent variable predicting the problem-solving ability of middle and high school students, and ego-resilience and emotional intelligence were set as the mediating variables. As for the research data, responses of 94 middle school students(40 males, 54 females) and 134 high school students(63 males, 71 females) who participated through mobile and off-line were analyzed using SPSS 24.0 and AMOS 18.0. The results are as follows. First, differences according to gender and school level were significant only in emotional intelligence. Second, ego-resilience and emotional intelligence mediated the relationship between growth mindset and problem-solving ability respectively. Third, the dual mediation effect of ego-resilience and emotional intelligence was significant in the relationship between growth mindset and problem-solving ability. Based on these results, theoretical and practical discussions and implications for improving problem-solving ability of middle and high school students are presented.