A growing number of studies suggest that flow experience is associated with life satisfaction, eudaimonic well-being, and the perceived strength of one’s social and place identity. However, little research has placed emphasis on flow and its relations with negative experiences such as anxiety. The current study investigated the relations between flow and anxiety by considering the roles of self-esteem and academic self-efficacy. The study sample included 590 Chinese university students, who were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire on flow, anxiety, self-esteem, and academic self-efficacy. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS software, in which both factorial analysis and path analysis were performed. Results revealed that the experience of flow negatively predicted anxiety, and both self-esteem and academic self-efficacy fully mediated the path between flow and anxiety. Specifically, self-esteem played a crucial and complete mediating role in this relationship, while academic self-efficacy mediated the path between self-esteem and anxiety. Our findings enrich the literature on flow experience and help with identifying practical considerations for buffering anxiety and more broadly with fostering strategies for promoting psychological sustainability and resilience.

Within environmental psychology, the restorative environment is receiving increasing attention due to its favorable impact on people's mental recovery, stress reduction, and psychophysiological well-being. Flow theory, as one of the foundations of positive psychology, is a popular theoretical framework for understanding human flourishing and well-being. The restorative environment is suggested to facilitate flow experience and city identity from the perspective of positive environmental psychology. Nonetheless, systematic research investigating them all together can hardly be traced. Thus, through a preliminary review of 169 relevant studies retrieved from the data source, this work proposes a novel theoretical model in which people's interactions within the restorative environment facilitate their experience of flow and perceived city identity. Additionally, this research provides conceptual guidance for city workers to engage in nature-based intervention and leisure therapy for improved well-being. Overall, this review endeavors to contribute to developing urban workers' restoration, happiness, and well-being from both practical and theoretical perspectives.

A happy adolescent may live a healthy and successful life. This study focused on parental expectations in the Chinese cultural context and investigated whether and under what conditions adolescents’ perceived parental expectations are associated with their happiness, the affective component of subjective well-being. This cross-sectional study included a sample of 1510 Chinese adolescents; the average age of the adolescents was 12.39 years, and 55.40% were boys. A questionnaire including the perceived parental expectations scale, self-efficacy scale, connectedness subscale and one item that measured happiness was administered to the adolescents. The results reveal that self-efficacy moderates the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness. For adolescents who exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy, perceived parental expectations are negatively correlated with happiness; in contrast, for adolescents who exhibit lower levels of self-efficacy, perceived parental expectations are not related to happiness. Moreover, the results reveal that connectedness moderates the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness. Among adolescents who exhibit higher levels of connectedness, a nonsignificant relationship is observed between perceived parental expectations and happiness; in contrast, among adolescents who exhibit lower levels of connectedness, perceived parental expectations are negatively related to happiness. This study reveals that, under conditions featuring higher levels of self-efficacy or lower levels of connectedness, perceived parental expectations are not conducive to their happiness. These findings have important implications with regard to parenting practices.

Background: Worry proneness has been proposed to influence uncertainty processing; however, its neural mechanisms during different forms of uncertain decision-making remain poorly understood. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate behavioral and neural responses associated with risky and ambiguous decision-making and to examine how individual differences in worry proneness relate to uncertainty-related neural processing. Methods: Participants completed a modified ambiguity–risk decision-making task during fMRI scanning. Whole-brain, region-of-interest (ROI), and continuous PSWQ-based correlation analyses were conducted to characterize neural responses associated with uncertainty type and individual differences in worry proneness. Results: Behavioral analyses revealed no significant effects of worry proneness or uncertainty type on gambling choices or reaction times. Whole-brain analyses showed that risky decisions elicited greater activation than ambiguous decisions in the right insula, right inferior parietal lobule, and left supramarginal gyrus, whereas ambiguous decisions preferentially recruited the right superior temporal gyrus. An exploratory peak-level interaction between worry proneness and uncertainty type was identified in the right middle frontal gyrus (BA6), with higher worry proneness associated with lower BA6 activation during risky decision-making. Continuous analyses further showed that BA6 activation during risky decisions was negatively correlated with PSWQ scores. ROI analyses demonstrated greater activation during risky than ambiguous decisions in the bilateral caudate nucleus, left insula, and right inferior frontal gyrus. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that risky and ambiguous decision-making are associated with partially dissociable patterns of neural activation. Worry proneness was not associated with widespread alterations in behavioral performance or uncertainty-related neural responses; however, exploratory analyses identified localized associations between worry proneness and prefrontal neural responses during risky decision-making. These findings suggest that individual differences in worry proneness may be related to selective variation in specific neural processes rather than broad alterations in the neural systems supporting uncertainty processing.