Resilience, Life Satisfaction and Flourishing: Mediation of Positive and Negative Affects in the Covid-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated mental health problems, which motivated this research, aimed to test the effect of resilience, mediated by positive and negative affects, on life satisfaction and flourishing. A total of 261 Brazilian university students participated; they had an average age of 24.38 ± 7.44 years old, and 63.9% were female. They answered an online survey at the beginning of social isolation containing scales on resilience, life satisfaction, positive and negative affects, and flourishing, in addition to sociodemographic questions. In the mediation model, the results indicated sufficiently adequate fits [B-Sχ² (328) = 698.28; p = 0.001; B-Sχ² / df = 2.13; CFI = 0.91; TLI = 0.90; RMSEA = 0.066; p (RMSEA <0.05) = 0.001], showing a mediating effect for positive affect, which corroborates previous studies, suggesting the importance of resilience and positive emotions even during the COVID-19 pandemic to preserve the mental health of university students.