Facial dissatisfaction and college students’ sense of meaning in life: The roles of defeat and ego depletion

We examined the relationship between college students' facial dissatisfaction and their sense of meaning in life, incorporating defeat and ego depletion as mediators. Participants were 2,671 Chinese college students who completed the Negative Physical Self Scale, the Defeat Scale, the Ego Depletion Scale, and the Meaning in Life Questionnaire. There was a negative correlation between students’ facial dissatisfaction and their sense of meaning in life, and defeat and ego depletion had both independent and chain mediating effects on this relationship. These results reveal the mechanism of the relationship between facial dissatisfaction and sense of meaning in life among college students, providing a preliminary basis for studying the causal relationship of these variables. Our findings also provide a theoretical basis for improving the sense of meaning in life of college students.