AccScience Publishing / HPR / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/hpr.0348
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Psychological Inflexibility, Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep, and Insomnia Severity among Chinese College Students: A Mediation Analysis

Yusong Zeng1* ,  Samuel Ken En Gan1,2,3,4
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1 APD Lab, College of Science, Math, and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang 325000, China
2 Department of Psychology, James Cook University, 387380, Singapore
3 School of Science and Technology, Singapore University of Social Sciences, 599494, Singapore
4 Department of Chemical Engineering, Inha University, Incheon 22212, South Korea
HPR, 0348 https://doi.org/10.36922/hpr.0348
Received: 28 October 2025 | Revised: 9 February 2026 | Accepted: 26 February 2026 | Published online: 28 April 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Background

Insomnia is pervasive among college students and may be exacerbated by maladaptive cognitive factors.

Objective

This study examined whether psychological inflexibility is associated with greater insomnia severity in Chinese college students and tested whether dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep mediate this relationship.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among university students recruited via convenience sampling from a university in China. A total of 104 students initially participated, and after data cleaning, the final analytic sample comprised 83 students (56% male; mean age = 20.89 ± 1.51 years). Psychological inflexibility, insomnia severity, and dysfunctional sleep beliefs and attitudes (DBAS) were assessed.

Results

Pearson’s correlations showed that psychological inflexibility was positively correlated with insomnia severity (r = 0.424, p < 0.001) and negatively correlated with DBAS-16 scores (r = −0.377, p < 0.001). Mediation analysis using Hayes’s PROCESS (Model 4) with bootstrapping indicated that dysfunctional sleep beliefs and attitudes partially mediated the association between inflexibility and insomnia. Greater inflexibility predicted more dysfunctional beliefs (β = −0.377, p < 0.001), and those beliefs, in turn, predicted higher insomnia severity (β = −0.231, p = 0.0328), accounting for a significant indirect effect (β = 0.087, 95% confidence interval [0.0002, 0.2050]). The direct effect of inflexibility on insomnia remained significant (β = 0.337, p = 0.002), while biological sex did not significantly affect the results.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that cognitively inflexible students tend to hold unhelpful beliefs and attitudes about sleep, which, in turn, contributes to greater insomnia severity.

Keywords
nsomnia
Psychological inflexibility
Dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep
College students
Mediation
Funding
This research was financially supported by Wenzhou- Kean University High-Level Talent Program (No. WB20220901000091).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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