Effects of Mentor's Autonomy Support on Students' Creativity: Meditating Role of Autonomous Motivation and Moderating Role of Students' Gender

Mentor's leadership is an important factor on graduate creativity. From self-determined theory perspective, this research analyzes the mechanism of mentor's autonomy support leadership on graduate student's creativity by investigating the mediation role of autonomous motivation and the moderation role of individual gender. A questionnaire survey is carried out on 300 graduate students in University of Science and Technology of China. The results show that:mentor's autonomy support has a positive effect on graduate students' creativity. Moreover, graduate students' autonomous motivation plays a total mediated role in the relationship between the mentor's autonomy support and students' creativity. Compared with male students, mentor's autonomy support have a stronger positive effect on female students' creativity.