Supervisors serve as the primary responsible parties in the cultivation of graduate students, and their supervisory style exerts a crucial influence on students’ innovativeness. Grounded in the cognitive appraisal theory of stress, this study investigates the impact of different types of supervisor supervisory styles on graduate students’ innovativeness through paired questionnaire surveys of both supervisors and students. Furthermore, it examines the mediating role of stress and the moderating effect of psychological resilience. The findings indicate that supportive supervisory style positively influences graduate students’ innovativeness through challenge stress, whereas controlling supervisory style negatively affects innovativeness via hindrance stress. Additionally, psychological resilience strengthens the positive relationship between challenge stress and innovativeness, while mitigating the negative impact of hindrance stress on innovativeness. These results elucidate the underlying pathways through which different supervisory styles influence graduate students’ innovativeness via stress mechanisms, providing theoretical foundations and practical insights for optimizing supervisory practices and enhancing the innovative competencies of graduate students.
Xu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.