Many STEM programs now require students to take non-technical courses to develop the soft skills necessary for professional practice, yet engineering students frequently resist this requirement. While prior research often attributes this resistance to heavy workloads, little is known about its cognitive and identity-related mechanisms. This study fills this knowledge gap by examining the effects of Cognitive Switching Costs, Work Overload, and Role Ambiguity on students' Affective Resistance to non-STEM coursework, as well as the subsequent impact on their Willingness to Engage and Long-Term Adoption of skills. We collected survey data from 212 undergraduate Computer Science and Engineering students and tested directional relationships using sequential OLS regression. Role Ambiguity emerged as the strongest predictor of Affective Resistance (beta of 0.47, p less than 0.001), exceeding the effects of Work Overload (beta of 0.20, p equals 0.007) and Cognitive Switching Cost (beta of 0.14, p equals 0.038). In turn, Affective Resistance significantly reduced Willingness to Engage (beta of -0.25, p less than 0.001), while Willingness to Engage served as a strong predictor of Long-Term Adoption (beta of 0.55, p less than 0.001). These results indicate that student resistance is driven primarily by the incongruence between non-technical content and students' emergent professional identities, rather than by cognitive effort or workload alone. To improve outcomes, curricula should focus on reducing role ambiguity by placing humanities and social science material in clear engineering contexts.

翻译：当前许多STEM（科学、技术、工程、数学）专业要求学生修读非技术类课程，以培养职业实践所需的软技能，但工程类学生常对此要求产生抵触。尽管先前研究多将这种抵触归因于课业负担过重，但其认知与身份认同层面的机制尚不明确。本研究通过考察认知转换成本、工作负荷超载与角色模糊对学生非STEM课程情感抵触的影响，以及这些因素对其参与意愿与技能长期内化程度的后续作用，填补了这一知识空白。我们收集了212名计算机科学与工程本科生的问卷调查数据，并采用序贯OLS回归检验了变量间的定向关系。结果显示，角色模糊是情感抵触的最强预测因子（β=0.47，p<0.001），其影响超过工作负荷超载（β=0.20，p=0.007）与认知转换成本（β=0.14，p=0.038）。情感抵触显著降低了学生的参与意愿（β=-0.25，p<0.001），而参与意愿又是技能长期内化的强预测指标（β=0.55，p<0.001）。这些发现表明，学生的抵触情绪主要源于非技术性内容与其逐渐形成的职业身份之间的不匹配，而非仅由认知努力或课业负担所致。为提升教学成效，课程设计应着重通过将人文社科材料置于明确的工程情境中来降低角色模糊性。