Feeling Insecure:Psychological Experience Of Air Pollution

As one of the most severe environmental problems,air pollution has been acknowledged as an outstanding social issue in contemporary China,which manifests its impendency and particularity.The reason is that,except huge economic lost and physical health damage,air pollution has caused unprecedented psychological shock among Chinese.On the other hand,feeling insecure results from frequent environmental risk is a spiritual predicament that each of us may face.Air pollution in China offers us a valuable case study on this predicament.Therefore,it is necessary and urgent for psychosocial researchers to explore the psychological impacts of air pollution so as to better understand the psychological predicament it caused.Literature review have documented a series of negative psychological impacts of air pollution.According to existing researches,air pollution may result in cognitive function impairment,emotional disturbance,abnormal behavior and decreased subjective well-being.However,these existing conclusions are characterized by three limitations,that is,pathological orientation,simplistic orientation,and suspending orientation.Further analysis reveals that these orientations could be attributed to the underlying paradigm utilized by researchers,toxicant-response paradigm and stimulus-reaction paradigm.According to both paradigms,air pollution was treated as toxic substance or negative stimulus,and psychological impacts due to air pollution were nothing more than pathological symptoms caused by toxic substance or negative stimulus(i.e.,pathological orientation).Hence,attention has been exclusively focused on the quantitative relationship between air pollution exposure and measures of psychological impacts(i.e.,simplistic orientation).Furthermore,little research has been carried out that has explored how psychological distresses were buffered in everyday lives(i.e.,suspending orientation)Risk-experience paradigm was proposed to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks of existing paradigms,and guide empirical study.This paradigm suggests that air pollution was constructed as an environmental risk in individual's mind,and its psychological effect was experienced in daily lives.Especially,feeling of insecurity was viewed as one of the typical psychological experience of air pollution in contemporary China.Four studies were conducted to examine the feeling of insecurity due to air pollutionChapter 4 was designed to reconstruct the feeling of insecurity and develop a scale specific to situational insecurity feeling.In this study,felt insecurity was defined as a holistic perception of "be at risk",which could be regarded as a multi-dimensional concept including emotional,cognitive and behavioral aspects Based on this three-dimensional conception.The State Insecurity Feeling Scale(SIFS)of 12 items was developed and psychometric analyses provided strong evidence that the SIFS is a valid and reliable measure of individuals' feeling about their insecurity.Chapter 5 included three studies aimed to examine the relationship between air pollution and perceived insecurity.Study 1 analyse data from the Chinese General Social Survey 2013 to test whether the greater perceived air pollution is associated with the increased level of perceived insecurity(which was operationalized as the perception of social disorder).This hypothesis was supported by results of Study 1 Two subsequent experiments(Study 2 and Study 3)established the causal effect of psychologically experiencing a polluted(vs.clean)environment on felt insecurity Furthermore,this causal effect was independent of participants'air pollution exposure history.In other words,air pollution could cause the feeling of insecurity through psychological priming(vs.environmental exposure)Chapter 6 examined the mediating and moderating processes through which air pollution is lined with felt insecurity.Our model posited that the effect of air pollution on felt insecurity is mediated by institutional trust,while this mediation effect was moderated by individual's perceived control.Overall,data from 428 participants supported this model.The results indicated that:(1)institutional trust played completed mediating effect between air pollution and felt insecurity;(2)perceived control moderated this mediation effect.For participants with greater perceived control,the effect of institutional trust on felt insecurity reduced.Chapter 7 was designed to examine whether and how the felt insecurity due to air pollution was buffered.Drawing on existing researches concerning emotion-foucused strategies,materialism(passive strategy)and nostalgia(active strategy)were proposed to compensate the felt insecurity.The correlational and causal relationship between air pollution and materialism were verified,but a mediation analysis failed to support that air pollution affects materialism through felt insecurity These results mean that materialism may not be used by individuals to buffer the felt insecurity due to air pollution.Positive associations between air pollution and nostalgia were supported.And subsequent experiment further indicated that experimentally induced nostalgia could reduce significantly self-reported felt insecurity.These results suggested that nostalgia could be used to buffer felt insecurity due to air pollution.The implications of present paper were discussed as following.First,research findings provide new evidences to better understand the negative psychological experience due to air pollution.Second,risk-experience paradigm may function as a valuable framework for future researches that aim to explore the psychological predicament of high-risk society.Third,the operational measurement and empirical study of state insecurity provide helpful supplements for insecurity.