Intertemporal Choices Of Different Social Classes

For now,China's poverty reducing work has entered a crucial stage,and the solution of poverty problem is of great significance for improving individual well-being and promoting social development.During the process of solving the problem of poverty,it is found that simple material support can hardly change the difficult situation of the poor people sustainably.In addition to the lack of material resources,psychological poverty also plays an important role,and irrational decision making is an important manifestation of psychological poverty.Therefore,it is of great practical significance to study the characteristics and psychological mechanism of different social classes in economic decision-making,based on this,it is also beneficial to find appropriate intervention measures to improve the persistence and solidification of poverty.A large number of previous studies have found that low class people have a higher delay discount rate in intertemporal choice,which means they are more short-sighted.However,some recent studies on Chinese subjects have found inconsistent results with previous studies,they found that the lower class does not necessarily show a higher delay discount rate than the higher class in intertemporal choice.What's more,under the influence of future orientation and other factors,the lower class also showed the characteristics of long-term planning and foresight in different types of intertemporal choice.Under this circumstance,whether there are significant differences in the delay discount rate of individuals of different classes in intertemporal choice,what factors influence the relationship between them? Through which mechanism this variable influences the intertemporal choice of different classes? We will answer the above questions by the following three studies.In the first study,the relationship between social class and intertemporal choice and the role of future orientation were tested by questionnaire.The results show that there is no significant difference in the delay discount rate between high and low social class in intertemporal choice,while the future orientation is the moderator between subjective social class and intertemporal choice.That is,when the future orientation is low,the delay discount rate of low subjective class is significantly higher than that of high subjective class.However,under the condition of higher future orientation,there is no significant difference in the delay discount rate between the higher and lower subjective classes.On the basis of study 1,the intergroup design of 2(high vs.low social class)×2(high vs.low future orientation)was used.We selected adult workers as participants,and experimental manipulation was used to initiate different levels of future orientation to test the results of study 1.The result of data analysis is consistent with that of the first study.There is no significant difference in the delay discount rate of different classes in intertemporal choice,and the future orientation effectively moderate the relationship between social classes and delay discounting rate in intertemporal choice.In the third study,life history strategy was introduced as a mediating variable to explain the moderating effect of future orientation on social class and intertemporal choice.Social samples were selected as the research object on the network questionnaire platform,and the overall test of the general model was conducted through the questionnaire method.The results show that there is a negative correlation between social class and the delay discount rate in intertemporal choice,but the correlation level is not significant.However,the way that social class influences the intertemporal selection of individuals through life history strategy is established,which indicates that life history strategy plays a mediating role between social class and intertemporal selection.The interaction between future orientation and subjective social class has a significant effect on intertemporal choice,but not on life history strategy,indicating that the general model is not valid,which may be because the moderating effect of future orientation to the main effect is not realized through the path of life history strategy.On the basis of previous studies,this paper examines the performance of different classes in intertemporal choice,complements the research on the behavioral decisionmaking of different social class and the psychological mechanism behind it,providing possible intervention paths to reduce the persistence and solidification of poverty.