The Effect Of Childhood Socioeconomic Status On Psychological Poverty Among College Students: The Moderating Role Of Future Orientation

Purpose: This study investigates the influence of childhood socioeconomic status on psychological poverty among college students,as well as whether future orientation can play a moderating role.Methods: This study was divided into two parts.In the first part,a questionnaire was used to investigate the basic information of college students’ childhood socioeconomic status,psychological poverty,and future orientation,as well as the influence of childhood socioeconomic status on psychological poverty and the moderating role of future orientation.903 college students and graduate students from two universities in Harbin City were selected as the research subjects and were administered the Childhood Socioeconomic Status Scale,the Psychological Poverty Scale,and the Future Orientation Scale.In the second part,the study examines the influence of childhood socio-economic status on the sense of psychological poverty among college students through the vocabulary decision-making task paradigm.It also uses a writing task to evoke the participants’ future orientation and further investigates the intervention effect of future orientation on the impact of childhood socio-economic status on psychological poverty.Participants were selected based on their scores on the Childhood Socio-economic Status Scale,with 25 individuals in the low childhood socio-economic status group and 29 in the high group.Both groups of participants participated in the writing task and vocabulary decision-making task.Results:(1)There was a significant negative correlation between childhood socioeconomic status and sense of psychological poverty.The higher the childhood socioeconomic status,the lower the level of psychological poverty.Future orientation was significantly positively correlated with childhood socioeconomic status,with higher childhood socioeconomic status associated with higher levels of future orientation.There was no significant correlation between future orientation and sense of psychological poverty.(2)Future orientation had a moderating effect between childhood socioeconomic status and sense of psychological poverty.The level of psychological poverty in individuals with high future orientation significantly decreased with increasing childhood socioeconomic status,while the level of psychological poverty in individuals with low future orientation did not significantly decrease with increasing childhood socioeconomic status.(3)Using reaction time as the dependent variable and conducting a 2×2×2repeated measures analysis of variance,there was no significant main effect of group;there was a significant main effect of priming;there was a significant main effect of word type;there was no significant interaction effect between group and word type;there was no significant interaction effect between group and priming;there was no significant interaction effect between priming and word type;there was a significant three-way interaction effect between group,priming,and word type.Further simple effects analysis showed that when future orientation was not primed,the low socioeconomic status group had faster reaction times for poverty-related words than neutral words,and the high socioeconomic status group had no significant difference in reaction times between poverty-related words and neutral words.After priming future orientation,there was no significant difference in reaction times between poverty-related words and neutral words for the low socioeconomic status group,and the high socioeconomic status group had faster reaction times for poverty-related words than neutral words.Conclusion:(1)There was a negative correlation between childhood socioeconomic status and psychological poverty among college students.Childhood socioeconomic status had a negative predictive effect on psychological poverty,and future orientation played a moderating role between childhood socioeconomic status and psychological poverty.(2)Compared with the high childhood socioeconomic status group,the level of psychological poverty was higher among college students in the low childhood socioeconomic status group.(3)After future orientation was improved,the level of psychological poverty among college students in the low childhood socioeconomic status group decreased.