The Relationship Between College Students’ Sense Of Relationship Power And Relationship Satisfaction:The Mediating And Moderating Effect Of The Desire For Power

In recent years,the marriage rate in China has been declining.According to data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2020,the marriage rate in China has dropped from 8.3% in 2016 to 5.8%,and the divorce rate has also increased.According to Eriksson’s theory of stages of personality development,college students are in an important period of building the ability to love,the intimate relationship with high degree of satisfaction will bring positive influence to their physical and mental health,but the relationship with low degree of satisfaction will easily lead to conflict or even break up of the relationship,which will bring negative influence to college students,such as negative emotion,suicide and so on.Some researchers have conducted researches on intimate relationship satisfaction from the perspective of power,and a large number of research results have verified that there are many correlations between intimate relationship power and relationship satisfaction.However,current researches mostly adopt the method of self-report to measure,and the research results are inconsistent.At the same time,power desire may play an important role in the relationship between the two,but the current research on this is not in-depth,therefore,this study aims to explore the relationship between intimate relationship power and relationship satisfaction,as well as the mediating and regulating role of power desire in the relationship between the two.This study uses the questionnaire priming method to study college students in Jiangxi Province.Firstly,power priming materials in the field of intimate relationship are compiled according to the power priming paradigm.On the basis of the previous research results,20 college students who are in love state are interviewed in a semi-structured way,from which four aspects(time arrangement,money expenditure,heterosexual relationship and future plan)are selected and extracted.Then,under the guidance of two psychology professors,the text material primed by intimate relationship power was formed,and the validity of the material was tested by combining self-evaluation with other evaluation.The test results showed that the material could effectively primed the subjects’ high/low intimate relationship power.In the formal study,subjects were randomly assigned roles in intimate relationships(high or low sense of power)and read priming materials to activate their different levels of power.Then,subjects in different levels of power were tested with Desired Power Scale and Relationship Assessment Scale respectively.A total of 571 questionnaires were distributed,33 invalid questionnaires were rejected,538 valid questionnaires were collected,and the recovery efficiency was 94.22%.The data was analyzed by SPSS22.0 and the results were as follows.(1)The sense of intimate relationship power significantly positively predicted relationship satisfaction;(2)The desire for power completely mediated the relationship between the sense of intimate relationship power and relationship satisfaction.When the individual is in a state of low sense of power,the higher the power desire is,the lower the relationship satisfaction is;(3)The desire for power plays a moderating role in the relationship between sense of intimate relationship power and relationship satisfaction of college students.When the level of power desire is high,the relationship power has a significant positive predictive effect on relationship satisfaction;when the level of power desire is low,the relationship power has no significant predictive effect on relationship satisfaction.The results show that the desire for power plays an important mediating and moderating role in the relationship between sense of power and relationship satisfaction,which provides an explanation for the difference of the previous studies.It is an in-depth and complementary to the previous studies.At the same time,the results of this study are of great theoretical and practical significance to the education of marriage and love education among college students.It is helpful for college students to maintain a good and healthy love relationship to establish a correct understanding of relationship power and emphasize the principles of equality and mutual respect.