A Study On The College Students’ Hoarding Behavior And Saving Cognition And Their Effects On Interpersonal Relation

As an adaptive behavior in the evolutionary process of human beings,a person’s hoarding behavior is just as normal as an animal’s behavior of storing food.However,if the level of a person’s hoarding behavior exceeds a certain limit,it is likely to develop into a disorder.This not only bothers one’s daily life,but also influences one’s various relations among which interpersonal relation is one of the most important.Excessive hoarding is a condition in which a person has difficulty in discarding or parting with valueless possessions,which is caused by strong urges to save items.This condition may lead to a chaotic living environment and have a negative impact on one’s life.Those people with serious symptoms can be diagnosed as having hoarding disorder,which is described as a new mental disease in the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by American Psychiatric Association in 2013.The participents in this research are normal people and they are different with those people who are diagnosed with clinical hoarding disorder.This research mainly focuses on the college students’ hoarding behavior,saving cognition and interpersonal relation.In the first part,the author conducted a questionnaire survey and 470 students responded to the questionnaire in total.The second part researched into the influence of different levels of hoarding behavior on one’s interpersonal relation.The first experiment selected 60 subjects who had different levels of hoarding.The purpose of the first experiment was to understand the subjects’ response to those emotion-loaded words of interpersonal relation on an explicit level while the purpose of the second experiment was to understand that on an implicit level.The esults show in the following:1.The result of the questionnaire revealed that hoarding behavior was prevalent among college students and there was no differences between girls and boys(F(1,469)=.032,p=.857).2.In the first experiment,there were significant differences in the subjects’ responses to the emotion-loaded words of different colors(F(2,57)=13.605,p<0.01,ηp2=0.323),and a significant interaction between the type of the subjects and the colors(F(2,57)=5.209,p<0.01,ηp2=0.155).3.In the second experiment,the participents had significant differences in the types of tasks(F(1,58)=6.372,p=.014<0.05,ηp2=0.099);there was no difference in their implicit attitudes to the emotion-loaded words of interpersonal relation(t(58)=-.805,p=.424>.05);the implicit attitude was significantly related to one’s hoarding behavior,saving cognition and interpersonal relation.Research Conclusion:1.Hoarding behavior is prevalent among college students and there is no difference between girls and boys and it is worth to pay a attention.Meanwhile,there is a close relationship between college students’ hoarding behavior,saving cognition and relationship,and the two may be the influencing factors of relationship.2.There aer differernces in the subjects’ responses to the emotion-loaded words,and at the visual perception the high hoarding level could be more sensitive to bright colors.3.Different levels of hoarding behavior had different response times to implicit tasks,the subjects had significant differences in the types of tasks;and the response time in compatible tasks was significantly faster than incompatible tasks.The D vaule of implicit attitude was significantly related to one’s hoarding behavior.