Poverty Mindset And Intertemporal Decision-Making: Psychological Mechanism And Intervention

On a global scale,poverty is still a major problem facing all countries in the word.For our country,with the successful completion of task of poverty alleviation,China has achieved the major historical task of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way and lifted the poor population out of poverty line.However,the psychological poverty related to material poverty is also serious,manifested in unreasonable cognitive mode and behavior patterns.This irrational cognition and behavior pattern not only has a negative impact on the lives of individuals,but also is not conducive to the consolidation of material poverty alleviation.Especially in the intertemporal decision-making behavior of the poor,the short-sighted and impulsive decision-making behaviors brought about by poverty will further aggravate the state of poverty.At the same time,the consequences of bad decision-making will bring more pressure and negative emotions,and damage the individual’s physiology and psychology.health.More badly,such psychological problems of poverty do not exist in the poor alone.Normal people will also show these poverty psychological characteristics when encountering a negative income shock,which affects behavioral decisionmaking.Therefore,it is very important to study the relationship between poverty psychology and intertemporal decision-making.In addition,material poverty,as an external objective state of life,also plays a strong role in shaping cognition and behavior.The influence of poverty psychology on economic decision-making may be affected by material poverty.Focusing on these issues,this study intends to investigate the differences in the impact of poverty mindset on individual intertemporal decision-making behaviors and psychological mechanisms under different poverty levels,and to explore the methods to improve the intertemporal choice preferences of the poor mindset people.Research 1 uses an experimental method to examine the impact of poverty mindset on intertemporal choice tasks under different poverty levels.intertemporal choice tasks can be divided into stages of value evaluation and value choice,and measures the choices of different experimental groups in different processing stages of intertemporal decision-making Preference,by comparing whether the choice preferences in the selection stages are consistent with the evaluation stages,To explore the psychological mechanism of different experimental groups in the intertemporal decisionmaking process.The results showed that the non-poor subjects preferred immediate reward,while the poor subjects preferred delayed reward.the non-poor subjects expressed the same choice preference in the two stages of value selection and value evaluation,while those expressed by the poor group were inconsistent in these two stages.The reason for the inconsistency is that the poor group used more self-control in the selection stage.Research 2 used an experimental method to examine the influence of opportunity cost cues on decision-making behaviors under poverty mindset,By setting the intertemporal choice options with opportunity cost cues,we verified the intervention effect of opportunity cost cues on the short-term choice preference under the poverty mentality.The results showed that the opportunity cost cue significantly reversed the choice preference of the poor subjects,prompting the subjects to choose more delay rewards.In short,the intertemporal decision-making behavior under the poverty mindset is affected by the poverty level.The choice preference expressed by poor subjects in the evaluation stage and the choice stage of intertemporal decision making is inconsistent.Self-control is involved in the choice stage of intertemporal choice process.Finally,opportunity cost cues are helpful to reduce the shortsighted behavior under the poverty mindset.