Poverty And Mental Poverty:the Mediating Role Of Scarcity Mindset

In recent years,the research on poverty psychology has made remarkable progress.It is found that the poor groups have psychological and behavioral characteristics that are significantly different from other social groups,and most of these unique characteristics are not conducive to their adaptation to the society and thus to getting rid of poverty.For example,the poor tend to only care about immediate interests but ignore long-term interests,only care about the amount of immediate income but do not make long-term life planning,relatively little investment for the future development of their children.In the long run,a vicious circle of poverty will be formed.Poverty is not only a lack of money,but also means the living environment that the poor face all the time in their life.Such high-pressure scarcity environment weakens the individual’s psychological and social resources continuously,and prompts the individual to make inappropriate economic decisions,which makes it difficult to improve the poverty situation.Based on this,this study is based on the social reality of China,combined with the latest international psychological poverty research mechanism and domestic anti-poverty practice,through the following three empirical studies to investigate the relationship between material poverty and psychological poverty and the formation mechanism of psychological poverty.Study 1 used a large sample questionnaire survey to preliminarily explore the relationship between material poverty and psychological poverty.A total of 1181 effective samples were collected from adults over 18 years old in Hubei and Chongqing.The results showed that individuals with higher levels of relative poverty had lower scores in cognitive ability,executive function,sense of hope,and achievement motivation,and higher delay discounting rates in intertemporal decision-making tasks.Study 2 examined the effect of material poverty on psychological poverty by manipulating poverty levels experimentally.A total of 214 college students were recruited and randomly assigned to the relatively poor group and the relatively rich group,with 107 students in each group.The results showed that compared with the wealthier group,the poorer group had lower scores on executive function and higher delay discounting rates on intertemporal decision-making tasks.In Study 3,a questionnaire survey was used to investigate the psychological mechanism between material poverty and psychological poverty in college students with 440 effective samples.The results show that scarcity mentality is the psychological mechanism of psychological poverty.Specifically,relative poverty significantly negatively predicts intertemporal decision-making through scarcity mentality,and scarcity mentality acts as an independent mediator.Relative poverty affects intertemporal decision making through the chain mediating effect of scarcity mentality and executive function,that is,compared with the relatively rich group,the relatively poor group has higher score of scarcity mentality,worse performance in executive function,and higher delay discount rate in intertemporal decision making task.The preliminary evidence of this study shows that material poverty causes individual psychological poverty,mainly due to the scarcity mentality.In order to break the vicious cycle of poverty and achieve long-term governance of relative poverty,we should intervene against these unique psychological behavior patterns,such as scarcity mentality.However,the current research on the formation mechanism of psychological poverty has not been able to form a conclusion.Therefore,it is very necessary to conduct systematic and in-depth research on the psychological patterns and laws caused by poverty,so as to provide theoretical and practical guidance for more effective poverty alleviation work.