The Impact Of Early Life Environmental Unpredictability Under Mortality Threat On Career Decision Risk Preference: The Role Of Sense Of Control

When making career decisions,people will face many uncertain factors,such as the amount of career options and information,the ambiguity of career criteria or attributes,the bidirectional of the selection process and so on.Many uncertain factors mean that career choice is often accompanied by risks.In career decision-making,some people will be more risky,while others will be more conservative.Career decision risk preference refers to the risk preference shown by the final result of career choice through comparative analysis of various possible career options.Life history theory studies what kinds of preferences and behaviors will be formed by individuals who have different early experience,providing a good perspective for understanding individual career decision risk preference.From the perspective of life history theory,this study takes college students as the research object,and explores the influence and mechanism of early life environmental unpredictability under mortality threat on the career decision risk preference through questionnaire survey and scenario priming experiment.The first study initially explored the moderating effect of the real life mortality threat perception in the early life environmental unpredictability and career decision risk preference through a questionnaire survey.The results showed that when the perceived mortality threat is high,individuals with higher early life environmental unpredictability also had higher career decision risk preference scores.However,individuals’ early life environmental unpredictability could not significantly predict career decision risk preference when perceived mortality threat was low.On the basis of the first study,the second study manipulated mortality threat in the environment through the scenario priming experiment,repeatedly verified the moderating effect of mortality threat between the early life environmental unpredictability and career decision risk preference.The results showed that under the priming condition of mortality threat,early life environmental unpredictability significantly positively predicted career decision risk preference.However,under the control condition,early life environmental unpredictability could not significantly predict career decision risk preference.On the basis of the second study,the sense of control variable was added to the third study to further clarify the specific path by which the early life environmental unpredictability influences the career decision risk preference under the priming condition of mortality threat.The results showed that under the priming condition of mortality threat,the sense of control played a partial mediating role between the early life environmental unpredictability and career decision risk preference.Under mortality threat,the higher the early life environmental unpredictability,the lower the sense of control and the higher career decision risk preference scores.The results show that:(1)Mortality threat plays a moderating role between the early life environmental unpredictability and the career decision risk preference.Under mortality threat,the early life environmental unpredictability significantly affects the career decision risk preference.Under non-mortality threat,The influence of the early life environmental unpredictability on career decision risk preference was not significant;(2)Under mortality threat,the influence of early life environmental unpredictability on the career decision risk preference is partly played through the sense of control.