The Relationship Between Self-esteem And Risk Decision-making Of College Students: The Moderating Role Of Uncertaint

College students are at the stage of development and establishment of their outlook on life and world,and they tend to be more impulsive when faced with risk taking.Risk taking has always been the focus of psychological researchers and is a common psychological phenomenon in our daily life.As an important part of the self-system,individual self-esteem and important personality traits are also important influencing factors of risk taking.In view of the fact that the conclusions on the relationship between self-esteem and risk taking in previous studies are not uniform,the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of self-esteem level on risk taking.On the other hand,in the past three years,the outbreak of COVID-19 has also left everyone in a sense of uncertainty for a long time.The sense of uncertainty will make individuals produce negative emotions such as hate and anxiety,which will affect all aspects of their lives.Therefore,this study intends to explore whether college students’ risk taking will be affected by self-esteem and uncertainty.This study took college students as subjects,and gradually explored the impact of self-esteem and uncertainty on risk decision-making of college students through a combination of questionnaire and experimental methods.This study includes 2 studies:Study 1: A simple random sampling method was used to select 321 college students from Tianjin Normal University,and a questionnaire survey was conducted using the Risk Appetite Questionnaire and the Chinese version of the Rosenberg Self esteem Scale(SES).Finally,316 valid questionnaires were obtained.To investigate the risk taking tendency and self-esteem of college students,and explore the relationship between them.Study 2: Adopted 2(self-esteem level: high and low)×2(Uncertainty: High and Low)Two factor inter subject design for behavioral experiments.Before the experiment,qualified subjects were invited by issuing the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale in Chinese(SES)in the school.After screening based on the questionnaire scores,88 subjects were invited,excluding those who could not participate in the experiment,and 80 were ultimately valid.Subjects with high and low self-esteem levels were randomly assigned to a high uncertainty group and a low uncertainty group,respectively.The recall paradigm task was used to manipulate individual uncertainty,and The Balloon Analog Risk Task was used to measure individual risk taking behavior to investigate the impact of self-esteem and uncertainty on college students’ risk taking.The results are as follows:The results of study 1 show that under the background of the COVID-19,there is no significant correlation between self-esteem and risk taking of college students.The results of study 2 showed that self-esteem and uncertainty had a significant interaction.In the case of high uncertainty,there was no significant difference in BART scores between the high self-esteem group and the low self-esteem group;In the case of low uncertainty,subjects in the low self-esteem group and high self-esteem group will take more risks than those in the low self-esteem group.This study draws the following conclusions:First,in the context of the COVID-19,self-esteem is not related to college students’ risk taking.Second,uncertainty plays a regulatory role in college students’ self-esteem and risk taking.