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The Structure Of Sense Of Community Responsibility And Its Influence Mechanism On Residents' Altruistic

Posted on:2020-02-15Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:C YangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1367330623961047Subject:Applied Psychology
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Altruistic behavior is a social behavior in which an individual spontaneously aims at gaining others and does not expect any external benefit.It plays an important role in the continuation of life,the development of society and the physical and mental health of individuals.Western scholars have been studying sense of community responsibility(SOC-R)for ten years.It is a sense of responsibility for individuals to be happy for the individual and collective in the community and does not expect any return.It is governed by social norms,affecting people's well-being and community engagement.At present,the direct relationship between SOC-R and altruistic behavior and the possible reasons are not known.The early theory of social norms believed that the individual's altruistic behavior was influenced by people's perception of social norms and the assessment of their own abilities and the perception of responsibility were the basis of altruistic behavior.At the same time,researchers found that unconscious altruistic information processing could effectively predict the rapid occurrence of altruistic behavior in real situations.Meanwhile,the brain regions of altruistic behavior,mainly the prefrontal cortex,was also associated with people's moral judgment,processing and extraction of memory information,and allocation of attention.Therefore,the present study conjectures that individuals with different levels of SOC-R have different levels of cognitive processing of altruistic information,which in turn affects the occurrence of individual altruistic behavior in real situations.Based on previous studies on responsibility and altruism,this paper proposes a hypothesis model of the effect of SOC-R on altruism from the perspective of community psychology.This paper uses questionnaire survey,behavioral experiment method and eye movement technology to carry out three series of researches,aiming to study the SOC-R under the background of Chinese culture and community characteristics,and verify the relationship model between SOC-R and altruistic behavior and explain the relationship from the perspective of cognitive processing.In the first study,the concept,measurement and influencing factors of SOC-R were discussed by qualitative analysis and questionnaire survey.The research hypothesis is that SOC-R is a multi-dimensional structure,influenced by factors such as demographic variables and subjective socioeconomic status.The first study includes three sub-studies.Study 1(N=184)used the open questionnaire survey method to understand the characteristics of residents' SOC-R through qualitative analysis,and constructed the theoretical dimensions of SOC-R.The results revealed that,(1)the person who had SOC-R should have both self-requirement and moral obligation to others,and his behavior should be subjective.Individuals with a high level of SOC-R should have positive psychological qualities and take the interests of others in the community and the collective as the value standard in decision-making judgment.Actively participating in community building,creating a good community atmosphere and interpersonal bonds were the responsibility factors of residents' consensus.SOC-R was a possible influence factor of residents' mental health.People were accompanied by positive emotional experience in practicing community responsibility behavior.(2)The theoretical structure of SOC-R included three dimensions which are community responsibility cognition,community responsibility emotion and community responsibility behavior(tendency).The results indicate that SOC-R is an attitude including cognition of self-responsibility to other people and relationships in the community,willingness to emotionally invest in the well-being and collective interests of others,and motivation to put one's words into actions and accept the consequence of their actions.Study 2(N=1013)used questionnaire survey to explore the structural characteristics of Chinese residents' SOC-R and developed corresponding questionnaire.The results revealed that,(1)SOC-R was a multi-dimensional structure,consistent with theoretical structure,including three dimensions.(2)SOC-R questionnaire had good reliability and validity,and was significantly positively correlated with conscientiousness and happiness.The results indicate that SOC-R has different components and the SOC-R questionnaire can be used as an effective tool to evaluate the level of SOC-R of residents.Study 3(N=1019)further verified the reliability and validity of SOC-R questionnaire,understood the current situation of Chinese residents' community responsibility and discussed its possible influencing factors.The results revealed that,(1)the SOC-R questionnaire had good internal consistency reliability and structural validity.(2)In general,the level of SOC-R of residents was high and had a positive trend,but the average score of community responsibility behavior was the lowest,which was still far from the “relatively consistent” of 5 points.Some residents still lacked SOC-R.(3)The level of individual SOC-R had significant differences in age,education level,marital status,number of children,housing type,health level,and socioeconomic status.Further multiple regression analysis showed that these factors had a significant predictive effect on SOC-R after age was removed.The results indicate that the structure of SOC-R is stable and credible.The overall level of SOC-R of Chinese residents is good,but the community responsibility behavior tendency is weak.The level of SOC-R is affected by demographic variables,subjective socioeconomic status,and subjective health level.In the second study,the questionnaire survey and behavioral experiment were used to modify the Self-Report Altruism scale(SRA scale),and the relationship between SOC-R and altruistic behavior was discussed.The research hypothesis is that the SRA scale is a multi-dimensional structure.The SOC-R is positively correlated with altruistic behavior,and SOC-R has a positive predictive effect on altruistic behavior.This study includes three sub-studies.Study 4(N=490)revised the SRA scale using questionnaire survey.The results revealed that,(1)altruistic behavior included two dimensions which were empathy and social responsibility.(2)The revised SRA scale had good internal consistency reliability,split-half reliability,and structural validity,and was significantly positively correlated with well-being.The results indicate that the revised SRA scale has good statistical indicators and is more suitable for community residents than original English version and existing Chinese versions.Study 5(N=1052)used the questionnaire survey method to initially explore the relationship between SOC-R and altruistic behavior,and explored its possible mediator variable.The results showed that,(1)the SOC-R was positively related to altruistic behavior and community identity.(2)The direct effect of SOC-R on altruistic behavior was significant,and community identity played a partial mediatory role between SOC-R and altruistic behavior.The results indicate that SOC-R can not only directly predict the changes of altruistic behavior but also indirectly predict the level of residents' altruistic behavior through community identity.Study 6(N=109)further verified the relationship between SOC-R and residents' altruistic behavior using repeated dictator game tasks.The results revealed that,(1)there was a significant positive correlation between SOC-R and altruistic behavior,and SOC-R had a positive predictive effect on residents' altruistic behavior.(2)With the increase of the round of tasks assigned,the level of residents' altruistic behavior gradually decreased.(3)There was a significant difference in money allocation between the groups with high and low SOC-R.The level of altruistic behavior in the group with high SOC-R was significantly higher than that in the group with low SOC-R.The results indicate that repeated dictator game task is an effective paradigm for assessing the level of residents' altruistic behavior.The residents with higher SOC-R are more altruistic in the dictator game.In the third study,cognitive behavioral experiments were combined with eye movement techniques to analyze the cognitive reasons for the differences in residents' SOC-R.The study assumes that individuals with different SOC-R are sensitive to altruistic information,which may be a possible cause of behavioral differences.This study includes three sub-studies.Study 7(N=217)explored the relationship between community responsibility level and residents' implicit evaluation through two parallel studies with reference to the classical implicit association test.The results revealed that,(1)the individual had significant implicit altruistic self-concept evaluation effect and implicit altruistic attitude evaluation effect.(2)Implicit altruism was not significantly related to explicit altruism.(3)The level of SOC-R was significantly positively correlated with implicit effect value.Regardless of the level of SOC-R,residents' response to compatible tasks was faster than that to incompatible tasks.(4)The IAT value of the group with high SOC-R was significantly greater than the group with low SOC-R.The results indicate that individuals with higher SOC-R are more inclined to associate altruism with self and make a positive evaluation,and associate non-altruism with others and make negative evaluation.Study 8(N=102)used the process dissociation procedure to explore the individual's contribution rate of consciousness and unconsciousness in the memory extraction of altruistic information and the influence of SOC-R.The results showed that,(1)regardless of inclusion test or exclusion test,the recognition performance of altruistic words was significantly better than that of neutral words.(2)In the specific processing,the extraction of altruistic words required more conscious and unconscious than neutral words,and the unconscious contribution rate was greater than that of consciousness.(3)Repeated ANOVA showed that the main effects of vocabulary types and processing methods were significant.The triple interaction between processing method,vocabulary type,and subject type was significant.In further comparison,the individual differences in SOC-R were only reflected in the extraction of altruistic words,that was,the individual with high SOC-R needed more unconscious and less conscious than the individual with low community responsibility.The results indicate that individuals with high SOC-R process altruistic words more unconsciously than those with low SOC-R.Study 9(N=77)used visual search task paradigm and dot-probe task paradigm and combined with eye movement technology to explore the spatial search speed difference and temporal bias component difference of altruistic and non-altruistic information in residents with different levels of SOC-R.The results showed that,(1)regardless of residents' SOC-R,people could quickly identify target stimuli(altruistic words and non-altruistic words)in the neutral stimulus background.But the response to non-altruistic words was shorter and more accurate.The target stimulus was recognized faster than neutral stimulus.(2)In the whole process of visual search,there was no significant difference in the total gaze frequency and total gaze ratio of the target stimuli,but in the total fixation time and total fixation time ratio.The individual to the non-altruistic words of total fixation time and total fixation time ratio was significantly greater than the altruistic words.(3)The level of SOC-R had a significant positive correlation with the total fixation time ratio of altruistic words and had a significant positive predictive effect.(4)Regardless of the level of SOC-R,there was no significant difference in the detection and attention of altruistic words and non-altruistic words.When altruistic words and non-altruistic words were paired with neutral words,people showed consistency promotion effect on altruistic words(i.e.,the response to altruistic words with consistent detection dot was faster than that of neutral words),but there was no attention bias on non-altruistic words.(5)In the whole process of detection,there was no significant difference between altruistic words and non-altruistic words in the orientation of the first viewpoint,the latency bias of the first viewpoint,the fixation time bias of the first viewpoint and the total fixation time bias.At the same time,there was no significant latency detection bias or initial attention bias for altruistic words and non-altruistic words,but both of them showed the overall attention maintenance and the early orientation bias for non-altruistic words(that was,individuals tended to pay more visual-spatial attention to non-altruistic words).(6)When considering the level of SOC-R,the study showed that SOC-R only had a positive predictive effect on the overall attention maintenance of altruistic words.The results indicate that individuals with higher SOC-R will invest more cognitive resources in the overall recognition and attention maintenance of altruistic words.Through three series of studies,this study clarifies the structure of SOC-R,verifies the effect of SOC-R on altruistic behavior,and the positive predictive effect of community responsibility on the altruistic behavior of residents,and adopts the cognitive research paradigm and combines eye movement technology explains its possible cognitive causes.The research results will promote the development and application of the theory of SOC-R,and provide effective psychological measurement tools for the assessment of residents' SOC-R and altruistic behavior,and provide a theoretical basis for the awakening of residents' SOC-R and the improvement of altruistic behavior.It will help to enrich the empirical results of community psychology in China.At the same time,the research results can also be used as selection tools for the recruitment of community full-time staff,providing a theoretical reference for the development of community work and laying the foundation for the construction of community psychological service system in China.
Keywords/Search Tags:Sense of community responsibility, Altruistic behavior, Questionnaire development, Mediating role, Cognitive processing characteristics
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