The Effects Of Social Class On Personal Need For Structure And Their Psychological Mechanism

Personal need for structure, as the most fundamental need in China, have an affect on every aspects of individual life. A lot of researchers think because of their own limitation, thoes lower social class prefer order, structure, and don't like uncertainty as well as unpredictability,compared with the higher. However, many researchers put forward the opposite opinion,that the higher social class are more engaged in systematic research, and used to exploring definitive answer of questions, what's more, their thinking style is more organized and standardized. For the differences,the present research we explore those questions: whether social class have an effect on personal need for structure, what is the psychological mechanism of this effect, and if this effect can be moderated by another variable.Based on the method of questionnaire, study 1 collected survey date in different school in Wuhan, collecting 449 college students' data of their subjective and objective social class of their family, perceived control and personal need for structure. After controlling for age, sex and other unrelated variables,the results of hierarchical regression analysis showed that subjective social class was significantly negatively related to personal need for structure, and further analysis found that The mediating effect of perceived control between subjective social class and personal need for structure was significant, that is to say, the lower one's subjective social class is, the lower perceived control is, and the more personal need for structure.In order to increase the external validity of the study,study 2 is the same as study 1 which investigated the relationship between social class, perceived control and personal need for structure. A self-reported questionnaire survey was conducted to collect 120 noncollege students' data. After controlling for age, sex, the results of hierarchical regression analysis showed that subjective social class was negatively correlated with personal need for structure, the mediating effect analysis found that perceived control played an mediating role between the subjective social class and personal need for structure, namely those lower subjective social class always had the lower perceived control, and the higher personal need for structure.Study 3 introduced social support to examine whether it affected the mediate model in study 1 and study 2. In study 3, 114 college students was randomly divided into two groups,priming a group of participants to experience temporarily higher social support,and another group of participants to experience temporarily lower social support. The result showed the moderated mediation models, for the mediate effect of perceived control between subjective social class and personal need for structure was moderated by social support: for the lower social support group, the mediate model existed; but for the higher social support group, the mediate model did not.To sum up, the results showed that: subjective social class has significantly predictive effect on personal need for structure, and subjective social class influences personal need for structure indirectly via the mediating role of perceived control, finally social support would have an affect on the mediate model of subjective social class-perceived control-personal need for structure: in the low social support conditions,the model was set up, but in the higher social support conditions, the model was not.