The Relationship Between Childhood Psychological Maltreatment And Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency:A Moderate Mediation Model

Purpose: The present study investigated the relationship among childhood psychological maltreatment,meaning in life,and mobile phone addiction tendency,and explored the mediating effect of the search for meaning in life as well as the moderating effect of the presence of meaning in life.Method: Childhood Psychological Maltreatment Questionnaire,Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Scale(MPATS),and Meaning in Life Questionnaire(MLQ)were administrated to 700 undergraduate students from three universities of Harbin,and the data was analyzed by SPSS22.0,Amos7.0 and Mplus7.0.Result:(1)Male undergraduate students got significantly more scores in disparagement,intimidation,and connivance than female undergraduate students;rural undergraduate students got significantly more scores in childhood psychological maltreatment and neglect than urban undergraduate students;non-only child got significantly more scores in neglect than only child;undergraduate students from incomplete families got significantly more scores in neglect than that from complete families;undergraduate students whose mothers had low-level of education got significantly more scores in mobile phone addiction tendency,withdrawal,and salience than that whose mothers had high-level of education.(2)The correlation coefficients of childhood psychological maltreatment,search for meaning in life,presence of meaning in life and mobile phone addiction tendency were significant to each other.(3)All regression coefficients of childhood psychological maltreatment,search for meaning in life and presence of meaning in life to mobile phone addiction tendency were significant.Regression coefficients of both the childhood psychological maltreatment and the search for meaning in life to the presence of meaning in Life were significant.(4)The presence of meaning in life had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and mobile phone addiction tendency.The mediation effect was moderated by search for meaning in life.Conclusion:(1)Male students were more likely to be subjected to childhood psychological maltreatment than female students;the students from the incomplete family were more likely to search formeaning in life than the students from the complete family;the student whose mother had low-level of education was more vulnerable to mobile phone addiction tendency than the student whose mother had high-level of education.(2)All of four variables incorporating childhood psychological maltreatment,search for meaning in life,and presence of meaning in life could forecast mobile phone addiction tendency.(3)The results showed that presence of meaning in life played a partial mediation effect in the relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and mobile phone addiction tendency.In addition,for individuals with lower search for meaning in life,childhood psychological maltreatment could negatively predict the presence of meaning in life,but for individuals with higher search for meaning in life,childhood psychological maltreatment could not negatively predict the presence of meaning in life.(4)Search for meaning in life moderated the relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and presence of meaning in life.