The Development Of Belief In A Just World In High School Students And Its Relationship With SNS Use:A Three-year Longitudinal Study

Researchers have demonstrated belief in a just world(BJW)as a personality disposition plays a significant positive role in the individuals' psychological and social adapt as well as mental health.However,few studies have paied attention to the orgins and development of BJW from the perspective of life-span development.Accroding to the justice motive theory and Piaget's theory of moral development,in the age of childhood,chilidren always take "immanent justice" as their style of moral reasoning for the purpose of maintaining the "personal constract".In developing their personal constract,they should believe that they will achieve more profitbale return if they abandon immediate gratification temporarily.Under such circumastances,they should believe the environment around them is a just place.Therefore,the style of moral reasoning is the orgin of BJW which happens in childhood.Subsequently,Darbert(2009)noted that the strength of BJW seems to decrease during adolescence because they slowly abandon belief in immanent justice and have no diffciculty in identifying random events along with they constructed maturer cognition.Obviously,in the view of Darbert(2009),adolescence is the turning point of the developmet trajectiries of BJW.While throughout the previous studies,few investigated the devlopmental characteristics during adolescence from the perspective of longitudinal view,including developmental tendency and inviduals' differences during development and what makes the differences.This paper slected high school students as participants who are in the age of transition from adolescence into early adulthood,to investigate their devlopmental characteristics of BJW during 3 years in high school and the factor caused invidividuals' difference.In study 1,BJW's scale was used to survey the level of BJW.This study chose participants from 17 classes in a high shool in Henan Province.We surey in November every year,and this surey continue 3 years from 2014 to senior 2016.Hierarchical linear model(HLM)was ued to process the data.In the first level of model,we defined BJW,personal belief in a just world(PBJW),genelaral belief in a just world(GBJW)as dependent variable respectively,to decribe the average initial level and developmental tendency.In the second level of model,we described the variance of intercept and slope and didn't add any predictor variable,this model was used to describe the individuals'difference of developmet.Result reveals that during the 3 years in high school,the level of BJW is on a significant declining trend(?10=-0.104,se=0.018,t =-5.800,p<0.001),as well as PBJW and GBJW(?10 =-0.086,se =0.019,t?-4.431,p<0.001;?lo ?-0.124,se =0.022,t =-5.730,P<0.001).The estimation of variance components reveals that the declining speed of BJW(?00 =0.029,X2 =905.825,p<0.05),PBJW(?00 ?0.043,X2 =949.190,p<0.01),GBJW(?00 =0.044,x2 =907.167,p<0.05)are significantly diffferent between individuals.In study 2,considering adolescents are the primary group of Socical networking sites(SNS)use,and majority of research noted that SNS use plsys important role in psychological developmet,therefore we want to investigate if SNS use impacts the developmet of BJW under the background of ecological system theory based Internet.Study 2 added "gender" and "SNS use" as predictor variable in the second level of HLM,to investigate how the SNS use impact the development of BJW when controll "gender".Result reveals that the stronger intensity the initial SNS use is,the faster will the level of BJW(?12 =-0.108,se =0.017,t =-6.258,p<0.001)decrease,including PBJW(?12 ?-0.115,se =0.018,t ?-6.226,p<0.001)and GBJW(?12 =-0.100,se =0.021,t =-4.715,p<0.001).What' more,the level of PBJW decreased faster in boys than in girls during 3 years in high school(?02:-0.128,se =0.040,t =-3.147,p<0.01).This paper investigate the developmantal charactristics of BJW during 3 years in high school students,including their developmental trend and individuals' difference,and what makes the difference from the perspective of longitudinal study.Finally the disadvantages and future research are disscused in the last of paper.