The Effects Of Subjective Social Class On Aggression:A Moderated Mediation Model

Human aggression not only leads to interpersonal conflict and destroys interpersonal harmony,its extreme manifestation also affects social stability and cause social anxiety.For this reason,the psychological community has always maintained a research interest in aggression,and conducted lots of research.When examining the influencing factors of aggression,scholars have consistently found that there is a correlation between individual social class and aggression.However,studies about the relationship between them have not yet reached a consensus conclusion,and the mediating mechanism and boundary conditions which affect the relationship have not been fully explored.In order to further explore the influence of social class on aggression and its psychological mechanism,this study proposes three hypotheses and constructed a moderated mediation model by reviewing relevant literature,and designs two sub-studies to verify the hypotheses and model.Study 1 used correlational method,which examined the relationship between social class,individual relative deprivation,belief in a just world and aggression with social adult samples.There were totally 355 participants who validly finished the online questionnaire.The questionnaire mainly included MacArthur Ladder Scale,Relative Deprivation Scale,Belief in a Just World Scale and Aggression Questionnaire.The results supported the three hypotheses and a moderated mediation model.We found that relative deprivation played a mediating role between subjective social class and aggression,and belief in a just world moderated not only the direct effect of subjective social class on aggression,but also the mediating effect of relative deprivation.Specifically,when the level of belief in a just world is low,the lower the subjective social class,the higher the relative deprivation and aggression;when the level of belief in a just world is high,the effects of subjective social class are not significant.Study 2 used experimental method and took 180 college students as samples.By manipulating social class,we examined the effects of subjective social class on relative deprivation and aggression of individuals with different levels of belief in a just world.In this study,relative deprivation was measured by a different scale and aggression was measured by competitive reaction time task to increase the reliability and validity of the research.The results of study 2 were similar to those of study 1,the main difference between two results lay in that belief in a just world did not moderate the direct effect of social class on aggression in study 2.In summary,this study has explored the relationship between social class and aggression and the psychological mechanism affecting it,which has certain theoretical value and practical significance.The main results showed that:(1)subjective social class negatively affected aggression;(2)relative deprivation played a mediating role between subjective social class and aggression;(3)belief in a just world moderated not only the direct effect of subjective social class on aggression(in study 1),but also the mediating effect of relative deprivation.