How Does Social Class Influence Mate Preference?

As an important social phenomenon of psychological and cultural,mate selection has always view as an important topic in the field of marriage and family.Most of the study about mate selection are concentrated in the field of sociology and economics.The study of mate selection in psychology are also pay more attention to the theoretical perspective of gender and evolutionary psychology,thus,from the current point of view,our study lack of integrated investigation of socio-cultural psychological perspective.Aligning with the assertion that,in our study will rely on the cognitive perspective of social class.Through the research methods such as questionnaire survey and experimental method.We used three studies to test some predictions.In Study 1,we used a large database to select first-married subjects with a marriage age of less than 5 years,and obtained a total of 338 valid samples.The relationship between social class and mate preference was examined.In Study 2,we picked 230 pairs of newlyweds as subjects,based on the social class cognition theory,finnlly sey up a moderated mediation model.In this model,perceived control of mediating effect and lay theories about social class of moderated effect.In Study 3,we used experimental method,found 159 college students as subjects,randomly divided them into two groups.In this way,come ture manipulated the regulatory variables(lay theory of social class).Our present research demonstrates that 1)one's social class was negative correlated with their mate preference;2)Sence of control for individual between the rich and the poor played a mediating role.Moreover,studies derived from social cognitive theory of social class demonstrate that if people endorse nonessentialist theories about social categories have potential to help lower class individuals shift their mate preference and perceived control.Furthermore,this study demonstrates that perceived control can moderate the mediation model.