The Influences Of Childhood Socioeconomic Status And Gain-loss Situation On Higher Vocational College Students’ Intertemporal Decision-making

Intertemporal choice is a process in which people make a series of judgments and choices based on the different values and interests of the present and the future.When faced with gain and loss situations,individuals have different intertemporal decision-making tendencies and preferences.The life history strategy believes that in order to better adapt to environmental conditions,people adopt different strategies to allocate limited time and resources to different activities and to the present and the future.According to previous investigations,childhood socioeconomic status has a greater impact on the individual’s choice of life history strategies than the current socioeconomic status.People with different childhood socioeconomic status will have different life history strategy choices,which in turn affects intertemporal decision-making.Research has found that the social influence of peers and the spontaneous or passive social comparison of individuals have certain influence on the individual’s in intertemporal decision-making.As a group different from undergraduates,higher vocational college students will have what kind of choice tendency in intertemporal decision-making.Therefore,this study explores the influence of childhood socioeconomic status and social comparison on the intertemporal decision-making of higher vocational students in the context of gain and loss situation.In this study,two experiments were conducted to explore the intertemporal decision-making in the context of gain and loss situation by combining the childhood socioeconomic status and social comparison.In Experiment 1,105 higher vocational college students were selected as subjects,using 2(childhood socioeconomic status: high childhood socioeconomic status/low childhood socioeconomic status)×2(gain and loss situation: gain situation/loss situation)of mixed design,to explore the childhood socioeconomic status of the influence of the gain and loss situation higher vocational college students’ intertemporal decision-making.The results show that childhood socioeconomic status moderates the influence of gain and loss situation on higher vocational college students’ intertemporal decision-making.Higher vocational college students with high childhood socioeconomic status are more inclined to choose large and long-term benefits in the gain situation than in the loss situation,that is,the time discount rate for intertemporal decision-making is smaller.The higher vocational students with low childhood socioeconomic status had no significant difference in the intertemporal decision-making when compared with the gain situation and the loss situation.In Experiment 2,143 higher vocational college students were selected as subjects,and finally 138 effective subjects,and adopted a mixed design of 2(childhood socioeconomic status: high childhood socioeconomic status/low childhood socioeconomic status)×2(social comparison: upward social comparison/ downward social comparison)×2(gain and loss situation: gain situation/loss situation).It was found that there are interactions between intertemporal choices under childhood socioeconomic status,social comparison,and gain-loss situation.In the upward social comparison,there is no significant difference in the intertemporal decision-making of higher vocational students with high childhood socioeconomic status and low childhood socioeconomic status in the gain situation.In the loss situation,higher vocational students with low childhood socioeconomic status are more likely to have small and recent losses than those with high childhood socioeconomic status,and the time discount rate is smaller.In the downward social comparison,there is no significant difference in intertemporal decision-making between high and low childhood socioeconomic status vocational students in the context of gains and losses.This study explores the impact of childhood socioeconomic status and social comparison on the intertemporal decision-making of higher vocational students in the gain and loss situation,which helps us to explore the intertemporal decision-making in the gain and loss situation more deeply,and enriches this related theory.In addition,the results of this study can also be applied to the field of education,which is helpful for counselors of higher vocational colleges and parents to help higher vocational students with different childhood socioeconomic status understand their intertemporal decision-making characteristics and guide them to make more long-term and rational decisions.We can also start from childhood,attach importance to childhood education,and help individuals with low childhood socioeconomic status to grow up better.