Exploring The Influence Of Reference Point Awareness And Its Clarity On College Students’ Risky Decision-making Based On Tri-reference Point Theory

In recent years,the epidemic crisis is recurring,the social environment is unpredictable,and the knowledge and technology are changing at an unimaginable speed.So people have to make big or small decisions every day to deal with the flood of information coming to them.At the same time,the uncertainties of the post-pandemic era pervades every corner of life.For contemporary college students,they have to face a series of important moments in life such as coursework papers,public examinations and autumn interviews under huge social pressure.Based on the Tri-Reference Point theory(TRP theory)proposed by Wang Xiaotian,this study attempts to explore the influence of reference point awareness and its clarity in risky decision preferences of college students under uncertain situations,so as to effectively use the TRP theory to explain and predict the risk decision-making behavior of contemporary college students and provide them with realistic practical guidance effectively.This paper explores this issue through four studies.Study 1(N=212)verifies the validity of the two core assumptions of TRP theory hold true in two decision-making contexts.The results show that the “minimum requirement first principle” is valid,while the “mean-variance principle”is only partially vali: when the mean value of expected outcome is lower than the reference point,people do not show a significant preference for risk seeking in the two contexts.Study 2(N=331)then pre-initiated the subjects’ tri-reference point awareness to verify whether the mean-variance principle holds in both decision situations.We find that the hypothesis is valid in the academic achievement context,while the results in the salary situation,remain the same as in Study 1.On the basis of the previous two studies,Study3(N=84)focuses on the salary decision-making situation,uses more specific and clear tasks to initiate college students’ the minimum requirement(MR)and goal(G).The results show that there is some deviation between college students’ subjectively reported fuzzy reference points and the actual reference values affecting their risk decisions,and that people’s risk preferences reversed from risk avoidance to risk seeking when expectations were near the true reference points,confirming the correctness and reasonableness of TRP theory’s hypothetical principles.In study4(N=59)further explored the actual impact of the true and fuzzy reference points of college students on their risky decision making behavior when there was no any initiation condition.The results rule out the possibility of a reversal of risk preferences due to different expectation settings and suggest that people are less likely to factor reference points into the decision-making process when they do not have a sufficiently clear perception of them.In summary,the results of this study suggest that if college students want to use TRP theory to guide their behavioral decisions in uncertain situations,they should not only have " minimum requirement awareness" and "goal awareness",but also have a clear and definite cognition of the minimum requirement and goal reference points.Only the reference points set after careful consideration and reality-based testing can help us effectively exert the practical utility and application value of TRP theory.