How does subjective social class predict prosocial tendency? Moderated chain mediation model based on reciprocity belief

Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2023-09-30

Wang, Shizhuang Sun, Hongri

Abstract： There are many factors influencing prosocial behavior, and the research results of "who is more prosocial in high social class or low social class" are different, and the research conclusions are easy to generate group stigma, so further clarifying how social class affects prosocial tendency has become a research hotspot. Previous studies mainly discuss the effect of self-induced social status from the perspective of prosociety. However, by subdividing subjective social class into subjective family class and subjective individual class, the relationship between subjective social class and prosocial tendencies may be better explained. In addition, reciprocity beliefs, as the ideological and cognitive aspect of an individual's internal reciprocity norm, is a remote factor that determines the actual reciprocity behavior, and was also introduced into the prediction mechanism to better explain the relationship between subjective social class and prosocial tendencies.
Study 1 recruited college students through an online platform with 598 valid participants, and used the MacArthur Scale of Subjective, the Prosocial Tendencies Measures, the Personal Norms of Reciprocity Scale, and the Personal Relative Deprivation Scale to measure individuals' subjective family class, subjective individual class, prosocial tendency, reciprocity belief, and individual relative deprivation. SPSS process was used to conduct chain multiple mediation tests and moderating effect tests. Results found that subjective family class can positively predict subjective individual class and prosocial tendency, and subjective individual class can negatively predict balanced reciprocity belief. Balanced reciprocity belief positively predicted prosocial tendency, in which balanced reciprocity belief played an intermediary role between subjective family class and prosocial tendency, subjective individual class and balanced reciprocity belief had a masking effect between them, and individual relative deprivation played an enhanced moderating role between reciprocal belief and prosocial tendency; In study 2, CGSS2021 data was used to further verify the results of study 1 by selecting variables related items, 2312 valid data were obtained after deleting missing data, and the same model test was conducted by SPSS process. Results found that both subjective family class and subjective individual class can positively predict prosocial tendency, subjective family class can still positively predict subjective individual class, subjective individual class negatively predicted negative reciprocity belief, negative reciprocity belief negatively predicted prosocial tendency, and subjective individual class played a mediating role between subjective family class and prosocial tendency.Subjective individual class and negative reciprocity belief played an intermediary role between them, and there were boundary conditions on the direct effect of individual relative deprivation. Combining the results of the two studies, it can be stably found that subjective family class can positively predict prosocial tendencies, which provided new evidence for "higher subjective social class has higher prosocial tendencies".Subjective family class is the antecedent influencing factor of subjective individual class, which can predict reciprocity belief and then prosocial tendency through the latter. Subjective individual class and reciprocity belief are important mechanisms for subjective family class to predict prosocial tendency, but different reciprocity beliefs play different roles in predicting prosocial tendency.
Whether it is the relationship between subjective family class and subjective individual class, the different predictive effects of different reciprocity beliefs on prosocial tendency, or the chain mediating effects of subjective individual class and reciprocity beliefs on subjective family class and prosocial tendency. These stable findings can help to understand subjective social class and its prediction mechanism for prosocial tendency, provide a new perspective for understanding the relationship between subjective social class and prosocial tendency, and show that social cognitive theory and social exchange theory are not incompatible in explaining prosocial tendency, and can better understand individual prosocial tendency by combining them.

Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review

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