Subjective social class and distrust among Chinese college students: The mediating roles of relative deprivation and bel
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Subjective social class and distrust among Chinese college students: The mediating roles of relative deprivation and belief in a just world Guoliang Yu 1 & Fengqing Zhao 2 & Hao Wang 3 & Sen Li 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Though the link between objective social class and interpersonal distrust has been well documented, the link between subjective social class and distrust has been less investigated. Besides, very little research has investigated the potential mechanism underlying this association. Based on relative deprivation theory and just world theory, the present study examined the relation between subjective social class and distrust as well as the mediating roles of individual/global relative deprivation and belief in a just world among college students in Chinese culture. A sample of 796 Chinese college students finished the measures of subjective social class, individual/group relative deprivation, belief in a just world, and interpersonal distrust. The result indicated that lower subjective social class was predictive of higher level of distrust. Path analyses indicated that individual relative deprivation mediated the association between subjective social class and distrust. Besides, belief in a just world and individual relative deprivation acted as sequential mediators between subjective social class and distrust. Furthermore, moderated mediation analysis did not support the moderating role of belief in a just world in the relationship model of subjective social class, individual/group relative deprivation, and interpersonal distrust. These findings highlight that to alleviate interpersonal distrust among students in the lower subjective social class, we should pay attention to students’ perceptions of justice and individual relative deprivation and how that could be shaping their interpersonal trust. Keywords Interpersonal distrust . Subjective social class . Individual relative deprivation . Group relative deprivation . Belief in a just world
Introduction Over the past decades, interpersonal distrust has grown substantially on a global scale (Zubok, Mikheeva, & Chuprov, 2014) and has become one of the features of contemporary society (Fetchenhauer & Dunning, 2010). Early in 1995-1998, the World Values Survey has demonstrated a trust crisis showing that only 26% of the respondents reported that most people could be trusted (Dalton, Hac, Nghi, & Ong, 2002). In recent years, the trust crisis seems to be on a climbing trend (for * Fengqing Zhao [email protected] 1
School of Education, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
2
School of Education, Zhengzhou University, No.100 Science Avenue, Zhengzhou City 450001, Henan Province, China
3
Mental Health Education and Counseling Center, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
example, in Mexico, Maria Fernandez-Poncela, 2014; in Japan, Tokuda & Inoguchi, 2008). As to China, on the one hand, it has been among the countries with the highest level of interpersonal trust, where over half of
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