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Introduction Based on four types of poverty defined by the combination of objective socioeconomic status and subjective economic affluence, this study examined the chain mediation mechanism through which political identity is associated with medical students’ prosocial behavior via emotion regulation strategies and further explored whether the effects of cultural heritage education (as measured by red music knowledge) differed across poverty types. Methods A survey was conducted among 1,070 medical students, measuring political identity, emotion regulation, prosocial behavior, red music knowledge, objective socioeconomic status, and subjective economic affluence. To control for the confounding effect of grade level and ensure that all participants had received the same cultural heritage education curriculum, the primary analyses were restricted to second-year students ( n = 782). Cluster analysis was employed to identify poverty types, and chain mediation models and multi-group analysis were used to examine the pathways across the different types. Results (1) Political identity positively predicted prosocial behavior, with a significant indirect effect mediated by the chain mediation pathway of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. (2) Cluster analysis identified four types of poverty: subjectively advantaged, dual-disadvantaged, objectively advantaged, and dual-affluence. (3) Path analysis revealed significant differences across poverty types: In the objectively advantaged type, two independent pathways (political identity direct effect and cognitive reappraisal → expressive suppression) additively predicted prosocial behavior, reflecting a resource additive effect; in the dual-disadvantaged type, the chain mediation pathway was not significant, but red music knowledge indirectly predicted prosocial behavior through political identity; in the subjectively advantaged type, subjective affluence positively predicted prosocial behavior through cognitive reappraisal; in the dual-affluence type, only cognitive reappraisal directly predicted prosocial behavior. Discussion Political identity is associated with prosocial behavior through a chain mediation of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. This mechanism exhibits qualitatively distinct patterns across the four poverty types, manifesting as four corresponding resource effects: substitution, compensation, additive, and dilution. These findings provide mechanistic explanations for the prosocial function of political identity, extend the application boundaries of the conservation of resources theory, and offer empirical evidence for targeted educational interventions tailored to students experiencing different poverty types.
Zhang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.