控制感与老年人生命意义：自我认同和政策支持的作用

本研究探讨了控制感、自我认同、对政策支持的感知等因素如何影响老年人的生命意义感。通过对300多名来自北京、香港和台北的老年人的调查，发现控制感和政策支持对老年人生命意义感的影响显着，二者不仅主效应显着，同时存在交互作用。进一步的分析还发现：政策支持在控制感与生命意义感的关系中起调节作用——高政策支持感增强了控制对生命意义感的正向作用；自我认同在控制感与生命意义感的关系中起部分中介作用。结果对积极应对老龄化问题与增进老年人身心健康有重要的理论和现实意义。

The Meaning of Life and The Perceived Control of Senior Citizens: The effect of Self-Identity and Policy Support

The current research examined four factors that impact the elderly’s quality of life. First, the meaning of life directly affects the mental health and the quality of life of the elderly. Second, the sense of perceived control is an important predictor of the overall physical and mental experience of the elderly. Third, self-identity increases individuals’ perceived value of themselves. Last, policy support perception is related to the available resource that the elderly can utilize to achieve their goals. Through a questionnaire survey of 272 elderly samples (M = 69.25, SD = 7.90), the results showed that 1) the sense of perceived control, self-identity, and policy support perception were all positively correlated to meaning of life. As the elderly had stronger sense of perceived control, this would make them believe they are capable of pursuit of their goals. With higher level of self-identity, the elderly are more lilely to accept themselves, such like values, abilities, and so on. With high policy support perception, they realized there was adequate, sufficient, and available social resource. All these factors contribute to the meaning of life of the elderly. 2) self-identity had significant effect on meaning of life. Besides, it also played as a partial mediating role in the relationship between the sense of perceived control and the meaning of life. 3) policy support perception moderated the relationship between the sense of perceived control and the meaning of life. This indicates that higher policy support perception could enhance the positive effect of the sense of perceived control on life meaning. The results indicate that in the high policy support perception condition, for those with the sense of higher sense of perceived control, they realized that the government provided them adequate support to pursue an ideal life. However, for those with lower sense of perceived control, they could not realize it. In contrast, in the low policy support perception condition, neither did people with high or low level of the sense of perceived control feel additional support from the government. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.