**1. Introduction**

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, our social culture and way of life have undergone profound changes [1,2]. Consequently, people are unknowingly experiencing the effects of this pandemic in their psychology and behavior. Many researchers have focused on the impact of COVID-19 on individuals' subjective feelings and objective life [3]. However, underlying these different psychological performances, there may be some common psychological basis worth exploring.

The need for structure, a basic need for human beings [4], may be one such basic psychological variable that deserves our attention. It refers to the psychological need to perceive one's existence and surroundings as clear, orderly, and predictable and not ambiguous or random [5], and could be the common inner psychological basis of many people's external manifestations. For example, the need for structure is concretely embodied in our desire for clarity from the obscure events, hope to find rules for our daily work, or our need to experience order in the products we purchase [6]. Researchers have found that the need for structure can predict conspiracy beliefs about important social events [7], preference for work [8], and people's understanding of news [9]. Compensatory control theory demonstrates that affirming social or physical structure is a means to compensate for personal control in an uncertain situation [10]. People who lack personal control are motivated to seek structure, order, and certainty in various ways [11]. As such, this motivation could be the underlying process that explains much of the psychological and behavioral performance of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

**Citation:** Rao, T.-T.; Yang, S.-L.; Zhu, X. How Does Social Class Affect Need for Structure during the COVID-19 Pandemic? A Moderated Mediating Model Analysis. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2022**, *19*, 932. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph19020932

Academic Editors: Paolo Roma, Merylin Monaro and Cristina Mazza

Received: 31 October 2021 Accepted: 9 January 2022 Published: 14 January 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

It is worth noting that there are individual differences in this tendency. Previous studies have found that higher class individuals have a strong sense of personal control; therefore, their need for structure is relatively lower [7]. However, against the background of an uncertain environment, individuals tend to experience difficulty in maintaining their perceptions of a structured world, as demonstrated through belief in conspiracy theories [12], appeal of a dominant leader [13], and collective action [14], which may reinforce the need for structure. Therefore, it is worth exploring whether the level of the need for structure among individuals from different social classes has changed amidst the pandemic, and what is the mediating mechanism underlying this change. This will not only help us better understand the series of stress-related responses observed during the pandemic but also provide suggestions for pandemic prevention practice and management. Therefore, this study focused on the differences in the need for structure among individuals from higher and lower classes against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the psychological mechanisms underlying this need.

#### *1.1. Social Class, Perceived Control, and the Need for Structure*

Studies focusing on the differences in the impact of the pandemic on individuals of higher and lower social classes in the USA [15] or in China [16,17] indicated that it imposed a significant negative impact on lower-class individuals. Moreover, previous research also found that perceived control positively affected individuals [18,19], while the need for structure negatively influenced them during the pandemic [20]. However, the relationship between social class, perceived control, and the need for structure is yet to be clarified. Subsequently, we explored their correlations from the existing literature (before the COVID-19 pandemic).

First, perceived control, the degree to which an individual feels that he or she is in control of the external world and not restricted by the environment [21], can negatively predict the need for structure. Research has shown that the lower an individual's perceived control, the higher their need for structure [22]. Compensatory control theory provides an explanation for this effect: According to the theory [6,11], feeling a sense of control is a basic human need and provides an important guarantee for people to feel that the world and their objective environment is safe and orderly. However, people are often faced with situations that are beyond their control. To compensate for this lack of control, individuals' needs for structure and order increase. Therefore, when confronted with incidents or uncertainty, individuals may upgrade their need for structure, with the lack of control as the psychological mediating factor. Many studies have supported this conclusion [23–25].

Second, social class, which refers to an individual's material resources as well as their perceptions of rank comparing with others in society [26], can positively predict perceived control. Despite the objective indicators used to define social class in existing literature, in recent years researchers tended to depict individuals' social class by integrating their perception of their own status in the social hierarchy with the traditional objective measurement. Therefore, several psychological studies on social class examined both the effect of objective class (some indices representing objective social status and material position, such as annual income, education level, and occupational reputation) and subjective class (a person's subjective assessment of where they are on the social ladder) [27]. Previous research suggests that higher class individuals are more likely to have a higher sense of control, based on both objective and subjective social class indicators [21,28]. The cognitive theory of social class [26] attempts an explanation of this effect: The theory argues that people who belong to higher classes are more likely to enjoy more resources in their life, and their living environment can provide them with more protection; thus, it is easier for such individuals to pursue and achieve important life goals and follow their own desires freely. Conversely, due to the shortage of material resources in their life, individuals who belong to lower classes are often subjects of their environment and must consider more environmental factors and the influence of others in their social lives. In the long run, individuals belonging to higher classes develop a relatively higher sense of control, while those of lower classes tend to possess a low sense of control [26]. These findings have been consistently supported by different studies with East Asian [7] and American participants [29].

Based on these two aspects, we can infer a mediating relationship among social class, perceived control, and the need for structure. In particular, the higher the social class of the individual, the higher their perceived control, which further leads to a lower need for structure. Research has already found a mediation model of "social class → perceived control → need for structure" [7]; however, the study only took college students as its participants and only examined the effects of the subjective class, which rendered its results less compelling. In the present study, we retested this issue by using data obtained from adults in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and examining the effects based both on objective and subjective social classes. We proposed the following hypothesis:

**Hypothesis 1.** *Participants from lower social classes have lower levels of the need for structure than those from higher social classes, with perceived control playing a mediating role.*

#### *1.2. Moderating Effect of the Threat of the Pandemic*

The above hypothesis describes the general relationship among social class, perceived control, and the need for structure. However, considering the threat posed by the pandemic, we speculated that the relationship between the three variables will differ. Compensatory control theory demonstrates a lower sense of control leads individuals to seek structure, while also proposing some potential moderating variables that could remove the negative correlation between perceived control and the need for structure [6]. For example, individuals with lower perceived control indicated an increased preference for products that provide structure, but for individuals with a strong belief in God this effect was not significant [30]. The existing research on compensatory control theory has tended to focus on the conditions under which the need for structure will not increase among people with lower levels of perceived control [30,31]. Conversely, the present study examined whether the need for structure increases among people with a higher sense of control under the threat of a pandemic. Therefore, in addition to compensatory control theory, we introduced further theoretical perspectives to analyze this assumption.

The cognitive motivation model of stress [32] can provide a new perspective to investigate this issue. This theory focuses on the relationship between the stress experienced by individuals and their cognitive structure. Based on this model, the desire for certainty is one of the preconditions for individuals to construct cognitive structures in stressful situations. More importantly, the model suggests that when people feel stress and threat, their need for certainty increases. According to this view, we can conclude that in the context of a pandemic, people may feel pressure and threat, thus increasing their need for structure.

Further, there may be individual differences in the effects of this increase. Studies have shown that motivational threats most typically cause a specific motivation among people who have relatively lower general levels of that particular motivation [33–35]. That is, threat or stress from the environment may make the motivation salient for everyone, although it will have a stronger effect for those with low chronic motivation, thus causing them to become close to those that have high levels of that motivation. Therefore, if Hypothesis 1 holds true, people from higher social classes and with a higher sense of control will generally have a relatively lower need for structure. Therefore, we can further speculate that in a pandemic-threat situation, those individuals (from higher classes and/or with higher perceived control) are more likely to find their need for structure increases significantly than those from lower social classes and/or who have lower perceived control.

Based on the above analysis, we proposed the following three hypotheses regarding this moderating effect.

**Hypothesis 2a.** *The threat of a pandemic can moderate the relationship between perceived control and the need for structure: When the level of pandemic threat is lower, perceived control negatively predicts the need for structure; when the threat level increases, the need for structure among individuals with higher perceived control will increase significantly, so that the predictive effect of perceived control on the need for structure will no longer be significant.*

**Hypothesis 2b.** *The threat of a pandemic can moderate the relationship between social class and the need for structure: When the level of pandemic threat is lower, social class will negatively predict the need for structure; when the threat level increases, the need for structure among individuals from higher social classes will increase significantly, so that the predictive effect of social class on the need for structure will no longer be significant.*

**Hypothesis 2c.** *The threat of a pandemic can moderate the mediating relationship of "social class* → *perceived control* → *need for structure" proposed in Hypothesis 1: When the level of pandemic threat is lower, the mediating effect will be significant; when the threat is higher, the mediating effect will not be established because the predictive effect of both social class and perceived control on the need for structure will no longer be significant (Figure 1).*

**Figure 1.** Hypothesized moderated mediating model.
