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The relationship between relative deprivation and fear of missing out in college students: the role of self-regulatory fatigue and personal belief in a just world

BMC Psychology volume 13, Article number: 55 (2025) Cite this article

Abstract

Background

Fear of missing out (FoMO) is a new type of anxiety disorder in the context of the Internet, which has a negative effects on the physical and mental health and behavior of college students, such as Internet addiction, non-adaptive socializing, and negative emotions. In order to investigate the effect of relative deprivation (RD) on FoMO of college students, this study conducted a moderated mediation model to examine the relationship between RD, FoMO, self-regulatory fatigue (SRF), and personal belief in a just world (BJW).

Methods

A total of 956 college students were surveyed on a RD Questionnaire, SRF Scale, FoMO Scale, and Personal BJW Scale.

Results

The results showed as follows: (1) College students’ RD positively predicted FoMO and SRF. (2) SRF partially mediated the link between RD and FoMO. (3) Personal BJW moderated the relationship between RD and FoMO, that is, when personal BJW is high, RD has a stronger predictive effect on SRF.

Conclusion

The results of this study help to reveal the influence and mechanism of RD of college students on FoMO. The results also show that reducing college students’ RD, improving self-control ability, and cultivating rational personal BJW can effectively prevent FoMO.

Peer Review reports

Background

Do you constantly check your moments and micro blog, even though you know you are bored, you can’t stop, because you don’t want to miss any of latest news? Do you read all the hot news on the internet, for fear that you will not know anything about it when you talk to your friends? Do you answer text messages while driving without risking your life? Whether you feel stressed when you leave home without your cell phone? These can all be signs of the fear of missing out (FoMO). The FoMO was first coined by the American writer Annie Stamell [1]. The FoMO is a type of diffuse anxiety that occurs when an individual fear that he or she is missing out on the meaningful experiences of others. It is characterized by the expectation of constantly knowing what others are doing [2]. Studies have found that about 75% of young people experience FoMO [3] cite in [4]. Studies have shown that college students and young adults who suffer from FoMO are more likely to experience fatigue, stress [5, 6], sleep problems, depression and other negative emotions, cell phone addiction [7, 8], and phub-phubing [9,10,11]. Therefore, to study the influencing factors and occurrence mechanism of college students’ FoMO is the basis of scientific prevention and effective control. Previous studies have investigated the relationship between FoMO and personality traits, psychological needs, and social media use; however, the relationship between FoMO and relative deprivation (RD) is a neglected topic. This study assessed one possible variable, that is, individual RD.

The relationship between RD and FoMO

RD refers to a sense of deprivation that occurs when an individual subjectively feels that what he or she deserves or is entitled to is usurpated when comparing himself or herself with others [12]. Feelings of RD manifest the psychological experience of unfairness and can produce anger and dissatisfaction with one’s situation. Previous studies have shown that RD will bring damage to people’s psychological development, and cause psychological adjustment problems, such as depression and anxiety [13, 14]. Anxiety is an important component of FoMO. FoMO is the anxiety of missing out on social activities in social situation. In other words, when an individual feels RD (one is deprived of what one deserves, while others get it), it may lead to exacerbate the FoMO (what am I missing out on at the moment? and constant anxiety about missing out in the future). Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1 RD significantly positively predicts FoMO.

Self-regulatory fatigue as a mediator

Previous studies have pointed out that an individual’s self-control may play an important mediating role between RD and negative emotions [15, 16]. We suggest that self-regulatory fatigue (SRF) is a mediating variable worth considering in RD and FoMO. According to the Strength Model of Self-control [17], human self-control ability is based on limited resources, and individuals will deplete their own resources when carrying out self-control activities. SRF refers to a state of persistent fatigue caused by the depletion of psychological resources exceeding the self-control ablity [18]. When individuals perceive RD, they will have a negative subjective cognition that they are in a relatively inferior position in social comparison [19]; feel anger, unfairness, dissatisfaction [20] and other negative emotions; even have impulsive behavior [21]. When dealing with external and internal negative factors, individuals have to invest continuous and more self-control resources to regulate emotions and behaviors [22,23,24], thus depleting more self-regulate energy, and prone to SRF. When an individual is in SRF, poor self-control resources will lead to a decline in overall self-control ability and a strong cognitive expectation to learn about the behavioral regulation difficulties experienced by others, will increase the FoMO. Previous studies also prove that when self-regulation capacity is insufficient, FoMO is more serious [25]. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2 SRF is the mediating variable of the relationship between RD and FoMO among college students.

Personal belief in a just world as a moderator

Belief in a just world (BJW) refers to people’s belief that the world they live in is just and that everyone can be treated fairly, including two dimensions: the general BJW (the world is just to others) and the personal BJW (the world is fair to himself) [26]. Personal BJW is more closely related to mental health [27], therefore, this study examines the moderating effect of personal BJW. According to the worldview verification model [28], people validate their worldview and strive to defend their worldview. When people encounter information that negates their worldview (realistic situations and experiences are inconsistent with worldview), it can lead to lower self-esteem, struggle to be consistent, experience high levels of psychological stress and even aggressive behavior, which depletes even more resources for self-control. RD may threaten the worldview of individuals with high personal BJW and thus may deplete more resources for self-regulation. From this perspective, personal BJW does not necessarily act as a buffer against the adverse effects of negative events [29]. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3 Personal BJW moderates the relationship between RD and FoMO. The negative effect of RD on SRF is stronger when personal BJW is higher.

In summary, this study construct a moderated mediation model (see Fig. 1). The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to test whether SRF mediates the relationship between RD and FoMO, and (b) to test whether the indirect associations between RD and FoMO via SRF are moderated by personal BJW. This study aims to answer the question of “how” and “under what circumstances” RD affects college students’ FoMO.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The proposed moderated mediation model

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Methods

Procedure and participants

The standard deviation of the FoMO scale obtained in the pre-survey was 3.1. The sample size was calculated according to the sample content formula of the measurement data of the cross-sectional study(\({\rm{n}} = {{{{1.96}^2}{S^2}} \over {{d^2}}}\)), and the margin of error for the survey was set at 0.2. The estimated sample size was 922. In this study, 1186 college students were selected from convenience sampling to carry out an online survey through a software called “questionnaire star” (https://www.wjx.cn/). We deleted questionnaires from participants who did not complete, answered consistently, completed in less than 3 min, and did not answer the validation questions (i.e., In this question, please choose the second option) correctly. A total of 956 college students (484 full-time and 472 part-time) completed the questionnaires in East China. Forms of consent were obtained from all participants before data collection. Participants were informed that the online survey followed the principles of anonymity, confidentiality, and independence and that the data would only be used for academic surveys. All procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board of the authors’ institution.

There were 214 male and 742 female students, including 364 first-year, 193 second-year, 241 third-year, and 158 fourth-year university students. The average age of the participants was 24.04 ± 5.21 years old.

Measurement

RD Questionnaire

The RD Questionnaire was developed by Ma [30]. It includes four items in total, using a 6-point Likert scale, and each item is scored on a 6-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). The total score for the four items was the RD score. The higher the total score, the stronger is the RD of the individual. Some sample items are:“Compared to the people around me, I am at disadvantage in life, work, etc.” and “I always feel like someone else is taking what’s rightfully mine.” In the present sample, Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.68.

SRF Scale

The SRF Scale was developed by Nes et al. [31] and revised by Wang et al. [18] to measure SRF levels. This scale consists of 16 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A higher total score indicated a stronger level of SRF. A sample item is: “I find it difficult to exercise as much as I shuold.” In the present sample, Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.84.

Personal BJW Scale

The participants’ personal BJW was measured using Personal BJW Scale developed by Dalbert and Stoeber [32] and revised by Su et al. [33]. The scale included seven items on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 6 (totally agree). All questions were scored positively. Higher scores indicated a stronger level of personal BJW. A sample item is: “I am usually treated fairly.” In the present sample, Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.84.

FoMO Scale

The FoMO Scale was developed by Przybylski et al. [2]. This scale includes 10 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally inconsistent) to 5 (totally consistent). A higher score indicated a stronger FoMO. The scale has good reliability and validity in Chinese college students [34]. Some sample items are: “I fear my friends have more rewarding experiences than me.” and “It bothers me when I miss an opportunity to meet up with friends.” In the present sample, Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.77.

Statistical method

Descriptive statistics and correlation analyses of the study variables, including RD, SRF, FoMO, and personal BJW, were performed using SPSS version 21.0. Hayes wrote PROCESS [35] and developed a plug-in specifically to analyze mediation and mediating effect analysis based on SPSS; previous studies have proven its effectiveness [36, 37]. First, we used Hayes PROCESS macro (Model 4) to test the mediation of SRF between RD and FoMO. Second, this study examines whether personal BJW moderates the mediation process. Moderated mediation is frequently used to examine whether the magnitude of a mediation effect is conditional on the value of the moderator. Using Hayes PROCESS macro (Model 7), we tested the moderated mediation effect of SRF and personal BJW. The bootstrapping method was used to test the significance of the effects and obtain robust standard errors for parameter estimation. The bootstrapping method produced 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals (CIs) for these effects from 5000 resamples of the data resamples. The Harman single-factor method was used to perform a common-method deviation test. Given that sex and age have significant effects on FoMO and SRF, this study included gender and age as controlled variables, and all study variables were standardized before data analysis.

Results

Control and inspection of common method deviation

The data collected in this study came from participants’ self-reports, which may have caused common method deviations. We adopted procedural control methods, such as anonymous questionnaire surveys and balanced item orders, to minimize the impact of common method deviations. In addition, to further examine whether common method bias exists, we used the Harman single factor method to carry out the common method deviation test. There were a total of 11 factors whose characteristic roots were greater than 1, and the explanatory rate of the first factor was 18.38% (< 40%), which indicated that the common method bias was not serious [38].

Preliminary analyses

The means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients of RD, SRF, personal BJW, and FoMO are reported in Table 1. From the data summarized in the table, it could be seen that the participants’ RD, SRF, and FoMO were significantly positively correlated with each other, and personal BJW was significantly negatively correlated with RD, SRF, and FoMO.

Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis results of each variable
Full size table

RD and FoMO in college students: a moderated mediation model

We used PROCESS 4 [35, 39] to test the mediating role of SRF between RD and FoMO. We generated 5,000 bootstrapped samples to estimate the CI of the indirect effect. Regression analysis (see Table 2) showed that RD significantly positively predicted FoMO (c = 0.33, p<0.001); after incorporating SRF into the regression equation, RD still had a significant positive predictive effect on FoMO (c’=0.21, p<0.001); RD significantly positively predicted SRF (a = 0.32, p<0.001); and SRF significantly positively predicted FoMO (b = 0.36, p<0.001). ab = 0.12, SE = 0.02; the bootstrap 95% CI was [0.09,0.15], excluding the 0. The total effect of SRF on FoMO was (ab/(ab + c’) = 35.18%. This indicated that SRF partially mediated the effect of RD on FoMO. The proportion of intermediary effect to total effect was 35.18.

Table 2 Mediation model test of self-regulatory fatigue
Full size table

We used PROCESS 7 [35, 39] to further test the moderated mediating effect of SRF and personal BJW. The results are presented in Table 3; Fig. 2. Regression analysis showed that RD positively predicted SRF (β = 0.22, p < 0.001), personal BJW negatively predicted SRF (β=-0.36, p < 0.001), and the interaction between RD and personal BJW had a significant predictive effect on SRF (β = 0.05, p < 0.05), with a 95% CI of [0.01, 0.10], excluding 0. This finding indicated that personal BJW played a regulatory role in the first half of the intermediary path of “RD → SRF → FoMO.”

Table 3 Bias of mediating moderating effect of RD and FoMO
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Fig. 2
figure 2

The summary figure for model 7 in this study

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To investigate how the level of personal BJW modulates the relationship between RD and SRF. We plotted the predicted RD against SRF separately for low and high levels of personal BJW (one SD below and one SD above the mean, respectively) (see Fig. 3). Error bars indicate the standard error of RD prediction about SRF at different levels of personal BJW. Simple slope tests showed that, for college students with high personal BJW, RD had a significant impact on SRF (bsimple=0.27, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.20, 0.35]). In contrast, the effect was much weaker for college students with low personal BJW (bsimple=0.16, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.09, 0.24]).

Fig. 3
figure 3

Personal BJW moderation between RD and SRF

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Personal BJW moderated the indirect influence of RD on FoMO through SRF. Further indirect effects of condition, for those with high personal BJW, the indirect effect of RD on FoMO was significant (effect = 0.10, SE = 0.02, 95% CI [0.06,0.13]). For low personal BJW, the indirect effect was weaker (effect = 0.06, SE = 0.02, 95% CI [0.03,0.09]). Finally, Johnson–Neyman technology was used to further explore the continuous changes in the indirect effects of RD on FoMO at different levels of personal BJW. It can be found that the effect of RD on FoMO is significant through SRF, when the values is above − 1.96. However, the indirect effect was not significant when the standard value was lower than − 1.96 (see Fig. 4).

Fig. 4
figure 4

The effect of RD on the indirect effect of FoMO at different levels of personal BJW

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Discussion

The relationship between RD and FoMO in college students

The study found that RD significantly positively predicted FoMO in college students, which is consistent with previous studies [40, 41]. In other words, in interpersonal interactions, when college students subjectively perceive that they are deprived of emotions, social resources, good opportunities etc., it will increase their social anxiety of FoMO and excessive attention and other behaviors. On the one hand, the core psychological process of RD is social comparison [42, 43], in which college students with a high sense of deprivation will show an obvious tendency and need for social comparison, which may encourage students to constantly look for similar comparison objects, and be widely exposed to the positive but biased social comparison information provided by other users on social networking sites [44, 45], thus causing FoMO [46]. However, there were no studies of social comparisons among the participants in this study. Therefore, future empirical are needed to determine whether RD leads to FoMO through social comparison. On the other hand, college students with negative cognition and negative emotional, will tend to seek compensatory activities or vicarious gratification and may display a desire for social contact with others, gain new experiences and fear of missing out on meaningful experiences of others, leading to FoMO [40, 47]. Previous studies in the field of RD focused more on the sense of deprivation caused by economic disadvantages. In combination with FoMO, this study focuses on the relationship between RD and FoMO in social contexts. FoMO is often used as a mediating variable for other variables such as individual psychosocial adaptation, social needs, and social media use etc [48,49,50,51,52], or as an independent variable for research [53, 54]. In this study, FoMO was used as the dependent variable to explore the cognitive process and mechanism of this diffuse anxiety state caused by RD.

The mediating role of SRF

This study determined that RD not only directly affects college students’ FoMO, but also indirectly through SRF. The resource pool for individual self-controlled is limited [55]. When college students encounter RD, they will experience bad emotions and negative cognition such as depression and anger [56]. Processing of negative cognition, regulating negative emotions and controlling behaviors all deplete self-regulation ability [22, 57], leading to SRF. Individuals with low levels of self-regulation are prone to psychological discomfort, increased stress and various maladaptive behaviors [55], such as Internet addiction [58] and increased future anxiety [59], which directly lead to or exacerbate FoMO. Contrarily, if an individual has a high level of control, he or she will mostly look for opportunities to change the current state [60].

The moderating role of personal BJW

This study found that personal BJW moderated the relationship between RD and SRF. The effect of RD on SRF was stronger when personal BJW was higher. In other words, high personal BJW exacerbates the adverse effects of negative events (RD) on mental health, which is similar to previous conclusions [61] and supports the worldview verification model [28]. When college students experience the RD, the higher the level of personal BJW, the greater the college students’ mood swings, the increased urge to punish others [62], and the more self-control capacity they expend to cope, because the sense of deprivation (“I am not getting what I deserve”) is inconsistent with their values (“The world is fair to me”). Contrarily, people with low personal BJW experience less psychological stress and conflict after deprivation because it is consistent with their own worldviews [63]. However, there are also scholars who hold views that personal BJW can buffer the impact of negative events [64, 65]. It is certain that personal BJW is an important factor in mental health [66] and play an important role in college students’ mental health. In addition to the worldview verification model, negative effects of this study may exsit for the following reasons: First, college students did not expect the “deprivation” in life and did not prepare for it; Second, compared with those with low level of personal BJW, those with a high level of belief may attribute negative social environmental stimuli such as deprivation to their own internal and stable negative factors.

Limitation and further direction

This study can still be improved in the following aspects. First, the cross-sectional design adopted in this study is based on certain theory foundations, but it can not completely avoid common method bias and inferred causality between variables. Future studies may adopt the empirical sampling [67] or the experimental methods, and continue to test this study through multiple repeated measurements at different time points or comparison between the experimental group and the control group. Second, this study only explored the psychological mechanism of FoMO and did not further explore the after-effects of FoMO. With the deepening and elaboration of research, it is necessary to further study the mechanism of FoMO on cognitive processing, emotional performance, social interaction and adaption of college students. So as to construct an overall idea of the influencing factors and after-effects of FoMO.

Conclusion

RD can significantly positively predict college students’ FoMO, which has been confirmed by some scholars; this study further enriches this conclusion. Our study found that SRF partially mediates the relationship between RD and FoMO among college students. Personal BJW regulate the front path of the mediation model. Specifically, RD was a greater predictor of SRF when personal BJW was high than when it was low.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

BJW:

Belief in a just world

CI:

Confidence interval

FoMO:

Fear of missing out

RD:

Relative deprivation

SRF:

Self-regulatory fatigue

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to all participants in this study.

Funding

This study was supported by he Key Projects of Humanities and Social Sciences in Universities in Anhui Province (Grants Nos. SK2021A0467), the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Grants No. 20YJC190006), and the Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project of Anhui Provincial (AHSKF2021D21). The manuscript is one of the core contents of these fund projects. The fund project provides research ideas, personnel and financial support for this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities and Management, Wannan Medical College, Wuhu, China

    Yun Chen, Qiuci Zhang, Ronghua Hang, Long Huang & Liang Yu

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  1. Yun Chen
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  2. Qiuci Zhang
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  3. Ronghua Hang
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Contributions

Yun Chen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft. Liang Yu and Qiuci Zhang: Data collection, Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing. Long Huang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing. Ronghua Hang: Data collection.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Long Huang or Liang Yu.

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Ethics approval and consent to participate

The procedures performed in our study involved human participants and they agreed the ethical standards of the institutional research committee, and also with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Academic Ethics Committee of Wannan medical college. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Chen, Y., Zhang, Q., Hang, R. et al. The relationship between relative deprivation and fear of missing out in college students: the role of self-regulatory fatigue and personal belief in a just world. BMC Psychol 13, 55 (2025). https://doiorg.publicaciones.saludcastillayleon.es/10.1186/s40359-025-02362-3

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Keywords

BMC Psychology

ISSN: 2050-7283

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