This study explores the impact mechanism of objective financial knowledge on college students’ financial attitudes, with a particular focus on the mediating role of self-construal. Based on a comprehensive survey of 5,839 college students, the results indicate that the level of objective financial knowledge significantly and positively affects their financial attitudes. Moreover, self-construal partially mediates this relationship, suggesting that students’ perceptions of their own financial knowledge and abilities, as well as their confidence in financial decision-making, can enhance the effect of objective financial knowledge on their financial attitudes. Therefore, improving college students’ objective financial knowledge and self-construal abilities can help to better shape their attitudes and judgment towards financial matters. This provides important theoretical support for universities and educational institutions to develop more scientific and effective financial education strategies. Additionally, this study enriches the theoretical framework of the relationship between financial literacy and behavior, expanding the interdisciplinary perspective of economics and psychology in the study of financial behavior.