Effects of grateful disposition, gender and gratitude condition towards psychological well-being

Abstract

Objectives. This study replicated previous studies on the effect of gratitude condition, and explored the effect of grateful disposition and gender and their interactive effects with gratitude condition, on psychological well-being of university student in Hong Kong.

Methods. All 150 participants (53 males, 97 females; mean age = 21.52, SD = 2.70) were Cantonese speaking university students recruited from four universities campuses in Hong Kong. They were required to respond the grateful disposition questionnaire and divided into high or low grateful disposition groups according to their scores of grateful disposition: those who scored equal or higher than 33 belonged to high grateful disposition group and others belonged to low grateful disposition group. Each participant was then randomly assigned into gratitude condition or hassles condition to participate the 14-days consecutive daily diaries. At the 14th day, they responded the psychological well-being measurements, including positive affect, negative affect, life satisfaction and depression.

Results. Results showed that gratitude condition elicited more gratitude. In addition, there was main effect of grateful disposition towards all four variables of psychological well-being. The main condition effect was only found on positive affect but it interacted with grateful disposition to influence both positive affect and negative affect. Neither main gender effect nor its interaction with grateful disposition and / or grateful condition was found in this study.

Discussion. The findings showed that gratitude condition increased positive affect. It also implied that grateful disposition was a reliable predictor of psychological well-being and people with higher grateful disposition participated gratitude condition strengthened their positive affect and weakened their negative affect than other combinations. Moreover, the findings suggested people with higher grateful disposition were more influenced by the gratitude condition with a larger magnitude than those with lower grateful disposition. This provided an implication that difference people needed different gratitude manipulations.