Previous research has found that religiosity is associated with psychological well-being (i.e., depressive symptoms, perceived stress, and life satisfaction), and this study sought to improve our understanding of this relation by examining two mediators: gratitude and social support. Additionally, this study sought to examine the effect of having been a custodial grandparent on social support and psychological well-being. These issues were examined using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and two subsets of participants from national samples (i.e., participants from the MIDUS II and MIDUS Refresher who completed outcome questionnaires with the Biomarker follow-up). Consistent with previous research, religiosity was associated with psychological well-being. Gratitude and social support, which themselves covaried, mediated that relation. Former or current status as a custodial grandparent was not associated with poor psychological well-being or less social support. These findings served as a replication and extension of previous research that showed gratitude may mediate the relation between religiosity and psychological well-being. Implications and limitations to this study are discussed.

Five studies examined interventions to increase the frequency of expressions of gratitude by psychology students in two classes of a psychology course at a large university in southwest Virginia. Studies 1 and 4 included signing a paper when declaring an intention to express gratitude to people behaving prosocially, while studies 2, 3, and 5 included responding to writing prompts prior to declaring an intention to express gratitude. Students in one class of Study 5 were also offered Actively-Caring for People (AC4P) wristbands that served as "tangible reminders of kindness" (Geller, 2013). Students in all studies were given one week to express gratitude. Gratitude expression was measured by self-report on a survey administered during the psychology course. In all but the first and fourth studies, increased intentions to express gratitude were significantly higher in the Intervention class than the Control class. The impact of the interventions on reports of gratitude expression was inconsistent. Theoretical/methodological explanations and directions for future research are discussed. / Master of Science

<p> While much scholarly attention has been given to the benefits of expressing gratitude, a paucity of research exists in the competent communication of gratitude. The current dissertation employs three studies to ascertain qualities of gratitude communication that are favored in message recipients, establish criteria for competent gratitude communication, and identify the extent to which features of gratitude messages corresponds to the competency criteria. The first study investigated various aspects of gratitude communication that message recipients characterized as ideal, such as verbal, nonverbal, and contextual factors. Building upon these findings, Study 2 developed and validated two scales: one measuring benefactor perceptions of the extent to which gratitude messages convey meaningful impact, thoughtfulness, and sincerity (the gratitude assessment scale, or GAS); and another measuring the presence of salient features of explicitness, elaboration, and affirmation in gratitude messages (the gratitude message features, or GMF, scale). Finally, participants in Study 3 were randomly exposed to a hypothetical gratitude message that contained one of the three features, all three features, or none of the features and responded to the GAS to evaluate their perceptions of the message. Findings established the skills-competence link, in which explicitness, elaboration, and affirmation all predict benefactor perceptions of the message’s meaningful impact, thoughtfulness, and sincerity. The findings of the dissertation reveal four significant contributions to gratitude communication research: (1) the identification of salient message features and benefactor evaluations of the message that reflect competent gratitude communication, (2) the development of statistically sound instrumentation pertaining to gratitude communication competence, (3) the establishment of the skills-competence link, which associates the features of a gratitude message to message perceptions that are essential to gratitude communication, and (4) the beginnings of a model of the process of gratitude communication.  </p>

No description available.

Gratitude is a ubiquitous emotional experience. A simple “thank you” could just be a casual gesture of politeness; yet, religions, philosophers, and psychologists have long proposed that heart-felt experiences of gratefulness is the key to well-being. This dissertation examined the mediating mechanisms of the effects of gratitude on subjective well-being. I proposed a resources-coping model, which postulates that gratitude fosters subjective well-being through first enhancing perceptions of coping resources, which in turn facilitating the adoption of adaptive coping strategies. I tested this model in three studies. Study 1 found that, compared to the control condition, participants experienced more favorable perceptions of social and personal coping resources, higher efficacy to positive reframe stressful events, and greater subjective well-being upon recalling grateful events. The effect of condition on subjective well-being was mediated by enhanced feelings of coping resources and positive reframing efficacy. Building on this finding, Studies 2 and 3 applied the structural equation modeling approach to examine the inter-relationships among gratitude, social and personal coping resources, adaptive coping strategies, and subjective well-being among individuals facing specific stressors. Study 2 revealed that gratitude was associated with the receipt and satisfaction with social support, as well as adaptive coping strategies, including positive reframing, humor, acceptance, religious coping, and social support seeking, among a group of familial dementia caregivers. Study 3, which was conducted among a group of adults who had recently experienced a work-related stressor, largely replicated the findings of Study 2 and found that gratitude was associated with both favorable perceptions of coping resources as well as enhanced deployment of adaptive coping strategies. The results of the structural equation models demonstrate that coping resources mediated the effect of gratitude on life and work satisfaction, perceived life and work stress, and depressive symptoms. Findings of these three studies generally support the resources-coping model. Implications on future studies on gratitude and the coping process, as well as the application of gratitude-related findings to psychotherapy are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Expressing gratitude has a significant function in societal interaction. As Eisenstein and Bodman (1993) suggested, only when the function of gratitude is expressed appropriately can it ¡§engender feelings of warmth and solidarity among interlocutors¡¨ (p.167). However, compared with other widely discussed speech acts such as apology and request, the speech act of expressions of gratitude seldom drew researchers¡¦ attention. The present study hence focuses on investigating EFL (English as foreign language) learners¡¦ behavior in realizing expressions of gratitude on the basis of cross-cultural comparison of NS-Cs (Native speakers of Chinese) and NS-Es (Native speakers of English) in terms of perception and production performances. Data used for analysis cover 60 NS-E, 60 NS-C, and 60 EFL speakers¡¦ data elicited from Discourse-Completion-Task (DCT) questionnaire which consisted of 24 scenarios in which four contextual factors, comprising social distance, social status, gender of interlocutor and severity of the situation were embedded. Scale-Response questionnaire (SRQ) was designed to obtain two cultural groups¡¦ perception in terms of degree of imposition, degree of gratefulness, and likelihood of the expectation of benefactors. The EFL group was further categorized into two groups on the basis of proficiency level. Among each group, the number of male and female participants was even. The result of SRQ shows that both cultural groups generated the same tendency, that is, the greater imposition the informant felt s/he caused to the benefactor, the more grateful s/he felt and the more likely s/he thought the benefactor would expect receiving expressions of gratitude. NS-Es¡¦ perceptions on the likelihood of gratitude expectation and degree of imposition were significantly higher than NS-C group¡¦s. In terms of the contextual factors, NS-C participants were found to be more sensitive to relative social status while NS-E participants were more sensitive to relative social distance. The analysis of DCT data shows that NS-Cs and NS-Es generated similar strategies in gratitude-provoking situations and NS-E group generated greater amount of strategy use. Both groups generated more strategies and lengthier utterances in situations bearing greater imposition. EFL groups were found to generate similar strategy uses as the two cultural groups did. Accordingly, the occurrence of negative sociopragmatic transfer was rare while negative pragmalinguistic transfer was more observable. Some linguistic properties of transfer reflected the cultural orientation. Instead of pragmatic performance, proficiency level seemed to be influential in linguistic accuracy, amount of strategy use and length of utterances. The limitation of the study suggests future study conduct on natural utterances, oral DCT, introspective interview with the informants and further discussion on role-play data to get a more comprehensive understanding of the behavior of expressions of gratitude realized by NS-Cs, NS-Es and EFL learners.

In Asia many young men and women feel obligated to give allowances to their parents. Scholars have shown that Singapore has reinforced traditional family relationships as a source of economic national security among citizens by drawing these feelings of obligation. I argue that students’ experience with parent-child relationships of obligation within Singapore comes from a combination of state policy and parental expectations. These relationships are not created solely by the state, but co-created by the combination of parents and the state and result in reciprocal relationships expressed as gratitude. This thesis argues that there are state programs in Singapore that reinforce sons’ bonds to parents while they are studying overseas in order to inculcate the idea of self-motivated gratitude to give money to parents. This study draws on data gathered from ethnographic interviews and participant observation conducted in Singapore with male students returning from studying overseas in 2015. The conscription of men into the military, scholarships for overseas educations, and funding for overseas Singaporean communities were all arenas where the state invested in strengthening the ties between sons and their parents in order to keep overseas students close to family. Among the respondents in this study the pressure to give back to family was solidified as a result of these programs which demonstrate that the state of Singapore seeks to sustain a global governance of gratitude among Singaporean transnational families. / Graduate / 0326 / raviv_litman@outlook.com

No description available.

This thesis is founded in the positive psychological theory of gratitude, the experience of thankfulness and its benefits on both the individual and the community. My explorations via personal journaling, careful reflection, and engaging in craft, led me to cultivate a new definition for gratitude: present moment awareness. Using sheer fabric and the meditative act of embroidering, the language of gratitude was relearned and cultivated. My piece aims to incite further explorations in thanks.

Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is extra-role behaviour that is not formally required by organizations, but benefits the organization and its members (Organ, 1988). OCB is considered to be a core dimension of job performance (Rotundo & Sackett, 2002) with research showing that OCB contributes to the health and productivity of organizations (e.g., Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009). As a result, both organizational researchers and organizations have long been interested in understanding the origins of this behaviour. However, research into the antecedents of OCB has important limitations. Notably, this research has conceptualized OCB as a static construct, which recent theorizing and research indicates is an inaccurate assumption (e.g., Beal, Weiss, Barros, & MacDermid, 2005; Ilies, Scott, & Judge, 2006). Additionally, OCB research has relied on a single theoretical framework, social exchange theory, to explain previous findings, creating narrowness in the field. The current dissertation sought to address these important limitations by conceptualizing OCB as a dynamic construct (i.e., one that has sizable day-to-day within-person variability) and examining the ability of state gratitude, a novel and theoretically relevant antecedent, to predict OCB. Drawing on the Moral Affect Model of gratitude, Affective Events Theory, and Broaden and Build Theory, I propose that state gratitude is an important driver of day-to-day fluctuations in OCB. In two daily diary studies, my findings revealed that, as predicted, dynamic fluctuations in OCB were significantly predicted by state gratitude. Additionally, in the second of two daily diary studies, state gratitude was successfully induced by a “count your blessings” task and state gratitude was found to be a significant mediator of the induction and OCB. Overall, the results lend support to the notion that OCB is dynamic and that state gratitude, a discrete positive emotion, can be an effective driver of OCB.