A Research of Gratitude and Personal Values in College Going Students

Abstract

Gratitude defines an attitude of positivity in a person’s character whether personal or professional. It can be easily understood as the realization of gratefulness towards a person’s deed from the beneficiary of the said deed. It is a spontaneous feeling emerging from within. However, it is not just an emotional response but also a choice we make.

This research aims to study the relationship between Gratitude and Personal values in College Going Students. For this research a sample of 100 colleges going students (50 boys and 50 girls) within the range of 18-24 years were administered. The tools used in the study were Gratitude Questionnaire and Personal Value Questionnaire.

The result shows positive relation between Gratitude and Personal Values. Statistical analysis indicated that Gratitude and Democratic, Aesthetic, Power and Hedonistic values are correlated with each other. The future implications indicated that feeling of gratitude leads to caring for each other. It teaches us to be sincere and honest which is essential for the society’s progression. It allows us to look inside us, and not to be arrogant, which is essential for successful outcomes for the work that we do. Incorporating constructs of positive psychology like gratitude and personal values have influence on health enhancements and well-being of young adults.

Introduction

Gratitude is one of the five characters strengths within the virtue category of transcendence. Peterson and Seligman offer an expanded definition of gratitude “a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift is a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty”.

In order to experience gratitude, one must be able to understand people as intentional agents whose actions are motivated by their own desires and beliefs. Some researchers have found that few children under the age of 7 years spontaneously express gratitude in response to receiving a gift, which suggests that expressing gratitude requires developmental capacities beyond theory of mind. Gratitude cannot be defined in a single way but it can be understood through our family values, moral stories and religious stories as well.

Gratitude reduces feelings of envy, makes our memories happier, lets us experience good feelings, and helps us bounce back from stress. Gratitude can be said to have considerable value in the understanding of human functioning and can been seen as a reliable indicator for wellbeing and attendant social variables. Personal values are the virtues that guide us to take into account human elements when one interacts with other human being. They are our feelings for the human essence of others. It’s both what we expect others to do to us and what we aim to give other human beings. These personal values give the effect of bonding, comforting and reassuring.

Values guide the selection or evaluate policies, people and events. Values are part and parcel of philosophy. Hence, aims of education are naturally concerned with values. All education is, in fact, very naturally value-oriented. Each educational goal, whether originating in a person, a family, a community, a school or an educational system, is believed to be good. ‘Good’ is intended to mean here ‘avoidance of bad’.

Review of Literature

Froh et al (2011) researched on Gratitude and the reduced cost of Materialism in Adolescents. The study examined high school students who completed measures of materialism, gratitude, envy, depression, academic functioning, life satisfaction, absorption, and social integration. It was found that gratitude controlling for materialism, predicts all outcomes i. e. , higher grade point average, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption with lower envy and depression. On the other hand, materialism controlling for gratitude, predicts 3 out of 6 outcomes, low grade point average, higher envy, and life satisfaction. Also, when gratitude and materialism were taken as predictors, it was found that gratitude was a stronger predictor of six outcomes than materialism.

In another study Froh et al (2009) researched on Gratitude and Subjective well-being in early adolescence: Examining gender differences. This study examined 154 students to identify advantages from it experience and expression. Students completed measures of subjective well-being, social support, pro-social behaviour, and physical symptoms. Positive associations were found between gratitude and positive effect, global and domain specific life satisfaction, optimism, social support, and pro-social behaviour; most relations remained even after controlling for positive affect.

Gratitude demonstrated a negative relation with physical symptoms, but not with negative affect. The relation between gratitude and physical symptoms was mediated by relational fulfillment. Gratitude demonstrated strong relations with the positive effects: proud, hopeful, inspired, forgiving, and excited. The relation between gratitude and family support was moderated by gender, indicating that boys, compared with girls, appear to derive more social benefits from gratitude.

In a research by Freitas et al (2011) 430 students between the age of 7-14 years were made to answer the questions: 'What is your greatest wish?' and 'What would you do for the person who granted you this wish?' The responses to the second question were content-analysed and coded into four types of gratitude: verbal, concrete, connective and finalistic. Subsequently, a quantitative analysis regarding age by each type of response was conducted.

The results showed a decline in the frequency of concrete gratitude and an increase in connective gratitude as age increased. Character strengths predict subjective well-being during adolescence which indicated that many character strengths are related to subjective well-being in youth. The high school students attended to Values in Action Inventory “strengths for youth” and measured subjective well-being (depression, happiness and life satisfaction) with many assessments, since 9th grade to their 10th grade.

In the results the effectiveness of other strengths and other directed strengths (kindness, teamwork) presumed lesser symptoms of depression. Transcendence strengths (meaning, love) presumed greater life satisfaction. Social support partly mediated the connection between strengths and depression however; it didn’t mediate between strengths and life satisfaction. These findings show that strengths build connections with people and propose larger self-predict future being.

In a study by Park et all (2009) on Building strengths of character: keys to positive youth development which resulted that good character is never singular if comprised of family with positive traits which manifests in one’s thoughts, behaviours, and feelings. The analysis shows that well-being of children and youth depends on the strengths which related to academic success and life satisfaction.

Throughout the ages, instilling strong character strengths among children and youth has been a major goal for parents and academicians. In spite the importance, scholars have neglected this topic throughout 20th century. Positive psychology has again refocused scientific attention on character, identifying it as one of the pillars of this new field and central to the understanding of the psychological good life.

In his research on Character strengths: Research and Practice and results showed that though strengths predict different outcomes, character strengths are linked to aspects of an individual and social well-being. This paper discusses ways that acknowledge and cultivate character strengths, among the context of a strengths-based approach to education and private development. Character matters and cultivating its elements ought to be a very important goal for all.

Wood et al (2010) did a research on Gratitude and Well-being: A review and theoretical. From this study it was depicted that gratitude is strongly linked to well-being, and this link may be unique and causal. Although positive psychology neglected the current limitations, the interventions to clinically increased gratitude were critically reviewed and concluded to be promising. Gratitude is important to clinical psychology because strong power in understanding well-being,  potential to improve well-being through gratitude with exercise. Froh et al (2008) did a research on counting blessings in early adolescents: An experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being.

The results indicated that blessing were associated with enhanced self-reported gratitude, optimism, life satisfaction, and decreased negative affect. Feeling grateful in response to aid mediated the relationship between experimental condition and general gratitude at the 3-week follow-up. The most important finding was the relationship between gratitude and satisfaction with school experience at immediate post-test and 3-week follow-up. Counting blessings were an effective intervention for well-being enhancement in early adolescents.

Van dyke et al (2007) did a study on How forgiveness, purpose, and religiosity are related to the and well-being of youth, and the purpose of this study was to bring attention that this research has shown and encouraged the empirical study of forgiveness, purpose and religiosity, particularly within the realm of youth mental health and well-being, because the values of forgiveness, purpose, and religiosity are considered mental health.

In another research on Gratitude predicts psychological well-being above the Big Five facets by Alex et al (2008) examined whether gratitude predicts psychological well-being above both the domains and facets of the five factor model. Participants completed the NEO PI-R measure of the 30 facets of the Big Five, the GQ-6 measure of trait gratitude, and the scales of psychological well-being.

Gratitude had small correlations with autonomy, and medium to large correlations with environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. After controlling for the 30 facets of the Big Five, gratitude explained a substantial amount of a unique variance in most aspects of psychological well-being. Gratitude is concluded to be uniquely important to psychological well-being, beyond the effect of the Big Five facets:

1. Methodology
2. Aim: To study the relationship between gratitude and personal values in college going students
3. Sample
4. Random sampling was administered on 100 college going students 50 boys and 50 girls in the age group of 18-24 years from Delhi and NCR.
5. Tools

Gratitude in College Going Students: The Gratitude Questionnaire-Six-Item Form (GQ-6) is a six-item self-report questionnaire designed to assess individual differences in the proneness to experience gratitude in daily life.

Personal values questionnaire by Dr. (Mrs. ) G. P. Sherry and Prof. R. P. Verma is a 40-item questionnaire which is designed to measure the spectrum of personal values. PVQ has 10 dimensions which were selected for assessment. They are Religious Values, Social Values, Democratic Values, Aesthetic Values, Economic Values, Knowledge Values, Hedonistic Values, Power values, Family Prestige Values, Health Values.

Analysis of Result, Discussion

This research aims to study the relationship between Gratitude and Personal values in college going students. For this research a sample of 100 colleges going students were administered. They were asked to fill the following questionnaires: Gratitude and Personal Values Questionnaire. Accordingly the scoring was done, and statistical analysis was carried out.

Gratitude is one of the five characters strengths within the virtue category of transcendence. Peterson and Seligman offer an expanded definition of gratitude “a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift is a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty”. Gratitude cannot be defined in a single way but it can be understood through our family values, moral stories and religious stories as well.

The advantages of practicing gratitude are about unending. Individuals who consistently practice gratitude by setting aside opportunity to see and reflect upon the things they're grateful for experience more positive feelings, feel more alive, rest better, express more compassion and kindness. Personal values have been employed in so distinctively different ways in human discourse. It is often said that a person has a value or an object has a value. Values that may be included in the general definition of personal values are love, brotherhood, respect for others — including plants and animals — honesty, sincerity, truthfulness, non-violence, gratitude, tolerance, a sense of responsibility, cooperation, self-reliance, secularism and internationalism. But the question is does Gratitude and Personal Values go hand in hand or these two parameters are different.

The present study aims to study the relationship between Gratitude and Personal values in college students. For this study a sample of 100 college students were used out of which 50 were boys and 50 were girls range between the ages of 18-24. The sample study was from Delhi NCR. The variables taken for this study were Gratitude and Personal Values. The tools used for this research were: Gratitude Questionnaire and Personal Values Questionnaire.

The first hypothesis states that, there will be a significant difference in Gratitude among college going students boys and girls. The hypothesis was rejected as the finding showed that there is no significant difference between Gratitude and Personal Values in boys and girls. This variable is neither significant at 0. 05 level of significance nor at 0. 01 level of significance. Result of earlier studies supports present study. A positive association was found between Gratitude and subjective well-being of students. Another research has proved that Gratitude was considered to be important psychological well-being in Adolescents.

The second hypothesis states that, there will be a significant difference in Personal values among college going boys and girls. The hypothesis was rejected as the finding showed that there is no significant difference between Gratitude and Personal Values in boys and girls. The variable is neither significant at 0. 05 level nor 0. 01 level. Result of the earlier studies support present study. A positive association was found between Gratitude and subjective Well-being in early Adolescents. Another research has proved that there is a positive association between Strength of character, orientation to happiness and life satisfaction.

The third hypothesis states that, there will be a significant relationship between Gratitude and Personal values among boys and girls. The hypothesis was partially accepted as the findings showed that there is a level of significance between Gratitude and Personal Values at levels of 0. 05 and 0. 01. On the basis of the result it can be showed that Gratitude is significant to Democratic, Power and Hedonistic Values at 0. 01 (2-tailed) level and it is significant to Aesthetic Values at 0. 05 (2-tailed) level. Evidences of past research reviews also support the present study. A positive association was found between Gratitude and Happiness where it was proved grateful thinking improved mood, and results also supported the predictive validity of the GRAT (Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test).

The co-efficient of correlation obtained between the variable of gratitude and of democratic values has been computed to be r=. 262 which has been considered to be significant at level of significance 0. 01. Thus we may infer that a significant positive correlation exists between Gratitude and Democratic values. Thus as the level of Gratitude increases the level of democratic values also increases.

There is no correlation between Family, Health, Knowledge, Social, Religious and Economic values with Gratitude. Because Gratitude pushes a person to think about the deeds of the other person first, this results in over compensating for things which are actually not very big. In turn, the person we might be grateful to may take undue advantage of this feeling and ask for favours which may be much more than the work done. On a personal front as a person would be sacrificing to compensate as a mark of gratitude towards a person there comes a feeling of discomfort and irritation. This causes unrest in a person’s personal and social life. Alongside, showing gratitude towards a person give an impression of weakness and docile personality

Conclusion

The purpose of this research was to assess the relationship between Gratitude and Personal Values in youth and to see whether there is a significant difference between the two. Gratitude pushes the person to think about the deeds of the other person. In turn, the person we might be grateful to may take undue advantage of this feeling and ask for favours which may be more than the work done. The results showed that the hypothesis was accepted as it showed there was significant level of difference between Gratitude and Personal Values. Gratitude seems to be significant to Democratic, Power, Hedonistic and Aesthetic Values.

The future implications indicated that feeling of gratitude leads to caring for each other. It teaches us to be sincere and honest which is essential for the society’s progression. It allows us to look inside us, and not to be arrogant, which is essential for successful outcomes for the work that we do. Gratitude and personal values promotes prosocial behaviour and incorporating such constructs of positive psychology have implications for health and wellbeing for individuals that further contributes to moral competence and character building of youth.

References

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