(Psychology of Emotions Motivations and Actions Series) Howard, Ashley R - Psychology of Gratitude - New Research-Novinka (2016)

PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS, MOTIVATIONS AND ACTIONS
PSYCHOLOGY OF GRATITUDE
NEW RESEARCH
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PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS,
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PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS, MOTIVATIONS AND ACTIONS
PSYCHOLOGY OF GRATITUDE
NEW RESEARCH
ASHLEY R. HOWARD
EDITOR
New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Howard, Ashley R., editor.
Title: Psychology of gratitude : new research / editor, Ashley R. Howard.
Description: Hauppauge, New York : Nova Science Publishers, Inc., [2016] |
Series: Psychology of emotions, motivations and actions | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017078 (print) | LCCN 2016022500 (ebook) | ISBN 9781634852326 (softcover)
| ISBN 9781634852494 (H%RRN)
Subjects: LCSH: Gratitude--Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC BF575.G68 P794 2016 (print) | LCC BF575.G68 (ebook) | DDC 179/.9--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017078
Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

CONTENTS
Preface vii
Chapter 1 Gratitude in Youth: Past, Present,
and Future Applications 1
Samantha Bausert and Jeffrey J. Froh
Chapter 2 Testing Scales of Parenting Practice and Filial Acts
in Children and Exploring Their Correlations 21
Shi Li
Chapter 3 Routine Household Chores in Gratitude
Development in Children 45
Shi Li
Chapter 4 Gratitude Uniquely Predicts Loneliness
above Socio-Demographics, the Big 5 Personality
Factors and Life Satisfaction 61
Félix Neto
Chapter 5 Gratitude and Envy: Implications for
Career Development 75
Viviana Langher, Andrea Caputo,
Valentina Nannini and Massimo Sturiale
Index 97
PREFACE
Gratitude is a disposition or mood that enables people to respond

positively for the benefits they receive from people, nature, or a moment of
peaceful bliss. Past research has recognized gratitude as one of the most
important virtues a person can have. It has been demonstrated that there are
psychological, interpersonal, personality, and physical benefits to being
grateful. Chapter One of this book provides an overview of what previous
gratitude research has shown, what present research introduces to the
literature, and what future research needs to enhance the theoretical
understanding of gratitude development in youth. Chapter Two explores the
correlations between filial acts and parenting practices. Chapter Three taps
into the unique function of routine household chores as a vital means in
developing gratitude in children, which plays a key role for an affective family
bond between parents and their children. Chapter Four explores whether
gratitude explains variance in loneliness after controlling for socio-
demographic factors, the Big 5 factors, and life satisfaction. The final chapter
reviews the role of both dispositional gratitude and envy on career adaptability
in young adults.
In: Psychology of Gratitude ISBN: 978-1-63485-232-6
Editor: Ashley R. Howard © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 1
GRATITUDE IN YOUTH: PAST, PRESENT, AND

FUTURE APPLICATIONS
Samantha Bausert* and Jeffrey J. Froh

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, US
ABSTRACT
Gratitude is a disposition or mood that enables people to respond
positively for the benefits they receive from people, nature, or a moment
of peaceful bliss. Past research has recognized gratitude as one of the
most important virtues a person can have. It has been demonstrated that
there are psychological, interpersonal, personality, and physical benefits
to being grateful. Only recently has present research begun to actively
explore gratitude in children and adolescents. Recent research with
children and adolescents shows the benefits of gratitude on youth are very
similar to that of adults. Specifically, grateful youth are more optimistic,
have a better life and school satisfaction, engage in more prosocial
behavior, and experience fewer negative emotions. Hence, gratitude has
the potential to promote psychological well-being and positive
adjustment in youth. While gratitude research in youth began with
examining the correlates of this virtue, currently, most research uses
experimental designs aiming to test the effects of gratitude interventions
in youth populations. Furthermore, only until recently have researchers
begun to examine the developmental onset of gratitude in children as well
as the specific precursors that promote gratitude. Preliminary evidence
*
Corresponding author: E-mail: sbause1@pride.hofstra.edu.
2 Samantha Bausert and Jeffrey J. Froh
indicates that parents play a significant role in promoting gratitude in

their children. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide an
overview of what previous gratitude research has shown, what present
research introduces to the literature, and what future research needs to
enhance the theoretical understanding of gratitude development in youth.
INTRODUCTION
Is saying “thank you” beyond good manners? Is being grateful a
personality trait? Is gratitude a mood? An emotion? Both? Many definitions of
gratitude exist, and researchers have conceptualized gratitude as many
different entities. The consensus seems to be that gratitude can be perceived as
“a moral virtue, an attitude, an emotion, a habit, a personality trait, and a
coping response” (Emmons & McCullough, 2003, p. 377; Lambert, Graham,
& Fincham, 2009, p. 1194). Gratitude has also been defined as the feeling a
person has when they experience a benefit purposely provided by another
individual or “moral agent,” although such positive experiences do not
necessarily have to result directly from a person (Emmons & McCullough,
2003). It is possible for people to be grateful for resources, objects, places, or
even qualities of the self. In this sense, gratitude is “the appreciation of what is
valuable and meaningful to oneself and represents a general state of
thankfulness and/or appreciation” (Sansone & Sansone, 2010, p. 18). For the
sake of this paper, we will define gratitude as a disposition or mood that
enables people to respond positively to others for the benefits they receive.
Additionally, gratitude has been referred to as “not only the greatest of
virtues, but the parent of all others” (Emmons, 2004, p. 4). This implies that
gratitude positively influences other qualities an individual can have. Indeed,
gratitude has been recognized as one of the most important virtues a person
can possess due to its influence on other outcomes and personality traits, but
what are these outcomes?
PAST GRATITUDE RESEARCH

Gratitude research continues to be a growing field in positive psychology,
but a majority of the past research explored gratitude’s influence on adults.
Grateful adults, compared to their less grateful counterparts, tend to have
greater life satisfaction (Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Sheldon 2011; Emmons &
Gratitude in Youth: Past, Present, and Future Applications 3
McCullough, 2003; McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002; Watkins,

Woodward, Stone, & Kolts, 2003), psychological well-being (McCullough et
al., 2002; Watkins et al., 2003; Wood, Joseph, & Maltby, 2009), subjective
well-being (Wood et al., 2009), eudaimonic well-being (Kashdan, Uswatte, &
Julian, 2006), and they are generally happier (Watkins et al., 2003). Most
studies have used self-report measures to directly determine the influence
gratitude has on a person’s overall happiness. To assure the accuracy of the
findings produced from self-report measurements, McCullough et al., (2002)
attempted to confirm these results with peer-report measures. For these peer-
report measures, friends, family, and people who have close relationships to
the participants completed a questionnaire about the participants’ gratitude.
The results led to the same conclusion: grateful people are happy people.
Additional research has demonstrated that grateful people, compared to less
grateful people, perceive themselves as having more purpose in life, more self-
acceptance, and they make more of an effort to strive for personal growth
(Kerr, O’Donovan, & Pepping, 2015). Collectively, previous research shows
that gratitude is a virtue worth pursuing because of its strong relation to
qualities that help people thrive.
Gratitude also appears to be an antidote for mental illness and a major
contributor to a person’s psychological well-being (Wood et al., 2009).
Specifically, eight studies demonstrated that gratitude is related to fewer
depressive symptoms (Lambert, Fincham, & Stillman, 2012), which is
consistent with past research (Watkins et al., 2003; Wood et al., 2009). Other
research has shown that a gratitude intervention, where participants record
events and situations for which they are grateful while rating the intensity of
their experienced gratitude for two weeks, reduces anxiety symptoms
compared to a placebo condition (Kerr et al., 2015). It has also been
demonstrated that grateful qualities (i.e., thankfulness) were associated with a
reduced risk of receiving a diagnosis of major depressive disorder or
generalized anxiety disorder (Kendler et al., 2003). Furthermore, grateful
individuals have a lower chance of developing a phobia, nicotine or alcohol
dependence, or abusing drugs. Therefore, not only can gratitude help make
people’s lives better—it can also help make people’s lives less bad.
In addition to psychological benefits, there are also major interpersonal
benefits associated with gratitude. Being grateful is related to having stronger
relationships and a richer social life (Wood et al., 2009). Using self-report and
peer-report measures, gratitude is connected to better quality relationships
(Algoe, Haidt, & Gable, 2008; Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Wood, Maltby,
Gillett, Linley, & Joseph, 2008). Gratitude also seems to promote relationship
formation, maintenance, connection, and satisfaction (Algoe et al., 2008;

Algoe, Gable, & Maisel, 2010). Therefore, gratitude, positively contributes to
healthy relationships, acting like a social crazy glue that keeps relationships
strong and stable.
In addition to interpersonal benefits, gratitude has been shown to correlate
with a surplus of positive traits, some of which may contribute to having
successful relationships with others. Specifically, previous studies have
demonstrated gratitude is positively correlated with extraversion (McCullough
et al., 2002; McCullough, Tsang & Emmons, 2004; Wood et al., 2009; Wood,
Maltby, Gillet, et al., 2008; Wood, Maltby, Stewert, Linley, & Joseph, 2008),
sociability (McCullough et al., 2002), openness (Joseph & Wood, 2010;
McCullough et al., 2002; McCullough et al., 2004; Wood et al., 2009; Wood,
Maltby, Gillet, et al., 2008; Wood, Maltby, Stewert et al., 2008), agreeableness
(McCullough et al., 2002; McCullough et al., 2004; Wood et al., 2009; Wood,
Maltby, Gillet, et al., 2008; Wood, Maltby, Stewert et al., 2008),
conscientiousness (McCullough et al., 2002; McCullough et al., 2004; Wood
et al., 2009; Wood, Maltby, Gillet, et al., 2008; Wood, Maltby, Stewert, et al.,
2008), warmth (Wood et al., 2009), altruism (Wood et al., 2009), religiosity
(Kraus, Desmond, & Palmer, 2015; McCullough et al., 2002), spirituality
(McCullough et al., 2002), hope (McCullough et al., 2002), optimism
(Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Kerr, et al., 2015; McCullough et al., 2002),
enthusiasm (Emmons & McCullough, 2003), determination (Emmons &
McCullough, 2003), achievement striving (Joseph & Wood, 2010), empathy
(McCullough et al., 2002), forgiveness (McCullough et al., 2002),
supportiveness (McCullough et al., 2002), and helpfulness (Emmons &
McCullough, 2003; McCullough et al., 2002). Many of these personality traits
(e.g., empathy, warmth, openness, agreeableness, forgiveness) can be
conceptualized as qualities that may be beneficial to a positive social
relationship. In addition, previous research has demonstrated that gratitude is
negatively correlated with materialism (Froh, Emmons, Card, Bono, &
Wilson, 2011; McCullough et al., 2002), neuroticism (McCullough et al.,
2002; McCullough et al., 2004; Wood et al., 2009; Wood, Maltby, Gillet, et
al., 2008; Wood, Maltby, Stewert, Linley, & Joseph, 2008), and envy
(McCullough et al., 2002), which are all traits that negatively affect people on
intrapersonal and interpersonal levels. Hence, it is evident that gratitude
strongly relates to a wide variety of positive traits.
In addition to positive traits, gratitude is also related with greater physical
health. Gratitude has shown to decrease levels of stress over time (Wood,
Maltby, Gillett, et al., 2008), which is critical to one’s health because stress
can lead to major physical health complications such as cardiovascular disease

or heart attacks (Hering, Lachowska, & Schlaich, 2015; Rosengren et al.,
2004). In addition to a decrease in stress, grateful people have been shown to
have better sleep patterns (Nelson & Harvey, 2003; Wood, Joseph, Lloyd, &
Atkins, 2009), possibly because they have less negative thoughts before
resting. It has even been shown that grateful college students are more alert,
have more energy, and reported fewer physical symptoms compared to others
(Emmons & McCullough, 2003). In sum, gratitude seems to benefit not just
our hearts and our minds, but also our bodies.
The literature discussed thus far has emphasized what past gratitude
research has found in adult populations. Presently, more of an effort is being
made to expand gratitude studies to include youth populations (i.e., children
and adolescents). Before we discuss the benefits of gratitude, however, we will
give a brief overview of gratitude development in youth.
GRATITUDE DEVELOPMENT IN YOUTH

It is important to know how gratitude influences children at specific ages.
Even more important is determining the age children begin to understand the
concept of gratitude. Studies that seek to determine gratitude’s initial
understanding in children is equivocal. A majority of the research that
investigates the influence gratitude has on children uses populations of
children aged 7 and older (Nelson et al., 2013), possibly because it is
commonly believed that gratitude starts to emerge in childhood during the
ages of 7 and 10 (Froh & Bono, 2014; Park & Peterson, 2006). Indeed, parents
tend to be more likely to notice gratitude in their children when their children
are at least 7 years old, which may suggest that children do not have a
sophisticated concept of gratitude until they reach middle childhood (Park &
Peterson). This is consistent with additional research showing that children do
not consistently express gratitude when receiving a benefit from another
person until they reach middle childhood (Emmons & Shelton, 2002). One
view all these researchers seem to share is that a child cannot begin to receive
the positive benefits of gratitude until there is a genuine understanding of the
concept (Froh, Kashdan, Ozimkowski, & Miller, 2009).
While the findings of Park and Peterson (2006) and Emmons and Shelton
(2002) are consistent, their results are inconsistent with Nelson et al.,’s study
(2013). Nelson and colleagues found that children younger than 7 years old
have an understanding of gratitude, showing that children have some concept
of gratitude (e.g., receiving a benefit to positive feelings) as young as 5 years

old. In addition, emotion and mental state knowledge at 3 and 4 years old
successfully predicted gratitude understanding when the participants were 5
years old (Nelson et al.,). This demonstrates that gratitude development may
be related to a child’s understanding of emotions and mental states. Similarly,
Layous and Lyubomirsky (2014) stated that “as children’s theory of mind and
capacity to understand emotions and take another’s perspective develops, so
too does their ability to feel and express heartfelt gratitude” (p. 153). This, in
turn, makes children more receptive to gratitude interventions.
Consistent with Nelson et al., (2013), Poelker and Kuebli’s study (2014)
provided evidence that children’s concept of gratitude becomes more
advanced as they mature. Specifically, older children (i.e., 4th and 5th graders)
were more capable of taking into account the gift giver’s intentions and
thoughts when expressing gratitude as opposed to the younger children (i.e., 1st
and 2nd graders) whose gratitude expressions were more heavily based on how
much they liked the described gift (Poelker & Kuelbi, 2014). The younger
children may have been more influenced by the actual gift itself due to their
immature mental states and underdeveloped knowledge of emotion
identification (Nelson et al., 2013). Hence, gratitude is most certainly a
developmental process, although it is clear that both younger and older
children are capable of expressing gratitude in response to a positive event if
they have an understanding of others’ emotional states.
Additional research may have successfully clarified the confusion in the
literature regarding whether or not children understand gratitude before middle
childhood. One study showed evidence that children from 5-11 years old were
able to express things in their lives for which they were grateful (Owens &
Patterson, 2013). These results demonstrate that younger children (i.e., 5 years
old) show signs they can conceptualize gratitude, although their complete
understanding still may not be fully developed. Therefore, children’s gratitude
understanding begins to solidify or emerge at 5 years old. It is still possible
that children do not have a completely developed understanding of gratitude
until middle childhood, although it is important to identify that the
development of gratitude understanding begins to emerge at age 5. These
results together indicate that gratitude in youth is a developmental process, yet
one that can begin earlier than was once thought.
Now that we know children have the ability to conceptualize gratitude at a
young age, it is important to identify what parents can do to foster gratitude
development in youth. Recent research has made efforts to directly identify

what elements of the parent-child relationship (i.e., relational closeness versus
conflict and positive emotional expression within the home) and the parents’
behavior (i.e., the degree to which parents model and value grateful expression
for their children as well as reinforce grateful expression in their children)
influence gratitude in youth (Bausert, Ruscio, & Froh, 2016). Results indicated
that positive parenting behaviors, parent-child closeness, and parents’ trait
gratitude were positively correlated with youth gratitude. In addition, results
demonstrated that parent-child conflict negatively predicts youth gratitude,
showing that as the conflict in the home decreases, the child will be more
likely to present with grateful qualities (Bausert et al., 2016). Hence, parents
should prioritize decreasing conflict in the home, modeling and reinforcing
gratitude, and developing close and positive relationships with their children if
their goal is to raise a grateful child.
Additional research has confirmed that parent-child relationships influence
a child’s gratitude development. White (2011) determined that “failure of the
mother to provide opportunities for her infant’s gifts of engagement and
pleasure-giving to be received in a spirit of joyful and playful responsiveness
leads to a failure of development of the capacity for gratitude” (p. 239). The
parent, specifically the mother, can therefore significantly influence their
child’s gratitude development. The results of White’s work demonstrate that
parents need to provide their children with appropriate opportunities to
understand gratitude. White even hypothesized that a child’s insecurity, lack of
trust, shame, or guilt will interrupt the child’s gratitude development, which is
logical considering positive experiences are what influence grateful
experiences (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).
An additional study confirmed that parents influence their child’s
gratitude development. Specifically, Hoy, Suldo, and Mendez (2013) found a
positive relationship between maternal and child gratitude. This finding
demonstrates how important it is for mothers to be aware of how their own
grateful behavior can influence their child’s gratitude development. This
influence could be a result of parent modeling of gratitude and reinforcement
of grateful behavior, which are both parenting behaviors shown to be linked to
greater gratitude development in youth (Bausert et al., 2016). We will now
turn our attention to gratitude’s link to positive outcomes in youth.
PRESENT RESEARCH OF GRATITUDE IN YOUTH

Correlates of Gratitude
Children seem to benefit greatly from gratitude. The results of a

correlational study found that gratitude in young children was associated with
love, zest, and hope, which is consistent with other research showing a link
with gratitude, hope, and life satisfaction (Park & Peterson, 2006). In addition,
there was an association between happiness and gratitude for children that
were 7 years old. Consistent with Park and Peterson’s work, Froh, Bono, and
Emmons (2010) found that gratitude predicted social integration, prosocial
behavior, and life satisfaction amongst middle school students. Hence,
gratitude may promote greater emotional well-being in children, which can
positively influence their future (Froh & Bono, 2014; Froh et al., 2010).
In addition to children, gratitude has been shown to have positive effects
on adolescent populations. For high school students, gratitude predicted higher
grade point averages, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption. In
addition, gratitude had a negative relation with envy and depression (Froh, et
al., 2011), which matches previous research conducted with adults. Similar
results from an additional study demonstrated that gratitude has a positive
association with positive affect, life satisfaction, optimism, social support, and
prosocial behavior, which again is very similar to the relations found with
gratitude in adults (Froh, Yurkewicz, & Kashdan, 2009). Gratitude also
demonstrated positive associations with subjective well-being, optimism,
pride, hope, inspiration, forgiveness, and excitement, as well as a negative
relation with physical symptoms (Froh, Yurkewicz, et al.,). All of these factors
are important for successful adolescent development, and gratitude seems to
be playing a critical role.
Gratitude Interventions
Thus far, we have discussed the general benefits of gratitude in adults, the
specific age for which children begin to understand gratitude, and the benefits
of being grateful in children and adolescents. Now that we know gratitude’s
link to positive outcomes in youth, and when its understanding develops in
children, how can we help enhance children’s grateful qualities? In the
beginning, most of the gratitude research conducted with youth was either
cross-sectional or longitudinal. Now, however, most of the research is applied
and comes from work done with gratitude interventions. Interventions that
focus on specific character strengths (e.g., gratitude) could potentially
influence an individual’s overall happiness (Seligman, Steen, Park, &
Peterson, 2005). Hence, present gratitude research has focused on designing
interventions that help children and adolescents increase their overall well-
being. Given that gratitude is proven to have so many positive benefits, it
seems fitting to emphasize gratitude in such interventions. Research performed
by Froh et al., (2014) confirms that gratitude interventions successfully induce
grateful qualities in youth. Some of the present research has demonstrated the
positive influence of gratitude interventions upon youth, while other present
research shows how gratitude interventions are often ineffective. As a result of
these equivocal findings, we will present some of the gratitude intervention
literature in an attempt to work through this discrepancy.
Froh, Sefick, and Emmons (2008) made the first attempt to see the effects
of a gratitude intervention in early adolescents (i.e., 6th and 7th graders).
Students were either assigned to a gratitude condition, a hassles condition, or a
control condition. Students in the gratitude condition participated in a daily
gratitude journal-keeping exercise where the students counted their blessings.
Students in the hassles condition focused on their irritants, and students who
were assigned to the control condition simply completed measures. Results
demonstrated that students in the gratitude condition reported significantly
more gratitude compared to the other students who were in the control or
hassles group. In addition, those who were assigned to the gratitude group
reported having a greater satisfaction with their school experience (i.e., found
school interesting, felt good at school, thought they were learning a lot, and
were eager to go to school) compared to the other two groups. Students who
counted their blessings also reported being more optimistic for the upcoming
week in comparison to the hassles condition, with lower levels of negative
affect. Hence, this longitudinal study provides evidence that gratitude
interventions are effective ways of promoting well-being in early adolescents.
A more recent study performed by Froh et al., (2014) confirmed the
positive benefits of gratitude interventions on children. Researchers assigned
children to either a school-based gratitude curriculum or an attention-control
condition. For the attention-control condition, lesson plans focused on
emotionally neutral topics. Students who were assigned to the gratitude
curriculum were educated about the appraisal of benefit exchanges (e.g.,
grateful thinking). The main result of this study showed that this type of
gratitude intervention has a positive influence on well-being up to 5 months
later, which speaks to how beneficial gratitude interventions are for children.
Although the studies previously mentioned showed that gratitude

interventions have positive effects on youth, additional studies have presented
evidence insinuating that gratitude interventions may be ineffective. For
example, Owens and Patterson (2013) had children who were assigned to the
gratitude condition participate in a weekly intervention where they were asked
to draw a picture of something they were grateful for that day. Researchers
found no significant difference in outcomes between the gratitude condition
and the control condition, providing evidence that such gratitude interventions
may be ineffective.
In an effort to clarify this uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of
gratitude interventions, researchers have performed meta-analyses. The results
of one of the most recent meta-analyses provide evidence showing gratitude
interventions are ineffective (Renshaw & Olinger Steevens, 2016).
Conversely, another recent meta-analysis showed promise for gratitude
interventions’ effectiveness, although additional research is still needed to
assure their benefit upon youth (Davis et al., 2016).
To many, it is surprising that research demonstrates that gratitude
interventions are inconsistently effective. What is causing these equivocal
results? Froh, Kashdan, et al., (2009) brought up an interesting theory that
gratitude interventions may only be effective for students who are unhappy or
ungrateful before intervention administration. They hypothesized that
individuals who already have high positive affect, or who are exceedingly
grateful prior to the intervention, may be unable to experience gains from the
intervention because their affect is already so elevated (Froh, Kashdan, et al.,).
Froh and his colleagues conducted a study to test this position. They randomly
assigned children and adolescents into a gratitude intervention condition or a
control condition. Results demonstrated that individuals assigned to the
gratitude condition low in positive affect gained more from the intervention in
comparison to individuals who had positive affect prior to participating in the
intervention. This finding appears to demonstrate that gratitude interventions
are effective when individuals lack grateful qualities before intervention
administration. Thus, to move the intervention research forward, more work is
needed in examining moderators, such as overall positive affect and gratitude.
FUTURE APPLICATIONS
Now that we have discussed what past research has found (i.e., the
benefits of gratitude in adult populations) and what present research has found
(i.e., the benefits of gratitude in youth populations, gratitude development, and

the effects of gratitude interventions), it is important to discuss what future
research needs to address in order to fill the gaps in the gratitude literature that
still exist within the positive psychology field. The practicality of some
gratitude interventions (e.g., counting blessings) can make their use appealing.
The second author (JJF) conducted a gratitude intervention with about 1,000
middle school students in their homerooms. Children were asked to count up
to five blessings for which they were grateful on a daily basis for 2 weeks.
After the intervention, teachers followed a lesson plan using the focused
conversation method of teaching (Nelson, 2001). They asked students the
following types of questions: Objective (e.g., What specific blessings did you
count?), Reflective (e.g., What did you like most about counting your
blessings?), Interpretive (e.g., What are the benefits of giving thanks?), and
Decisional (e.g., How can we practice gratitude in our lives and at school?).
Anecdotally speaking, students seemed to benefit from counting blessings.
Some students reported recognizing that “life could be so much worse.” One
student, who was from a wealthy family, stated “I realized how good I really
have it. Some kids have nothing. I just never thought about it before.” Hence,
this is just one of the many creative ways we believe youth can be taught to
experience and express gratitude. Another way youth can be taught to
experience and communicate gratitude is to dedicate a specific time of year
(e.g., a certain month) to expressing thanks to others. For instance, students
can write a thank you card each week for a gift received from another student
(e.g., protecting them from a bully), an administrator (e.g., supporting a class
trip to a museum), a teacher (e.g., waiting with them until their parents arrive
at school to pick them up), or support staff (e.g., ensuring the heat works
during the cold winter months). Given the ease of inducing gratitude, its
potential for making school tasks and exercises more creative, and its benefits
to individuals and their environments, gratitude interventions for youth, in our
view, should be seriously considered by those interested in fostering positive
youth development.
Because gratitude may strengthen supportive relationships and increase
prosocial behavior in adolescents (Froh, Yurkewicz, et al., 2009), grateful
qualities may be especially useful for students with special needs, physical
disabilities, or social adjustment difficulties. Teaching students to respond
gratefully to friends who protect them from a bully, encourage them to persist
on a task, or offer help on homework can strengthen friendships while
increasing students’ satisfaction with school and their chances of succeeding.
Future research should further examine the sources of youth gratitude, how
grateful thinking is related to better goal striving, academic achievement,

learning, and social development in youth, and how to apply use of gratitude
promotion toward these ends.
Simmel (1950) argued that gratitude is the moral glue of a functioning
society and the “moral memory of mankind” (p. 388). This logic can be
applied to school communities. School psychologists can help students
identify resources provided by the Board of Education (e.g., funding for
extracurricular activities), school-level administration (e.g., support for school
plays), teachers (e.g., giving up lunch to help students), support staff (e.g.,
cleaning the facilities), and community volunteers (e.g., hours committed to
enrichment events). Most importantly, recognizing the contributions and
investments others make toward their welfare and development would help
students focus on concrete ways they are valued at the school. Knowing that
others believe in and care to bring out the best in them would motivate self-
improvement. Gratitude felt and expressed by students and the improved
behaviors that could ensue would likely spread to teachers and staff by
encouraging them to work harder for students and helping to prevent burnout.
Therefore, teaching students to count blessings and develop an “attitude of
gratitude” may foster stronger bonds to schools and communities, helping both
students and schools thrive.
Social exchange is necessary for most organizations in society to function
properly. The positive emotions of leaders (e.g., principals, teachers) predict
the performance for their entire group (George, 1995). Grateful principals may
beget grateful teachers, who beget grateful students; grateful teachers and
grateful students may outperform their less grateful counterparts. Indeed,
evidence suggests that gratitude promotes social cohesion, relational and job
satisfaction, and even organizational functioning (Emmons, 2003).
Appreciation interventions indicate that many people—in organizational,
educational, and health care settings—benefit from experiences of gratitude
(Childre & Cryer, 2000). More supportive relationship networks among
teachers and staff would only help meet the rising challenges of student
diversity. Examining such issues could yield novel ways of improving schools.
CONCLUSION
Having strong social ties is a fundamental need, and securing strong and
supportive relationships early on can provide bedrock for many positive
outcomes in development. Experiencing and expressing gratitude can help
improve youth moods, strengthen their social ties, and cultivate a sense of
purposeful engagement with the world. Though such experiences are critical
for healthy development, research on gratitude in youth or the development of
gratitude is only now emerging. We have sought to review the literature on
gratitude interventions for youth to bring into focus its relevance to students
and schools. Gratitude can lead to many positive outcomes of central
importance to children and adolescents (e.g., psychological well-being,
satisfaction with school and other domains, prosocial relationships), and it
likely improves focus on priorities and fulfillment of meaningful goals. Thus,
developing gratitude applications for students holds promise for catalyzing
achievement and improving school bonding.
Gratitude could be designed into existing programs (e.g., character and
civic education) to enhance their effectiveness. Moreover, classes in English
and Writing might also benefit from the inclusion of gratitude and appreciation
exercises; not only would such exercises help develop writing skills (given the
social emotional nuances involved in benefit exchanges), they may also
motivate students to focus on their unique life stories and priorities, helping to
forge their purpose.
In general, teachers can encourage appreciative responding in students by
emphasizing and reinforcing kind acts in the classroom. Teachers and staff
could model reciprocity and thankfulness in coordinated activities with
students, which are all things parents can do at home too. The more youth are
exposed to such behaviors and engage in environments where balanced and
supportive exchanges take place, the more likely they will be to develop a
capacity for gratitude. The prospect that fostering gratitude in students could
have positive impacts that spread to the rest of the school underscores the
value of gratitude for students and schools. At best, gratitude could help make
schools places where youth and their potential are valued above all else, while
all the people and communities involved thrive as well.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
Name: Samantha Bausert, B.A.
Affiliation: Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, United States of America
Education: B.A., Psychology with High Honors, Honors College Associate,
Hofstra University; Doctoral Candidate, Hofstra University, School-
Community Psychology (September 2015 - Present)
Address: Hofstra University, 219 Hauser Hall, Hempstead, NY, 11549,
United States of America
Research and Professional Experience:
School Psychology Intern, Mary G. Clarkson Elementary School, Bay Shore,
NY (Fall 2015 - Present)
Therapist, Diagnostic and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders,
Hofstra University (Fall 2015 - Present)

Research Assistant to Dr. Jeffrey Froh, Psy.D., Gratitude Laboratory, Hofstra
University (Fall 2015 - Present)
Volunteer Research Assistant to Dr. Sarah Novak, Ph.D., Hofstra University
(2014 - 2015)
Research Assistant to Trisha Kennedy, Hofstra University (Fall 2014 - Spring
2015)
Research Assistant to Dr. Max Banilivy, Ph.D., Pederson-Krag Center (Spring
2014)
Research Assistant to Anna Varfolomeyeva and Alyssa Mante, Hofstra
University (2013)
Honors:
Nominated for the Ted Bernstein Memorial Award (Award recognizes
superior promise in a beginning level doctoral student) (Spring 2016)
Publications Last 3 Years:
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Froh, J. J., Disabato, D., Blalock, D., Bono, B., Quartuccio, J. McKnight, P., &
Bausert, S. (work-in-progress). Gratitude’s role in predicting antisocial
and prosocial behavior in adolescence: A 4-year longitudinal
investigation.
Bausert, S., Novak, S., & Kaminetsky, E. (work-in-progress). Mental illness
stigma in the context of romantic relationships.
Kania, P., Novak, S., & Bausert, S. (work-in-progress). Obesity stigma and
stigma-by-association in romantic relationships.
Book Chapters
Bausert, S., Froh, J. J., & Bono, G. (work-in-progress). Longitudinal
developments in adolescent gratitude. In J. Tudge & L. Frias (Eds.),
Developing gratitude. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Name: Jeffrey J. Froh, Psy.D.

Affiliation: Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, United States of America
Education: B.A., Psychology, St. Joseph’s College; M.S., School Psychology,
St. John’s University; Psy.D., School Psychology, St. John’s University
Address: Hofstra University, 201 Hauser Hall, Hempstead, NY, 11549,
United States of America
Research and Professional Experience: See Professional Appointments
below.
Professional Appointments:
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Hofstra University (2012 -
Present)
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Hofstra University (2006 -

2012)
Lecturer, Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics,
Stony Brook University (2008 - 2009)
School Psychologist, Half Hollow Hills Central School District (2004 - 2006)
Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychology, St. Joseph’s College (2003 -
2006)
School Psychologist, Shoreham-Wading River School District (2003 - 2004)
Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychology, Molloy College (2003)
School Psychologist, Woodmere School District (2003)
Honors:
Faculty Recognition for Successful Pursuit of External Funding (2013)
Distinguished School Psychology Alumnus from St. John’s University (2013)
Who’s Who in Academia Honorable Mention (2013)
Julia Vane Award (Given to an individual for publications in the fields of
school and clinical psychology that enhance the doctoral programs at
Hofstra University and bring promising research findings to the larger
community of scholars and scientists) (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,
2016)
* - indicates student author
Books
Froh, J. J., & Bono, G. (2014). Making grateful kids: The science of building
character. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press.
(Foreign Translations: Korean, Spanish, and Chinese)
Froh, J. J., & Parks, A. (Eds.). (2013). Activities for teaching positive
psychology: A guide for instructors. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Froh, J. J., Disabato, D., Blalock, D., Bono, B., Quartuccio, J. McKnight, P.,
& *Bausert, S. (work-in-progress). Gratitude’s role in predicting
antisocial and prosocial behavior in adolescence: A 4-year longitudinal
investigation.
Chaplin, L., Froh, J. J., John, D. R., & Rindfleisch, A. (under review).
Reducing materialism in adolescents.
Froh, J. J., Bono, G., Fan, J., Emmons, R. A., *Henderson, K., *Harris, C.,
*Leggio, H., & Wood, A. (2014). Nice thinking! An educational
intervention that teaches children how to think gratefully [Special Issue:

Theoretical Frameworks in School Psychology Intervention Research:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Future Directions]. School Psychology

Review, 43, 132-152.
Book Chapters
*Bausert, S., Froh, J. J., & Bono, G. (work-in-progress). Longitudinal
developments in adolescent gratitude. In J. Tudge & L. Frias (Eds.),

Developing gratitude. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wood, A. M., Emmons, R. A., Algoe, S. B., Froh, J. J., Lambert, N. M., &
Watkins, P. (in press). A dark side of gratitude? Distinguishing between
beneficial gratitude and its harmful impostors for the positive clinical
psychology of gratitude and well-being. In Wood, A. M. & Johnson, J.
[Eds.] The Wiley Handbook of Positive Clinical Psychology (pp. xx-xx).
Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Emmons, R. A., Froh, J. J., & Mishra, A. (in press). The assessment of
gratitude. In S. J. Lopez (Ed.), Positive psychological assessment (2nd ed.,
pp. xx-xx). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
*Krakauer, M., *Ruscio, D., Froh, J. J., & Bono, G. (in press). Integrating
positive psychology and gratitude to work in the schools. In M. Terjesen

& M. Thielking (Eds.), Handbook of Australian school psychology:
Bridging the gaps in international research, practice, and policy (pp. xx-
xx). New York: Springer.
Bono, G., *Kraukauer, M., & Froh, J. J. (2015). Appreciating gratitude in
practice. In P.A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in
practice (2nd ed, pp. 559-575). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Bono, G., Froh, J. J., & Forrett, R. (2014). Gratitude in school: Benefits to
students and schools. In M. Furlong, R. Gilman, & E. S. Huebner (Eds.),
Handbook of positive psychology in schools (2nd ed., pp. 67-81). New
York: Routledge.
Furlong, M., Froh, J. J., *Muller, M., & Gonzalez, V. (2014). The role of
gratitude in fostering school bonding. In D. Shernoff & J. Bempechat
(Eds.), Engaging youth in schools: Empirically-based models to guide
future innovations (Volume 113, pp. 58-79). National Society for the
Study of Education Yearbook. New York: Teachers College Record.
*Lomas, T., Froh, J. J., Emmons, R. A., & Mishra, A. (2014). Gratitude
interventions: A review and future agenda. In. A. Parks & Stephen M.

Schueller (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychological interventions (pp. 3-
19). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Froh, J. J., & Parks, A. (2013). Introduction. In J. Froh & A. Parks (Eds.),
Activities for teaching positive psychology: A guide for instructors (pp. 3-
9). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Chapter 2
TESTING SCALES OF PARENTING PRACTICE

AND FILIAL ACTS IN CHILDREN
AND EXPLORING THEIR CORRELATIONS
Shi Li
University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia
ABSTRACT
Given filial piety is open-ended and can be very demanding in the
Oriental culture, adult children can only become accustomed to caring for
their elderly parents if their grateful thought is internalised into filial acts
in their childhood development. This chapter tested two newly developed
scales of filial acts in children and parenting practice, and explored the
correlations between filial acts and parenting practices. A total of 589
high school students in northeastern China participated in the survey.
Results indicated the validity and reliability of both scales. Factor
Analysis was used, which brought down the item number for the scale of
parenting practice from 31 to 20, while the items of filial acts were all
retained. Analysis of the correlations revealed that discipline plays a role
twice as important as parental love and induction in helping children
engage in filial acts, in particular in sharing housework, which is in line
with the painful nature of internalisation of grateful thought.

Sli7@une.edu.au.
22 Shi Li
Keywords: filial acts, filial thought, filial piety, grateful children, gratitude,
grateful acts, gratitude development, household chores, parental love,
induction, discipline
BACKGROUND
Filial piety lies at the heart of benevolence-a primary Confucian virtue of
respect, obedience, and care for one’s parents and ancesters, and is widely
practised in eastern Asia, such as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Japan, Korean, and Vietnam. Children with the virtue of filial piety are willing
to look after their parents by providing support in terms of emotion, labour,
and finance. Prior studies (e.g., Ho, 1993, 1996; S. Li, 2013, 2014a; Yeh,
2003) suggest that filial piety can help with intergenerational solidarity and
social harmony, and provide a relief to the social welfare system of a country,
particularly underdeveloped countries such as China; yet it may also result in
self-oppression and economic burden on adult children. According to Yang et
al., (1989), filial piety comprises four sequential components: filial
knowledge, filial affection, filial intention, and filial acts, and it is not a natural
progression to filial acts. Li points out that, due to the unmeasurable nature of
filial thought, a filial or grateful child must be reflected in “an act of returning
kindness” (2014b, p. 3), that is, filial acts. Filial acts can range from an
affectionate smile or touch, to daily care and financial support of one’s
parents. An occasional affectionate smile or touch is easy, but providing daily
care and financial support over a long period of time is far more costly, yet the
latter may still be required in modern Oriental countries such as China. In Li’s
view, filial thought arises from parental love and induction, while filial acts
require discipline to internalise children’s filial thought about parental love
and induction.
A prevalent lack of gratitude in the one-child generations of China
provides abundant empirical evidence of a breakdown of this progression from
filial thought to filial acts. For 36 years, from 1979 to 2015 (the universal two-
child policy was put in place on 1st January 2016), the one-child policy was
implemented in China (Short, Zhai, Xu, & Yang, 2001). It has been found in a
large number of empirical studies (Chen & Zou, 2007; Deng, 2011; Du, He, &
Xu, 2010; Huang, 2011; M. Li & Peng, 2011; Lu, 2009; Tang, 2007; Zhou,
2008), that, on the one hand, the only boys and the only girls in most of the
one-child families, especially in urban areas, were pampered with all the
benefits that parents of a family could provide, such as the best food and
Testing Scales of Parenting Practice and Filial Acts … 23
clothes; on the other hand, they were taught and communicated responsibility
and social norms by their parents and teachers but were asked to perform few
household chores. What then was the factor that deterred filial thought from
advancing to filial acts and caused the breakdown of the progression for these
children? Could it be household chores?
LITERATURE REVIEW ON HOUSEHOLD CHORES

Despite concerns about household chores being seen as a burden or a
primary source of conflict between parents and children, numerous studies on
housework also suggest that engaging children in household chores has many
benefits, such as fostering interpersonal skills, responsibility, mental health,
educational attainment and career success (e.g., Levine, 2012; Rende, 2015;
Rogoff, 2003; Smith, 1969; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981; Whiting, Whiting, &
Longabaugh, 1975; Wilcox, 2011; Wingard, 2006). Kohlberg (1984) and
Piaget (1965) suggested that household chores could act as a vital means for
the development of moral character in children. Crusec et al., (1996), and
Rende and Prosek (2015) also found that engaging children in routine
housework could enhance their concern for others. Therefore, routine
household chores are strongly recommended and advocated by almost all the
researchers in this field.
However, children’s participation in chores has been on the decline for
decades. Besides little housework being required of most of the one-child
generations in China, Braun Research found that only 28% of 1001
participating U.S. parents asked their children to do chores in 2014 (Rende,
2015). An investigation of 30 middle-class families in Los Angeles, California
further revealed that little time was spent by most children in helping around
the house (Klein, Graesch, & Izquierdo, 2009). Less engagement in housework
resulted from a probable underestimation of the importance of the role that
household chores can play in one’s life. Weissbourd’s research team from the
Harvard Graduate School of Education surveyed 10,000 middle- and high-
school students in the U.S. in 2013 and surprisingly found that almost 80%
preferred either achievement or happiness to caring for others (Russel, 2014).
Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger (2015) suggested on TEDTalk that “Good
relationships keep us happier and healthier”–a conclusion he reached from the
findings of their 75-year-old Harvard study on adult happiness. Empathy and
good relationship are exactly what engagement in household chores can
greatly help develop and enhance, as found in the aforementioned studies.
24 Shi Li
“We’re out of balance,” commented Weissbourd (Breheny, 2015). This is a

disconcerting and alarming message sent from the two largest world
economies.
Despite all the importance of and the concern about household chores in
modern families, there has been no research looking at sharing household
chores as a vehicle to develop children’s grateful acts towards parents, and no
scale to investigate the correlation between parenting practices and filial acts
in which sharing chores makes up a major part. There is also no logical answer
for the finding that adult daughters have a more affective bond with old
parents (Zeng, 2015). Given the fact that, across cultures, daughters in the
household tend to take on more domestic tasks than sons (Blair, 1992; Ho,
1993; Klein et al., 2009; Seymour, 1988), could it be chores that make
daughters more grateful to their parents than sons? How then do household
chores work for gratitude development in children? What is the mechanism
behind it? Li (2016) provided a conceptual framework for the mechanism for
gratitude development in children.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
According to Li (2016), morality of justice, which holds the key to filial
acts, consists of three dimensions, parental love, induction and discipline. His
morality of justice theory is primarily based on some very influential
psychological and sociological theories, attachment theory, the social justice
theory, and Hoffman’s moral internalisation theory. In what follows, the three
dimensions will be briefly elaborated on and discussed to see how they foster
the development of gratitude in children.
First, parental love plays a vital role, serving as the seed for the reciprocity
of children’s love and other positive emotions such as caring, sympathy,
empathy, compassion, generosity, and even trust (Fredrickson, 1998, 2004,
2013; Komter, 2004; McNeely & Barber, 2010), “which in turn has the effect
of building that individual’s physical, intellectual, and social resources”
(Fredrickson, 1998, p. 300). Attachment theory researchers (Ainsworth, 1961,
1967, 1969, 1989; Bowlby, 1965, 1969, 1980, 1982; Brenning, Soenens,
Braet, & Bal, 2012; Steele & Steele, 2013) also found that attaining or
maintaining proximity to a caring mother-figure is critically important for a
child. A strong prosocial disposition was also noted in children who had been
brought up with parental love (Honig, 2004). Second, the social justice theory
(1982; Elm & Weber, 1994; Hoffman, 1975; Hume, 1960; Kohlberg, 1984;
Piaget, 1965; Rawls, 1999; Rest, 1979) provides a theoretical framework for
induction to subjugate one’s hedonistic needs for moral values (Hoffman,
1975) so that moral reasoning (filial thought) is able to advance to moral acts
(filial acts). The social justice theory postulates that moral development is
primarily based on social justice, which is achieved through balancing
different rights, obligations, and benefits, and forms the bedrock of social
cooperation and harmony. Through balancing diverse rights, obligations and
benefits, individuals learn to respect mutual rights and benefits. This, in turn,
leads to a long-term disposition of appreciation of kindness rendered by others,
that is, a character trait of gratitude (S. Li, 2016). Third, discipline offers a
critical vehicle to substantialise and habitualise moral reasoning (filial
thought), according to Hoffman’s internalisation theory (1960, 1975), which
has also been endorsed by numerous psychologists (e.g., Minton, Kagan, &
Levine, 1971; Schoggen, 1963; Simmons & Schoggen, 1963). Parental
discipline is an essential requirement in exerting constraint on the self-interest
tendency of a child and it can, as explained by Blustein, “gradually shift from
its position of outward authority to an inner position of self-control” (1982, p.
127). Aristotle maintained that learners develop their ability for performing
virtuous acts “through habituation first motivated by punishment and threat of
punishment,” rather than by teaching (Curzer, 2002, p. 158). Therefore,
without the measure of discipline, filial thought alone is unlikely to be
effective. Enforcing rules, such as asking children to bear negative
consequences of their mistakes (if they can), is customarily considered as a
major measure of discipline, but which bears a passive nature.
While, household chores provide a unique active disciplinary method for
parents to internalise filial thought in their children. By routinely engaging in
housework, children are able not only to observe but also to experience and
bear the monotony, tediousness and hardship that household chores bring on a
regular basis. This is deemed to be a painful process, as it is never easy to
overcome one’s hedonistic dispositions and subjugate one’s self-interest, but a
process through which a sense of social justice is gradually established in
children’s minds that no rights and benefits come without obligation.
Household chores provide a great vehicle for actively developing one’s sense
of social justice, through which parental love can eventually be reciprocated
with children’s love, and filial thought can be gradually internalised to become
filial acts and maintained in their childhood and beyond, even throughout their
lifetime. In sum, engaging in housework plays a vital role in developing filial
acts and filial children, and routine housework can be a predicator of filial
acts. Thus it is very necessary and important to develop a scale of filial acts
26 Shi Li
based on housework for children and explore what parenting practice best
helps promote their filial acts.
THE FILIAL ACT SCALE FOR CHILDREN AND

THE PARENTING PRACTICE SCALE
Based on the theoretical framework of the mechanism for gratitude

development in children, a scale of filial acts and a scale of parenting practice
were specifically developed for exploring their correlations. The filial act scale
included five sample items, three of which measured children’s contributions
to household work as their grateful acts in sharing parents’ household burdens,
including (1) self-care, (2) home meal, and (3) home cleaning. “Self-care” was
tasks performed by children to keep themselves and their room clean and tidy,
and included washing their own clothes, making their bed, folding and storing
clothes, organising their desk, and keeping the floor free of clutter. “Home
meal” included work involved in preparing, cooking, and serving food, as well
as setting the table for a meal and washing dishes. “Home cleaning”
encompassed all cleaning tasks, such as washing clothes for other family
members, washing windows, sweeping, and vacuuming. The last two items
concern grateful acts delivered on special occasions: (4) Looking after parents
when sick, for example, helping them take medicine and get a good rest, or
sharing more chores; (5) Preparing birthday cards or gifts for parents. In
consideration of the participating students being the only child in a family and
living in an apartment in China, sibling care and outside chores such as yard
work, as practised in the U.S, were not included.
The parenting practice scale was developed based on existing measures,
for example, the Child Report of Parent Behaviour Inventory (Schaefer, 1965)
and Parental Support Scales (Barber, Stolz, & Olsen, 2005), and was adapted
to capture information for this survey which investigated the three dimensions,
parental love (13 items), induction (7 items) and discipline (11 items,
including 5 newly developed items on demanding children to engage in
housework). Parental love measured the extent to which children perceived
their parents as caring. Students reported on the frequency with which their
parents demonstrated parental love in interaction with them in five respects:
expression of affection (4 items), academic support (3 items), emotional
support (2 items), protectiveness (2 items), and child-centredness (2 items), a
total of 13 items. Examples from the dimension of parental love included
items such as “Speaks to me with a warm and friendly voice”; and “Enjoys
doing things with me.” The induction subscale assessed the extent to which
their parents communicated with them on social norms and rules setting. There
are seven items in total, such as, “Communicates with me on what I should or
shouldn’t do, for example, saying thanks for help received and not evading my
own responsibility,” and “Helps me become aware that everyone makes
mistakes and I should be truthful to myself.” The discipline subscale assessed
the extent to which a child perceived how their parents asked them to share
housework and enforced penalties if they broke the rules. There are 11 sample
items in total, for instance, “Asks me to take care of myself, that is, keeping
myself and my own room clean and tidy, such as washing my own clothes,
making my bed, folding and storing clothes, organising my desk, and keeping
the floor free of clutter” and “Compels me to engage in housework if I don’t.”
Using a 5-point Likert-type scale, where 1 = always, 2 = often, 3 =
occasionally, 4 = rarely and 5 = never, the children rated how well items
described their parents and themselves. Items 6, 10 and 11 in the subscale of
discipline were negatively worded. The use of adolescents’ self-reports about
their parents was justified on two grounds. On the one hand, parental self-
reports tend to exaggerate parental love and discipline and have been criticised
as unreliable (Schwarz, Barton-Henry, & Pruzinsky, 1985). On the other hand,
adolescents are able to act as knowledgeable informants about parental
behaviour (Gorden, 1969; Moskowitz & Schwarz, 1982).
THE PRESENT STUDY

This study aims (a) to assess the validity and reliability of the two scales
and (b) to explore the correlations between parenting practices and filial acts
of children.
Sample
A total of 589 seventh- and eighth-grade students aged 12 to16, from a

public high school in Heilongjiang province, northeast China participated in
the survey. Tabachnick and Fidell suggested that “it is comforting to have at
least 300 cases for factor analysis” (2007, p. 613). Therefore, the sample size
of the study can be deemed as appropriate. Instead of a private school or a
selective school, an average public school was selected to produce a diverse
28 Shi Li
sample in terms of socioeconomic status of families and educational

backgrounds of parents.
Measures
In order to ensure confidentiality, there was no direct contact between the

participants and the researcher. Consent was sought from participating
children and their parents through the school, and the questionnaires were
administered in class by their teachers. Child participants anonymously filled
out the survey by self-reporting the basic information about themselves and
their families (e.g., age, gender, family structure, educational background of
parents), parenting practices of their parents, and their filial acts. In light of
people’s tendency to present themselves in socially desirable way or in a
positive light (also known as ‘faking good’), when completing questionnaires,
the categorical terms such as filial acts or grateful acts, and parental love were
removed from the two scales. The other two categorical terms of induction and
discipline were also removed in case they confused the child participants. The
item codes and numbers of each category were replaced with one set of
numbers for each scale. The two scales were then put in one questionnaire
entitled “The Survey of Student Family Lives,” which aimed to present it in as
neutral a light as possible.
Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of Gender and Age of the Total Sample

(N = 589)
Number Percent % Missing Mean SD Range

Gender 585 99.3 4 1.48 .5 1
Boy 306 52
Girl 279 47.4
Age 589 100 0 14.19 .832 4
12 17 2.9
13 82 13.9
14 286 48.6
15 179 30.4
16 25 4.2
All negatively worded items were reversed in the analysis. Some missing
values were spotted occurring randomly, but with no systematic patterns,
therefore the Exclude cases pairwise option was ticked in the use of SPSS so
that the cases were excluded only if they were missing the data required for the
specific analysis.
Table 1 shows the information of the participating children, which is
relevant to this study.
Independent Variable: The Items of the Parenting Practice Scale

The parenting practice style scale was employed, which investigated the
three dimensions of the mechanism for gratitude development in children,
parental love (13-item), induction (7-item) and discipline (11-item).
Target Variable: The Items of the Filial Act Scale

The filial act scale of children (5-item) was used to examine children’s
housework sharing and grateful acts on special occasions such as birthdays.
The descriptive statistics of the three dimensions of parenting practice
(parental love, induction and discipline) and filial acts are shown below in
Table 2:
Table 2. Descriptive Statistics of the Three Dimensions of Parenting

Practice and Filial Acts
Number Mean Std. Skewness Kurtosis

of items Average Boys Girls Deviation
Parental Love 13 2.1027 2.1608 2.0365 .66032 .583 -.081
Induction 7 1.7907 1.8455 1.7259 .79434 1.270 1.177
Discipline 11 2.3858 2.4859 2.2610 .91699 .522 -.300
Filial Acts 5 2.484 2.611 2.346 .8189 .533 .230
Factor Analysis Results
The Parenting Practice Scale

The 13 items of the parental love subscale, the 7 items of the induction
subscale, the 11 items of the discipline subscale, and the 5 items of the filial
act subscale were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA using SPSS
version 23). Prior to performing PCA, the suitability of data for factor analysis
was assessed. Inspection of the correlation matrixes revealed the presence of
many coefficients of .3 and above, a value which, as suggested by Tabachnick
and Fidell (2007), was strong. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values were .83 for
30 Shi Li
parental love, .87 for induction, and .77 for discipline, exceeding the
recommended value of .6 (Kaiser, 1970, 1974), and Bartlett’s Test of
Sphericity (Bartlett, 1954) reached statistical significance (p < .05), supporting
the factorability of the correlation matrix.
Principal component analysis of the parenting practice scale items
revealed the presence of seven components with eigenvalues exceeding 1,
explaining 22.2%, 11.2%, 5.6%, 5.1%, 4.3%, 3.6%, and 3.4% of the variance,
respectively. The outcome of the number of seven components that appear not
strictly in line with the three factors (dimensions) of the mechanism as
designed is perhaps due to other education factors playing a part in these
items, such as autonomy and encouragement. An inspection of the scree plot
revealed a clear break after the second component, indicating one of the seven
components was clearly outstanding. Oblimin rotation was performed by a
different number of components, which revealed a more optimal solution
when extracting a fixed number of 3 (see Table 3), very neat and tidy, and
congruent with the three factors of the mechanism. A cross-loading problem
occurred on Parental Love Items 7 and 8, which had loadings (.306 and .391,
.390 and .480, respectively) on two components. Parental Love Item 7
(Provides me with guidance in study, for example, discussing questions with
me) and Parental Love Item 8 (Makes me feel better after talking over my
worries with her/him and provides me with guidance) may involve reasoning
with children. Further parallel analysis showed five components with
eigenvalues exceeding the corresponding criterion values for a randomly
generated data matrix of the same size (31 variables x 589 respondents) (see
Table 4). Therefore, the three-component solution can be well accepted. The
result of PCA supports the three-dimensional structure of the parenting
practice structure. Communality values were also obtained after three factors
had been chosen. Nine items were removed due to their values being less than
.3, including four Parental Love items (5, 6, 9, 13) and five Discipline items
(6, 7, 8, 10, 11). Parental Love Items 7 and 8 were also removed due to their
cross-loading problems. All the Induction items remained unchanged. It was
also noted that Discipline Item 9 (Asks me to apologise to others [e.g.,
teachers or students] whom I wrongly hurt) fell into the component of
Induction. Perhaps this also involves reasoning with children. After the
removal of items with low communality values and cross-loading issues, and
the component change of an item, the scale of the parenting practice retained 7
Parental Love items, 8 Induction items and 5 Discipline items. The Cronbach’s
alpha coefficient of the parenting practice scale was .857, higher than .8 that is
regarded as preferable (Pallant, 2011).
Table 3. Pattern Matrixa for PCA with Oblimin Rotation of Three-Factor

Solution of Parenting practice
Component
1 2 3
Induction Item 7 .820
Discipline Item 9 .550
Discipline Item10 .378
Parental Love Item 5 .351
Discipline Item 11 -.319
Parental Love Item 13
Discipline Item 6 -.408
Parental Love Item 8 .390 .408
Parental Love Item 7 .306 .391
Parental Love Item 9
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalisation.
a. Rotation converged in 8 iterations.
32 Shi Li
Table 4. Comparison of Eigenvalues from PCA and Criterion Values

from Parallel Analysis
Component Actual eigenvalue Criterion value from Reference for

number from PCA parallel analysis Decision
1 6.885 1.449 Accept
2 3.472 1.394 Accept
3 1.748 1.348 Accept
4 1.568 1.309 Accept
5 1.317 1.242 Accept
6 1.128 1.182 Reject
7 1.065 1.156 Reject
The Scale of Filial Acts
The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin values for the filial act scale was .77 for filial
acts, exceeding the recommended value of .6 (Kaiser, 1970, 1974) and
Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity (Bartlett, 1954) reached statistical significance
(p < .05), supporting the factorability of the correlation matrix. Principal
component analysis of the filial act scale items revealed the presence of one
component with an eigenvalue exceeding 1, explaining 51% of the variance.
An inspection of the scree plot revealed a clear break after the first component.
This was strictly in line with one factor for filial acts as designed. The
communality values of these items were all above .3, indicating all of these
items should be retained. Oblimin rotation was performed by two components
(see Table 5), very neat and tidy, and congruent with the two subcategories of
filial acts: sharing household chores and grateful acts towards parents on
special occasions. This was further supported by the results of parallel
analysis, which showed only one component with an eigenvalue exceeding the
corresponding criterion value for a randomly generated data matrix of the
same size (5 variables x 589 respondents) (see Table 6). Therefore, the one-
component solution can be well accepted. The result of PCA supports the one-
dimensional structure of the filial act structure. Communality values indicated
that all of the five items should remain. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of
the filial act scale was .73, above .7 that is considered acceptable (Pallant,
2011). See the revised scales of parenting practice and filial acts in Appendix
A.
Table 5. Pattern Matrix for PCA with Oblimin Rotation of Two Factors
Solution of Filial Acts
Component
1 2
Filial Act Item 1 .892
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalisation.
a. Rotation converged in 4 iterations.
Table 6. Comparison of Eigenvalues from PCA and Criterion Values

from Parallel Analysis
Component Actual eigenvalue Criterion value from Decision

number from PCA parallel analysis
1 2.551 1.118 Accept
2 .933 1.052 Reject
Correlation, Partial Correlation, Multiple Regression and T-

Test Results
The relationship between the three dimensions (parental love, induction

and discipline) and children’s filial acts was investigated using the Pearson
product-moment correlation coefficient. Preliminary analyses were performed
to ensure no violation of the assumptions of normality, linearity and
homoscedasticity. There was a small positive correlation between parental
love and filial acts, r (bivariate/zero-order correlation) = .29, n = 455, p
<.005, r2 = 8.4% indicating that 8.2% shared variance between the two.
However, a medium correlation was found for induction and discipline with
filial acts, r = .42, n = 535, p < .005, r2 = 17.9% and r = .41, n = 541, p <. 005,
r2 = 17.1%, respectively. Each of their squared Pearson correlations of
induction and discipline helps explain twice as much variance on filial acts as
parental love (see Table 7).
34 Shi Li
Table 7. Pearson Correlations between Parental Love, Induction,

Discipline and Filial Acts
Parental Love Induction Discipline Filial Acts

Parental Pearson Correlation 1 .440** .087 .292**
Love Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .062 .000
N 471 449 456 455
Induction Pearson Correlation .440** 1 .355** .423**
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000
N 449 556 534 535
Discipline Pearson Correlation .087 .355** 1 .414**
Sig. (2-tailed) .062 .000 .000
N 456 534 564 541
Filial Acts Pearson Correlation .292** .423** .414** 1
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000
N 455 535 541 564
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Partial correlation was used to explore the relationship between each of

the three dimensions (parental love, induction and discipline) and filial acts,
while controlling for the other two dimensions. Preliminary analyses were
performed to ensure no violation of the assumptions of normality, linearity and
homoscedasticity. There was a one-third less strong, positive, partial
correlation between parental love and filial acts, when controlling for
induction and discipline, r = .22, n = 369, p < .005, with moderately high
levels of parental love being associated with moderately high levels of filial
acts. This suggests an even weaker correlation between parental love and filial
acts than the one obtained by Pearson correlation. An inspection of the zero
order correlation (r = .33) suggested that controlling for induction and
discipline had some degree of effect on the strength of the relationship
between parental love and filial acts. There was a 50% decrease in the positive
partial correlation between induction and filial acts, controlling for parental
love and discipline, r = .18, n = 369, p < .005, with low levels of induction
being associated with low levels of filial acts. An inspection of the zero order
correlation (r = .37) suggested that controlling for parental love and discipline
had a big effect on the strength of the relationship between induction and filial
acts. Yet, there was still a strong, positive, partial correlation between
discipline and filial acts, controlling for parental love and induction, r = .30, n
= 369, p < .005, with high levels of discipline being associated with high
levels of filial piety. An inspection of the zero order correlation (r = .31)
suggested that controlling for parental love and induction had little effect on
the strength of the relationship between discipline and filial acts.
Standard Multiple Regression was used to assess the ability of three
variables (parental love, induction and discipline) to predict levels of filial
acts. Preliminary analyses were conducted to ensure no violation of the
assumptions of normality, linearity, multicollinearity and homoscedasticity.
The largest (Standardised) Beta Coefficient was .28 for discipline, compared
to .21 for parental love and .22 for induction, which indicates that discipline
makes the strongest unique contribution to explaining the dependent variable
of filial acts. The part correlation coefficients were .29 for discipline, .20 for
parental love, and .21 for induction, which resulted in their subsequent R
square values 8.4, 4, and 4.4, which indicates that Discipline uniquely explains
around double the variance as uniquely explained by each of the two other
variables, parental love and induction. Because the Sig. value is .00, less than
.05, all the three variables, parental love, induction and discipline made a
unique and statistically significant contribution to the prediction of perceived
filial acts.
An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the filial act
scores for boys and girls. There was no significant difference between scores
for boys (M = 2.6, SD = .826) and girls (M = 2.3, SD = .779; t (558) = 3.91, p
= 00, two-tailed). The magnitude of the difference in the means (means
difference = .27, 95% CI: .13 to .140) was small (eta squared = .027). When
the two subcategories of filial acts were examined separately using a t-test, the
magnitude of the differences in the means for household chores (eta squared =
.017) and ad hoc grateful acts (eta squared = .023) was also small.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Through scree test, oblimin rotation and parallel analysis, and by checking
communalities, the items of the revised scale of parenting practice after PCA
were brought down from 31 to 20, encompassing seven Parental Love items,
eight Induction items and five Discipline items. And the Cronbach’s alpha
coefficient of the parenting practice scale became higher than the preferable
value, .8. The scale of filial acts was found to be well in line with the original
design, with a significant Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. In particular, the result
from oblimin rotation by two components was highly congruent with the
designed two subcategories of filial acts, regularly sharing household chores
and ad hoc grateful acts. Therefore, all the five items of filial acts were
36 Shi Li
retained. In sum, PCA results support the parenting practice and filial acts
scales as two psychometrically sound and valid measures.
Explorations into the correlations between the three dimensions of
parenting practice (parental love, induction and discipline) and filial acts
revealed that parental love contributed only half as much as either of the other
two dimensions to filial acts. This was further confirmed by partial correlation
and multiple regression when controlling for induction and discipline. This
suggests that parental love alone may not help develop filial acts. The analysis
of Pearson correlation, partial correlation and multiple regression also revealed
that induction was also nearly as important as discipline, but had the least
effect on filial acts if controlling for parental love and discipline. This
indicates the importance of induction or reasoning in parenting, but may also
suggest that children are not inclined to perform filial acts for parents who are
strict with them, but do not care for them and say one thing but do another.
Meanwhile, Pearson correlations, partial correlation and multiple regression all
showed that discipline made the strongest and unique contribution to
explaining filial acts. Surprisingly, all of the five Discipline items retained
concern household chores while all the items in other disciplinary methods
such as taking negative consequences for one’s mistakes were found to be less
significant. This may suggest that engaging in chores is not only beneficial in
helping children to actively engage in housework but also promotes children’s
grateful acts towards parents on special occasions, such as looking after sick
parents or preparing parents’ birthday gifts. In sum, sharing household chores
can be seen as the most important measure of discipline in developing filial
acts.
Comparing the means of parental love, induction, discipline and filial acts,
it was found that these participating children received the highest level of
induction, a medium high level of parental love and medium level of discipline
from their parents; however, they then made a slightly lower medium level of
contribution to their parents (filial acts). The overall mean for parental love,
2.1 for all the children, suggests that these children, independent of gender,
were not spoilt. This is against the findings of the aforementioned studies that
most of the one-child generations were pampered, the reason for which
remains to be further explored. The lowest means of 1.8 for induction suggests
that their parents had a lot of reasoning or communication with them. While
2.4, for the means of discipline, suggests that their parents made the least
effort to discipline these children. The highest means for filial acts, 2.5,
suggests the lowest level of filial acts by these children towards their parents
regardless of gender, compared to the contributions that their parents made to
them in terms of the three dimensions. Overall, data analysis suggests that the
parents of these participating children engaged in a lot of reasoning or
communication with their children, but displayed slightly less love and
imposed even less discipline on their children. In return, these children
occasionally engaged in housework, looked after their sick parents, and
prepared birthday gifts for their parents.
The t-test result suggests that there was no significant difference between
boys and girls on filial acts that included both engaging in household chores (3
items) and ad hoc grateful acts (2 items). This does not endorse the findings by
Zeng et al., (2015) that adult daughters had a strong affective bond with
parents, which perhaps resulted from the one-child policy in young
generations in China. And the magnitudes of the difference of household
chores and ad hoc grateful acts between boys and girls were also small and can
be neglected. It can be tentatively concluded that Chinese one-child
generations are not appropriate subjects to investigate differences in filial acts
by gender.
There are two major limitations of this study. First, although filial acts
should be regarded as a good predicator for children’s grateful disposition
towards parents, filial or grateful thought should also have been included in
the scale of filial acts (or renamed as filial piety), so the correlations between
the three dimensions of parenting practice and filial thought, and between filial
thought and filial acts, can also be explored. Including filial thought would
ensure the survey provides a complete investigation of the subject. Second, it
would be better to select samples from a community or country with multi-
child families. China has a unique demographic feature due to its one-child
policy, which provides a good opportunity to measure gratitude, but is perhaps
not ideal for measuring the magnitude of difference between boys and girls.
In sum, the scales of parenting practice and filial acts were tested and
found to be valid and reliable, and they have considerable potential as a
valuable tool in the investigation of correlations of parenting practices and
children’s filial acts. As filial piety continues to play a role in the Oriental
culture and there is an increasing awareness of the importance of household
chores in developing an affective family bond in the West, further studies on
correlations between parenting practice and filial acts or household chores
cross-culturally is becoming important. It is hoped that the development of this
survey will make some contribution to this endeavour.
38 Shi Li
Appendix A. The Survey of Student Family Life (after PCA)
Your parent(s): Please tick the box on the right as to how well
Occasio
Always
Rarely
Never
Often
items describe one or both of your parents
nally
Speaks to me with a warm and friendly voice
Enjoys doing things with me, e.g., playing games, travelling
Intentionally buys me things, such as good food, toys, beautiful
clothes and study materials
Meets my demands, such as buying snacks, toys, and beautiful
clothes
Worries about my health, e.g., asking me to wear more clothes in
cold weather
Worries about my safety when I’m away, e.g., reminding me to
be watchful crossing the road
Makes sacrifices for me, such as not watching TV in order not to
affect my study
Communicates with me on what I should or shouldn’t do, e.g.,
saying thanks for help received and not evading my own
responsibility
Tells me why I should or shouldn’t do something, e.g., why I
should thank for help, and why not to evade responsibility
Asks me to understand and respect others, putting myself in
other people’s shoes
Demands more of myself than of others, e.g., don’t blame others
for my bad results
Asks me to see self-control as a challenge, such as refraining
from enjoying pleasure and actively engaging in housework
without parents’ demand
Helps me learn lessons from mistakes I make
Helps me be aware that everyone makes mistakes and I should
be truthful to myself
Asks me to apologise to others (e.g., teachers or students) whom
I wrongly hurt
Asks me to take care of myself, that is, keeping myself and my
own room clean and tidy, such as washing my own clothes,
making my bed, folding and storing clothes, organising my desk,
and keeping the floor free of clutter
Compels me to take care of myself if I fail
Asks me to engage in age-appropriate household chores, e.g.,
cooking meals, wishing dishes, and cleaning the home
Compels me to engage in housework if I don’t
Asks me to look after myself more and engage in more chores as
I grow older
Yourself: Please tick the box on the right as to how well items
describe yourself
Look after myself, such as washing my own clothes, making the
bed, folding and storing clothes, organising my desk, and
keeping the floor free of clutter
Cook meals for the family, including preparing, and serving
food, as well as setting the table for meals and washing dishes
Clean my home, encompassing washing clothes for other family
members, washing windows, sweeping, and vacuuming, etc.
Look after parents when they are sick, e.g., help them take
medicine and get a good rest, or share more chores
Prepare birthday cards or gifts for my parents
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Chapter 3
ROUTINE HOUSEHOLD CHORES

IN GRATITUDE DEVELOPMENT
IN CHILDREN
Shi Li
University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia
ABSTRACT
Engaging children in household chores tends to be considered either
as a way for the development of family obligations or as an impediment
to children’s academic performances, but few relate it to gratitude
development in children. This chapter taps into the unique function of
routine household chores as a vital means in developing gratitude in
children, which plays a key role for an affective family bond between
parents and their children. Engagement in routine household chores
enables children to habitualise the consciousness that there are no rights
and benefits in existence without associated obligations. This
consciousness contrasts with the hedonistic disposition of human beings.
Only from feeling gratitude towards parents for earlier sacrifices will a
child develop a sense of social justice leading to a long-term grateful
disposition, that is, a character trait of gratitude.

Email: Sli7@une.edu.au.
46 Shi Li
Keywords: routine household chores, housework, gratitude development,

children, parental love, induction, discipline, justice, morality of justice,
internalisation
Children’s engagement in household chores is customarily considered as

something concerning family obligations or academic success (Breheny, 2015;
Rende, 2015; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981), not a way for developing an
affective bond between parents and their children, in which parents love their
children, and then children have reciprocal love their parents. Some parents
are reluctant to require their children to perform household duties as they feel
the demands of these chores compromise their children’s gratitude for the
sacrifices made by these parents. Yet, a good number of empirical studies
(e.g., Y. Chen & Yang, 2011; M. Li & Peng, 2011; Lu, 2009; Ma, 2011;
Zhang, 2013) have revealed that parental sacrifices do not naturally lead to the
reciprocity of children’s love. What then makes some children ungrateful to
their parents who love them so much and have made great sacrifices in their
development? What construct holds the key solution for developing gratitude
in children towards their parents? This chapter taps into the role of household
chores and the correlation between household chores and gratitude
development in a child.
This chapter first gives a brief introduction regarding the mystery relating
to the difference in the strength of the affective bond between parents and an
adult daughter compared to the bond with an adult son; second, it reviews the
role of household chores in child development in prior research; third, the
conceptual framework of gratitude development is elaborated; fourth, a
correlation between routine household chores and gratitude development in
children based on psychological and sociological theories is discussed; and
finally, a conclusion about the nexus between routine household chores and an
affective bond between parents and children is drawn.
A MYSTERY BETWEEN HOUSEHOLD CHORES AND

A STRONGER AFFECTIVE BOND BETWEEN PARENTS
AND THEIR ADULT DAUGHTER
A large number of empirical studies (e.g., Bojczyk, Lehan, McWey,

Melson, & Kaufman, 2011; Ho, 1993; Suitor & Pillemer, 2006; Ward-Griffin,
Routine Household Chores in Gratitude Development … 47
Oudshoorn, Clark, & Bol, 2007; Zeng, 2015) have revealed that an adult
daughter has a stronger affective bond with old parents than an adult son. Ho
(1993) noted that among Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan adult daughters
practised filial piety more than did adult sons. In 2015, the Aged Care and
Family Research Centre of Beijing University, in conjunction with the
Research Centre of Chinese Economy, released the findings of their seven-
year-long nation-wide “Follow-up Investigations of Factors on the Chinese
Elderly’s Health” (Zeng, 2015) conducted in 22 provinces and cities by paying
door-to-door visits to elderly families up to 60,000 times from 1998 to 2005.
These findings suggested that there is a much better return for parents from
raising a daughter than from a son in terms of daily care and affective comfort,
especially in their advanced old age. By controlling for demographic, social
and economic factors, such as age, sex, location of residence (rural or urban),
ethnicity, educational background, marital status, number of children,
proximity to children, and habits of smoking, drinking and physical exercise,
their data analysis revealed that the affective bond of old parents with an adult
daughter was stronger than with an adult son by up to 28-29%, and the risks of
decrease in the cognitive ability of old populations who were more in
communication with a daughter and a son-in-law were lower than those who
were more in communication with a son and a daughter-in-law by 33% in rural
areas and 16% in urban areas. It has to be noted that the adult children being
investigated in the follow-up investigations were from multi-child families in
China, not the generations of the one-child policy that was put in place in
1979, for the minimum age for the participating adult children was 35 in the
last year of investigation, 2005, by which time the oldest children of the one-
child policy were only 26 years of age.
Given the Chinese custom that boys are much more valued and favoured
in terms of parental love and support in their childhood and youth, especially
in rural areas, with the purpose of providing for their parents in old age in
return, what construct makes adult daughters, who are less valued and
favoured, more likely to provide daily care and affective comfort to their
parents than an adult son? If it is a difference in their roles in practising filial
piety, in which old parents tend to seek daily care from an adult daughter but
financial support from an adult son, it will be hard to explain why these
different roles result in a differing level of affection experienced between adult
sons and their parents and adult daughters and their parents. If this is simply
due to differences in gender and social status, for instance, an adult daughter
being less busy and, as a woman, more empathic than an adult son, while the
son acting as the breadwinner and showing less feminine empathy, it then will
48 Shi Li
become difficult and awkward to explain away the finding of the “Follow-up
Investigations” that a son-in-law performs better than a daughter-in-law in
providing daily care and affective comfort. There have been no explorations in
previous empirical studies into reasons about why an adult daughter maintains
a stronger affective bond with her old parents than an adult son, and how a
stronger bond between parents and a daughter is developed. To explore this
issue, it is necessary to look at how an affective bond between parents and a
child develops as the child grows? To be more specific, what distinctive
construct in their family roles makes a daughter develop a more affective bond
with the parents than a son?
HOUSEHOLD CHORES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Household chores, such as cleaning, washing and cooking, are customarily
considered as the most distinctive construct in the Oriental culture that
distinguishes a daughter from a son, in which a daughter is generally required
to perform much more housework than a son in a multi-child family. It was
very common in the old generations of China (prior to the one-child policy),
such as the participating adult children in the “Follow-up Investigations,” that
a young daughter took up a large share of household chores, while a son was
more valued and was spared daily family obligations. Such a phenomenon has
also been reported in India. In this report, parents relied more heavily on girls
than boys to fulfill family obligations, and girls were required to perform up to
twice as many chores as boys, to the point that daughters partly or fully
assumed domestic tasks at an age as early as five to seven (Seymour, 1988). Is
it likely that household chores create diversity in affection between a daughter
and a son with their parents?
The generations of the one-child policy in China provide a unique social
experiment to examine this phenomenon empirically. A large number of
studies (e.g., Z. Chen & Zou, 2007; Deng, 2011; Du, He, & Xu, 2010; Huang,
2011; S. Li, 2014a; Tang, 2007; Zhou, 2008) have revealed that in most of
these one-child families, especially in urban areas, the only boys and the only
girls were not required to perform any household chores but had all the rights
and benefits of a family as best their parents could provide. The excessive
pampering of either the only boy or the only girl by their parents and
grandparents results in “little emperors” or “little princesses.” The
aforementioned surveys on gratitude in the one-child generations conducted in
China’s middle schools and universities in various questionnaires also

revealed a widespread lack of gratitude in the one-child generations towards
their parents. For example, Li and Peng’s (2011) survey of 485 middle school
students in an urban area found that 100% of them believed that gratitude was
not relevant to them at that age, and 30% of them never expressed gratitude to
their parents. Lu’s (2009) investigation of 500 junior middle students in a rural
area showed that 83.82% of respondents considered self-fulfilment as a way of
expressing gratitude to parents. Removal of housework from a child’s daily
life appears to suggest that there be a negative correlation between lack of
sharing household chores and a child’s grateful disposition towards their
parents.
Yet, a review of the literature on housework shows that few prior studies
have investigated this correlation between household chores and gratitude in a
child. Most of these studies focused on the benefits of children’s engagement
in domestic tasks, such as being valued, cooperation skills and reciprocal
obligation (e.g., Rogoff, 2003; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981; Whiting, Whiting,
& Longabaugh, 1975; Wingard, 2006), and a few (e.g., Smith, 1969; Wilcox,
2011) discussed a correlation between housework and the academic
performance of a child. The findings on the role of housework that most
relates to gratitude came from Kohlberg (1984) and Piaget (1965), who stated
that household chores can act as a vital means for the development of moral
character in a child, and also from Crusec et al., (1996), who stressed that
engaging a child in routine housework could enhance concern for others,
especially in older children. Yet, none of the aforementioned established a
direct and logical correlation between household chores and gratitude in
children. Hence, some specific questions remain unaddressed. For example,
why was it more likely that daughters who were more engaged in housework
held a stronger affective bond with their parents? What construct turned a
sense of family obligations in daughters into a grateful disposition towards
their parents? Causality for a correlation between household chores and
gratitude needs to be scholarly explored. Prior to exploring how engaging
household chores makes a contribution to gratitude development in children, it
is also necessary to have a proper understanding of what gratitude is and how
gratitude is developed.
50 Shi Li
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF GRATITUDE

DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN
Currently there are two basic but contrasting views about the nature of
gratitude. Some scholars see gratitude as an episodic emotion or disposition
(e.g., Aristotle, trans. 1976; Williams, 1985), while others believe that
gratitude is a long-term disposition, a state of character or a character trait
(e.g., Emmons, 2004; Komter, 2004; Robert, 2004; Watkins, 2004). Li (2014b)
points out that gratitude should not be comprehended solely as a thought but
must be manifested in “an act of returning kindness.” For a thought of
gratitude has to be enacted when it comes to a demanding task such as looking
after an elderly parent for years in terms of filial piety in the Oriental culture.
The view of demandingness is endorsed by the gratitude theory (Keller, 2006),
which states that gratitude arising from parental love and earlier sacrifices is
voluntary, ongoing and open-ended, and can be very demanding. In other
words, a child’s gratitude towards parents should not only be manifested in
words by simply saying “I care about you,” but, more importantly, in deeds,
such as spending time with parents in walking and chatting, daily care, and
looking after a sick old parent.
A conceptual framework, or a mechanism, for gratitude development in a
child has rarely been the focus of researchers of parenting styles. The existing
research on parenting styles primarily concerns academic achievements,
children’s autonomy and positive emotions such as empathy and trust. The
body of research includes Baumrind’s (1968) seminal work on the major
parenting styles “authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive” and its modified
version by Maccoby, Martin and Hetheringon (1983), which splits the last
style “permissive” into “indulgent” and “neglectful.” Although it has been
found that the authoritative parenting style bears great significance
transculturally in almost all positive outcomes, gratitude falls through the
cracks. It is only in Li’s (2016) studies that a mechanism for gratitude
development in children was developed, in which morality of justice is
considered as holding the key solution to gratitude development in children.
The mechanism encompasses two components: parental love and social
justice, and the latter can only be developed through induction (moral
reasoning) and discipline. In what follows, the roles of parental love and social
justice in gratitude development in a child will be discussed in detail.
First, parental love plays a fundamental role in the development of an
affective bond between parents and children, serving as the seed for the
reciprocity of love and other positive emotions such as caring, sympathy,

empathy, compassion, generosity, and even trust (Fredrickson, 1998, 2004,
2013; Komter, 2004; McNeely & Barber, 2010), “which in turn has the effect
of building that individual’s physical, intellectual, and social resources”
(Fredrickson, 1998, p. 300). Attachment theory (Ainsworth, 1961, 1967, 1969,
1989; Bowlby, 1965, 1969, 1980, 1982; Brenning, Soenens, Braet, & Bal,
2012; Steele & Steele, 2013) indicates that attaining or maintaining proximity
to a caring mother figure is critically important for a child, particularly for
infants. And deprivation or inadequate parental love and care during early
childhood has serious short-term and long-term ill-effects on personality
development and aspects of mental health, such as anxiety, anger, sadness,
grief, mourning and depression. Such attachment arising from mother-figure
love and care has also been observed to influence an individual’s behaviour
over time, well into adulthood and across generations (M Main & Goldwyn,
1995; Mary Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). Dr Alice Honig (2004), a
prominent expert on prosocial behaviours, also noted a strong prosocial
disposition in children who had been brought up with parental love. Therefore,
parental love plays an essential role in the development of the affective bond
between parents and children, and a child’s grateful disposition towards his or
her parents.
However, parental love alone will not lead naturally to reciprocity of
children’s love without the process of social justice, something which has been
evidenced in the widespread of lack of gratitude in the one-child generations
of China as discussed above. Both Piaget (1965) and Kohlberg (1976, 1984)
found that the development of an individual’s sense of social justice is not
automatic, and does not simply occur in tandem with chronological aging.
This view is endorsed by a good number of social justice theorists (Deigh,
1982; Elm & Weber, 1994; Martin L. Hoffman, 1975; Hume, 1960; Rawls,
1999; Rest, 1979) who believe that one’s social justice is achieved through
balancing different rights, obligations, and benefits, and is the bedrock of
social cooperation and harmony. This concept can be expanded from
psychological and sociological perspectives. From a psychological
perspective, given the fact that the hedonistic predispositions of human beings
are largely constitutional (Aristotle, trans. 1976; Hume, 1960; Kohlberg,
1964), social justice is a vital avenue for subjugating one’s hedonistic needs
and replacing them with moral values (Martin L. Hoffman, 1975). From a
sociological perspective, individuals are born into associations of people and
must balance their own interests with those of others in the association.
Therefore, in Li’s (2016) view, through induction or moral reasoning by
52 Shi Li
balancing diverse rights, obligations and benefits, individuals learn to respect

mutual rights and benefits, which in turn leads to a long-term disposition of
appreciation of kindness rendered by others, that is, a character trait of
gratitude.
Then, how to develop a sense of social justice? Hoffman’s internalisation
theory (1960; 1975) provides a good answer, which has also been endorsed by
numerous psychologists (e.g., Minton, Kagan, & Levine, 1971; Schoggen,
1963; Simmons & Schoggen, 1963). Although induction or moral reasoning is
considered by Kohlberg (1976) as a precondition for the next moral stage in
his theory, moral reasoning will not lead naturally to moral actions, in
particular, when it comes to high costs such as filial piety (Bee, 1994; S. Li,
2014a). As we know, moral development against the hedonistic or selfish
nature of human beings is a painful process (Aristotle, trans. 1976), so the
development of gratitude may be predestined to be a demanding undertaking.
Therefore, Hoffman (1975) held the view that discipline plays a vital role in
the internalisation process of social justice. Parental discipline is an essential
requirement in exerting constraint on the self-interest tendency of a child and it
can, as explained by Blustein, “gradually shift from its position of outward
authority to an inner position of self-control” (1982, p. 127). Only in this
manner, “the deepest form of gratitude” and “a way of life,” as Shelton (2004,
p. 273) described it, can social justice be cultivated. Without parental
discipline, parental love alone is unlikely to bear fruit.
NEXUS BETWEEN ROUTINE HOUSEHOLD CHORES

AND GRATITUDE DEVELOPMENT
Routine household chores provide a great vehicle for parents to internalise

a sense of social justice in their child. Unlike occasional housework, such as
cooking that could be regarded as fun or a relief from intensive study or
mental work, routine household chores are laborious, monotonous and boring,
thus, without parental disciplinary enforcement, moral reasoning alone may
not be sufficient for children to carry out these tasks especially in their early
stage. Through engaging in routine family responsibilities, children will be
able to learn that their rights and benefits should be earned by correspondingly
fulfilling their obligations, and that there are no rights and benefits in the
world without obligations attached to them. Routine household chores will
help “sober children into the social fact that growing up means that obligation
precedes pleasure” (Ochs & Kremer-Sadlik, 2007, p. 9). More importantly,

childhood is a vital phase for the development of a habitus of social justice. As
Aristotle stated, “it is of no little importance what sort of habits we form from
an early age – it makes a vast difference or rather all the difference in the
world” (trans. 1976, p. 32). The routine engagement of housework throughout
childhood provides, through parental discipline, great opportunities for
children to internalise or habitualise a sense of social justice in their inner
state.
It must be noted that parental love and induction (moral reasoning) are as
essential as discipline through routine housework engagement for gratitude
development in children, and these are three integral parts of the mechanism.
Without the development of social justice through discipline, in particular by
engaging children in housework, they will be spoilt and become self-centred
like some of the children of China’s one-child policy. Without parental love
and induction, children could see themselves as cheap labour and consider
their housework engagement as a commercial trade for their living in a family,
which could greatly compromise their feeling of parental love. Parental love is
the source of the reciprocity of a child’s gratitude; while the development of
social justice through induction and discipline, in particular by engaging in
housework, is more of a means for parents to help their child internalise such
parental affection. Therefore, parental love, induction and discipline,
especially through routine housework, are indispensable to the mechanism for
gratitude development in children.
Of course performing household chores might not alone be sufficient for
internalising a good sense of social justice in a child. Other disciplinary
measures such as curbing children’s desires and asking children to bear
negative consequences for their mistakes (if they could) may also help instil in
children the concept of mutual respect of rights and interests, and promote
healthy interpersonal relationships and social harmony. It should also be
pointed out that excessive housework may impede a child’s academic
performance (Smith, 1969; Wilcox, 2011).
CONCLUSION
The engagement of routine household chores is a great vehicle for children
to internalise a sense of social justice, which can transform one directional
parental love into reciprocal love between parents and children. Through the
development of morality of justice arising from parental love and social
54 Shi Li
justice, the nexus between routine housework and an affective bond between
parents and children is positively established. This suggests that only if
morality of justice is developed in children, can an affective bond between
parents and children be cultivated in their childhood and maintained well
beyond their childhood or throughout their lifetime. This provides a good
explanation for the mystery arising from the findings of the aforementioned
studies that found that an adult daughter had a stronger affective bond with
their old parents than an adult son had; and a son-in-law, under the influence
of his wife, an adult daughter, performed better than a daughter-in-law in
providing daily care and affective comfort. Accordingly, to make a filial or
grateful child, the development of morality of justice holds the key solution, in
which parental love, induction and discipline, especially through routine
housework, are the integral parts of the mechanism. Therefore, in modern
society, parents should consider requiring their children to assist the family in
day-to-day chores during their childhood and adolescence.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Name: Shi Li
Affiliation: University of New England
Research and Professional Experience:
His research career has rapidly gained strong momentum in the areas of
cross-cultural studies in gratitude development in children and filial piety in
recent years. Some of his articles were published in world-renowned journals
such as China Report (Sage Publications) and Childhood Education
(Routledge) and he is currently working with research partners domestically
and internationally on some grant applications in the area of gratitude
development.
60 Shi Li
Professional Appointments:
Lecturer in Chinese language and culture from 2007 to the present
Honors:
2016. A Mechanism for Gratitude Development in a Child, Early Child

2015. Explorations into White Australia’s Sense of Superiority over Chinese,
International Journal of China Studies (University of Malaya), 6(3), 313-
329.
2015. Chinese Parents’ Role Modelling: Promoting Gratitude. Childhood
Education (Routledge), 91(3), 190-197.
2014. “All Good is of Parents” and its Chinese Context, China Report (Sage
Publications), 50 (4) pp. 1-12.
2014. How to Make a Grateful Child? Reflection on Gratitude Campaigns in
China in Recent Years, Sage Open, October-December 2014: 1–7.
2013. The moral dilemma and social disadvantages of placing unique
emphasis on the filial child, the International Journal of Critical Cultural
Studies, 11(1), pp1-10.
2013. Confucianism in the eyes of Australian high school teachers, Asian
Social Science, 9(11), pp. 33-40.
2013. Some reflections on how to approach Chinese culture, International
Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 9 (2), pp. 1-13.
Chapter 4
GRATITUDE UNIQUELY PREDICTS

LONELINESS ABOVE SOCIO-
DEMOGRAPHICS, THE BIG 5 PERSONALITY
FACTORS AND LIFE SATISFACTION
Félix Neto*
Universidade do Porto, Portugal
ABSTRACT
The goal of this research was to explore whether gratitude explains
variance in loneliness after controlling for socio-demographic factors, the
Big 5 factors, and life satisfaction. A total of 231 (Mage = 15.14, SD =
1.17; range 14-18 years) adolescents (57% females) completed the
measures of gratitude, Big Five personality factors, satisfaction with life,
and loneliness. Correlation analyses and multiple regression analyses
were performed. The results showed, as expected, that gratitude and
loneliness were negatively correlated. In addition, gratitude made a
significant unique contribution (8% of the variance, p < .001) to
loneliness, controlling for socio-demographics, the Big 5 personality
factors, and life satisfaction. The discussion of these results outlines the
importance of gratitude in its own right for loneliness.
*
Corresponding author: Félix Neto, Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação,
Universidade do Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal, e-mail
<fneto@fpce.up.pt>.
62 Félix Neto
Keywords: adolescents, big five, gratitude, loneliness, satisfaction with life
In Cicero’s words, “gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the
parent of all the others.” Gratitude has been described as a moral virtue,
attitude, emotion, personality trait, and coping response (Emmons,
McCullough, & Tsang, 2003). As an affective trait, (the grateful disposition or
disposition toward gratitude) it has been defined as “a generalized tendency to
recognize and respond with grateful emotion to the roles of other people’s
benevolence in the positive experiences and outcomes that one obtains”
(McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002, p. 112). In this line, people with high
disposition to gratitude are more likely to evidence grateful moods and
emotions in their daily interactions. Gratitude showed positive links with
diverse measures of subjective well-being. Individuals with high grateful traits
tend to evidence high levels of satisfaction with life and positive affect
(McCullough et al., 2002).
Previous work has shown that gratitude has incremental validity above the
effects of the Big 5 personality factors relatively to forgiveness (Neto, 2007),
satisfaction with life (Wood, Joseph, & Maltby, 2008), and psychological
well-being (Wood, Joseph, & Maltby, 2009). For example, Neto (2007)
explored whether gratitude accounted for a significant portion of the variance
beyond that of personality in the study of dispositional forgiveness (i.e., lasting
resentment, sensitivity to circumstances, and unconditional forgiveness)
among college students. The results evinced that personality, namely
agreeableness and neuroticism correlated with lasting resentment and
unconditional forgiveness. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses showed
that gratitude explained a significant amount of variance of unconditional
forgiveness. Wood et al., (2008) showed that gratitude still made a significant
contribution to life satisfaction after controlling for the Big Five factors. In this
line, this study addresses the following question: Does gratitude contribute
unique variance to loneliness, beyond socio-demographic factors, the Big 5
personality traits and life satisfaction?
Loneliness is an aversive and subjective experience. Loneliness is
typically defined as the perceived discrepancy between one’s actual and one’s
desired social relationships (Peplau & Perlman, 1982). Feeling lonely is not
the same as being alone. People may be lonely in a crowd or socially satisfied
while alone. Empirical research shows that loneliness is associated with
different affective states such as being unhappy (Neto & Pinto, 2010). People
high in loneliness have increased levels of distrust towards others (Rotenberg,
Gratitude Uniquely Predicts Loneliness … 63
1994), and are more likely to perceive social interactions as threatening (Tsai
& Reis, 2009).
Loneliness was chosen as an outcome construct for three primary motives.
First, research displays a significant prevalence of loneliness among
adolescents. Some works showed that loneliness peaks in adolescence
(Brennan, 1982; Heinrich & Gullone, 2006). A research found that loneliness
increased 36.1% from middle childhood into adolescence (Schinka et al.,
2013). Second, loneliness has negative effects on mental and physical health
(Hawkley & Capitanio, 2015), and longevity (Holt-Lernstad, Smith, & Layton,
2010). Greater loneliness was related to higher degrees of depression and
lower degrees of well-being and self-esteem (Heinrich & Gullone, 2006; Neto
& Costa, 2015). Loneliness was also positively associated with suicidal
ideation and behavior (Rudatsikira et al., 2007). Third, there is no overlap
between loneliness and other facets of the Big Five, such as anxiety and
depression which are facets represented in the Big Five model.
A character strength, as gratitude (Neto, Neto, & Furnham, 2014) should
be expected to be related to an emotional vulnerability, as loneliness.
McCullough et al., (2002) found that gratitude appeared associated with
prosocial behaviour and empathy. “The prosocial nature of gratitude suggests
the possibility that the grateful disposition is rooted in the basic traits that
orient people toward sensitivity and concern for others” (McCullough et al.,
2002, p. 114). Gratitude enhances helping acts and behaviors stimulated by
gratitude build and strengthen social attachments (McCullough et al., 2001).
The grateful disposition is positively associated with compassionate love for
close others and humanity (Neto & Menezes, 2014).
Furthermore, grateful people evidence more positive perspectives of their
social contexts (McCullough et al., 2002; Wood et al., 2008). Such a positive
life orientation contrasts with a lonely worldview which typically rates others
and themselves more negatively (Lau & Kong, 1999).
Recent research has shown that gratitude is negatively associated with
loneliness (e.g., Caputo, 2015; Ni, Yang, & Zhang, 2015). Past research
examining the role of gratitude to alleviate the experience of loneliness has
been scarce, yet past research indicated that gratitude and mental health are
strongly linked (Burcat, 2010; Feng, 2011; Caputo, 2015; Ni et al., 2015). This
set of research displays two main limitations. First, none of these studies have
been conducted across adolescence, a period of life where loneliness peaks.
Burcat (2010) and Ni et al., (2015) used as samples college students and
Caputo (2015) used young adults with a mean age of 29 years; Feng (2011)
used as sample Korean American pastors and spouses. Second, these studies
64 Félix Neto
have not taken into account confounding personality factors. Burcat (2010)
and Feng (2011) performed correlation analyses, but they have not taken into
account further confounding factors. Caputo (2015) investigated the
relationship between gratitude and subjective feelings of loneliness controlling
for well-being. Ni et al., (2015) examined the mediating role of social support
in the relation between gratitude and loneliness.
The Big 5 factors of neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion,
conscientiousness, and openness constitute some of the most investigated
personality variables in the last decades (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Gratitude is
positively linked to agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and
openness, and negatively linked to neuroticism (e.g., McCullough et al., 2002;
Wood et al., 2008; Neto, 2007). The Big 5 traits explain between 21 and 28%
of the variance in the grateful disposition (McCullough et al., 2002). The Big
Five variables are also correlated with loneliness (e.g., Lee, Tam, & Chie,
2014). This association raises the possibility that the relation between gratitude
and loneliness is due to the third variable effects of the Big 5.
Subjective well-being concerns how people evaluate emotional and
cognitive domains of their lives (Diener, Lucas, & Oishi, 2002). Subjective
well-being comprises three components: 1) the satisfaction with life, 2) the
presence of positive affect, and 3) the absence of negative affect (Diener et al.,
1985). Satisfaction with life concerns the cognitive evaluation of life as a
whole. Previous literature evidenced that gratitude is associated with life
satisfaction (McCullough et al., 2002; Watkins, 2004; Wood et al., 2008).
Wood et al., (2008) demonstrated that gratitude has a unique relation with life
satisfaction.
In this study it is examined whether gratitude is related to loneliness, and
it is tested whether gratitude evidences a unique relation with loneliness, or
whether gratitude is only related to loneliness given the confounding effect of
the Big 5 personality factors and life satisfaction. At the best of our
knowledge, this has not previously been tested.
METHODS
Participants
The participants were 231 (131 girls and 99 boys, besides one participant
not indicating a gender) youngsters. Their mean age was 15.14 (SD = 1.17,
range = 14-18). Girls (M = 15.18, SD = 1.18) and boys (M = 15.01, SD = 1.61)

did not differ on age, F(1, 229) = .35, p =.56.
Instruments
The material included four questionnaires: the revised UCLA Loneliness

Scale, the NEO-FFI, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, and the Gratitude
Questionnaire.
Loneliness. A validated Portuguese version (Neto 1993) of the revised

UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona 1980) was used to
measure loneliness. This validated Portuguese scale is composed of 18 items,
of which 9 are worded positively (e.g., “I am an outgoing person”) and 9
negatively (e.g., “I am no longer close to anyone”). The response options were
never (1), rarely (2), sometimes (3), and often (4). Greater scores denote
higher loneliness. The Cronbach coefficient alpha for this sample was .83.
Big Five. The Portuguese version of the NEO-FFI (Barros & Marques,
1996) was administered. The NEO-FFI assesses the personality domains
Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and
Conscientiousness with 12 items each (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Items involve
questions about the typical behaviours or reactions which are answered on a
five-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”
In the present research internal consistencies of the scales (Cronbach’s alpha)
ranged between .65 (Openness to Experience) and .81 (Conscientiousness).
Table 1. Descriptive statistics, alpha coefficients, and range of scales
Mean SD α Range
Loneliness 1.87 .41 .83 1-4
Big Five
Neuroticism 3.01 .52 .71 1-5
Agreeableness 3.41 .46 .66 1-5
Extraversion 3.54 .47 .70 1-5
Conscientiousness 3.52 .55 .81 1-5
Openness to Experience 3.13 .42 .65 1-5
Satisfaction with Life 4.82 1.20 .83 1-7
Gratitude 3.73 .62 .66 1-5
Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
66 Félix Neto
Satisfaction with Life. The Satisfaction with Life Scale was first developed
by Diener et al., (1985) to assess satisfaction with people’s lives as a whole. It
contains five items. A sample item is: “The conditions of my life are
excellent.” Respondents were asked to state how much they agreed or
disagreed with each item on a 7-point Likert scale (where 1 = Strongly
disagree and 7 = Strongly agree). The reliability and the validity of this scale
have been previously shown for Portuguese people (Neto 1993). The
Cronbach coefficient alpha for this sample was .83.
Gratitude. The GQ-6 was used to measure gratitude (McCullough,
Emmons, & Tsang, 2002). This is a dispositional measure including six items.
A sample item is: “If I had to list everything that I felt grateful for, it would be
a very long list.” Participants endorsed each item on a five-point Likert-type
scale (where 1 = Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree), with greater
scores indicating greater proneness to experience gratitude. This scale
presented good psychometric characteristics, including a robust one-factor
structure and high internal consistency, especially considering its brevity
(McCullough et al., 2002). The scale has been adapted to a Portuguese
population (Neto, 2007). The coefficient alpha in the current study was .66.
Moreover, respondents answered socio-demographic questions, such as
age, gender, ethnicity, and educational level. Two additional questions were
asked: “Do you believe in God?” and “Do you attend church every week
(except when you are truly unable to do so)?”
Procedure
The students were asked to participate in a research about well-being

during a class session. The survey was administered in groups ranging in size
from 12 to 25. Students were told that participation was optional, and
responses would remain confidential. The participation rate was 100%. After
completing the questionnaire participants were debriefed. The average time
needed to complete the study was approximately 25 minutes.
RESULTS
Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for the scales, as well as the
alpha reliability coefficients, and the ranges on each scale.
Pearson’s correlations were conducted to examine the relations between

the different measures considered (loneliness, neuroticism, agreeableness,
extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, life satisfaction and
gratitude) (see Table 2). Cohen (1988) defined effect sizes as small at r = .10,
medium at r = .30, and large at r = .50. Assuming these definitions loneliness
had medium zero-order correlations with neuroticism (r = .30, p < .001),
conscientiousness (r = -.39, p < .001), and life satisfaction (r = -.41, p < .001),
and large correlations with agreeableness (r = -.51, p < .001), extraversion (r =
-.54, p < .001), and gratitude (r = -.60, p < .001). The size of these correlations
denote that the Big 5, life satisfaction, and gratitude are important predictors of
loneliness.
In order to test whether gratitude could explain unique variance in
loneliness after controlling for the effects of socio-demographic variables, Big
5 factors and life satisfaction, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were
computed. All tolerance values surpassed .10 (and VIFs < 10) suggesting no
problems with multicollinearity (Field, 2000). Also, the largest correlation
between predictors was .60, less than .80, the heuristic figure suggesting
possible multicollinearity (Field, 2000).
In the first step, the socio-demographic factors of gender, age, belief in
God, and attendance in church were entered into the regression. In the second
step, the Big 5 factors were entered. In the third step, life satisfaction was
entered. Finally, in the fourth step, gratitude was entered. The results of the
hierarchical multiple regression analyses are shown in Table 3.
Table 2. Intercorrelations among loneliness, Big Five personality traits,

life satisfaction and gratitude
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. Loneliness ---
2. Neuroticism .29*** ---
3. Agreeableness -.51*** -.26*** ---
4. Extraversion -.54*** -.28*** .47*** ---
5. Conscientiousness -.39*** -.17* .48*** .41*** ---
6. Openness to -.10 .07 .15* .10 .15* ---
Experience
7. Life satisfaction -.41*** -.33** .37*** .28** .46*** -.04 ---
8. Gratitude -.60*** -.18** .51*** .46*** .37*** .21** .50***---
* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
68 Félix Neto
Table 3. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses examining the

prediction of loneliness by demographic factors (step 1), five-factor
domains (step 2), life satisfaction (step 3) and gratitude (step 4)
Variable Loneliness
Step 1 Step 2 Step3 Step 4
Std β P Std β P Std β P Std β P
Step 1
Sex -.09 -.05 -.07 -.08
Age .13 .04 .05 .04
Belief in God .15 .07 .06 .04
Attendance in church .04 -.06 -.02 -.09
Step 2
Neuroticism .14* .10 .13
Agreeableness -.27** -.20* -.11
Extraversion -.27** -.28** -.16*
Conscientiousness -.11 -.05 -.08
Openess to Experience -.02 -.03 -.06
Step 3
Life satisfaction -.20* -.01
Step 4
Gratitude -.43**
R2 .04 .39*** .42*** .50***
R2 change and significance .04 .35*** .03** .08***
Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
In the first step, no socio-demographic variables emerged as significant

predictors of loneliness. In the second step, the five factors of the NEO-FFI
were added, and neuroticism, agreeableness and extraversion emerged as
significant predictors of loneliness, accounting for 39% of the variance in
loneliness. In the third step, life satisfaction was added, and agreeableness and
extraversion remained in the model, and life satisfaction was also a significant
predictor. This model accounted for 42% of the variance in loneliness. In the
fourth step, the addition of gratitude accounted for an additional 8% of the
variance in loneliness. This model accounted for 50% of the variance in
loneliness.
DISCUSSION
As might be anticipated from a well-being and character strength,
gratitude was negatively correlated with loneliness. Adolescents who
displayed higher gratitude also experienced less subjective feelings of

loneliness. Adopting conventional definitions (Cohen, 1988), the size of the
correlation between gratitude and loneliness was large. For McCullouth et al.,
(2002) the grateful disposition expresses emotional health and is triggered by
the process of people concentrating on their positive experiences. Grateful
people perceive the positive side in the social context and focus on positive
experiences which are likely to alleviate their feelings of loneliness.
Overall, the results of this study displayed that the socio-demographic
factors considered, used as control variables, have not significant impact on
loneliness. This suggests that loneliness is more influenced by psychosocial
factors than by socio-demographic factors, as suggested in previous studies
(e.g., Neto, 2002; 2016). For example, Neto (2016) showed that re-
acculturation and adaptation factors were more important for understanding
loneliness than demographic factors among Portuguese youths from returned
migrant families. All the psychosocial factors considered in the present study
were significantly associated with loneliness, but openness to experience.
Findings support the importance of the Big 5 personality factors, life
satisfaction, and gratitude for loneliness. The Big 5 personality factors
accounted for 35% of the variance in loneliness, over-and-above sex, age, and
belief in God and church attendance. Life satisfaction added another 3%.
Gratitude explained another 8% of the variance in loneliness after controlling
for life satisfaction, the Big 5 personality traits, and socio-demographic
variables. This suggests that gratitude may be uniquely important to loneliness.
In sum, the present research denotes that the grateful dispostion is related to
loneliness, and that this relation is at least independent of the Big Five traits
and of life satisfaction.
Current findings also have practical implications. The demonstration that
gratitude predicts loneliness above the effects of the Big Five factors and life
satisfaction, suggests that gratitude interventions may be used to alleviate
loneliness. Recognition of loneliness as a risk factor for the quality of life
contributed to the design of interventions to reduce loneliness (Masi et al.,
2011). Could lonely people profit from learning thankfulness? If in the past
psychological benefit of gratitude has been shown to promote well-being, it
can also be used to prevent people from suffering loneliness. Watkins et al.,
(2008) found that grateful reappraisal of unpleasant open memories decreased
unpleasant emotional impact. Positive activities like experiencing gratitude
can mitigate loneliness. “Teaching habits of gratitude to youth could affect
their mental health and positive behaviors for years to come” (Layous &
Lyubomirsky, 2014).
70 Félix Neto
This research has several limitations. First, the sample was constituted by
adolescents and we don’t know how well our findings generalize to other age
groups. Second, the cross-sectional design of this research does not permit
inferences about cause and effect. Third, self-reports were used. This is
appropriate as loneliness is by definition a subjective experience. However,
future work is needed to explore whether current results persist when using
informant ratings (e.g., parents, friends, romantic partners) of loneliness
(Luhmann et al., 2016).
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Chapter 5
GRATITUDE AND ENVY:

IMPLICATIONS FOR CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Viviana Langher1,*, Andrea Caputo1,

Valentina Nannini1 and Massimo Sturiale2
1
Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology,
University of Rome “Sapienza,” Rome, Italy
2
School of Foreign Languages and Literatures,
University of Catania, Catania, Italy
ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that gratitude has been found to predict academic
self-efficacy (Rey, 2010) and persistence (Shishim, 2013) and its
potential role in promoting career development has been highlighted (Dik
et al., 2015), little research specifically examined the relationship
between gratitude and career development. Instead, research has
demonstrated that envy at work acts as a counter-productive behavior
which negatively affects one’s own career and the success of the
organization (Menon & Thompson, 2010), as well as group effort (Tyler
& Blader, 2000), trust and satisfaction (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2006).
The present research study aims to explore the role of both
dispositional gratitude and envy on career adaptability (Savickas, 1997)
in young adults. This construct refers to the individual’s resources for
*
Corresponding author: Email: viviana.langher@uniroma1.it.
76 Viviana Langher, Andrea Caputo, Valentina Nannini et al.
coping with developmental vocational tasks, occupational transitions and

work traumas which help to form adaptive strategies.
A sample of 180 university students (86% females) whose mean age
was 19.54 (SD = 2.33) completed dispositional measures of gratitude
(GQ-6, Gratitude Questionnaire) and envy (DES, Dispositional Envy
Scale) and a Career Adaptabilities scale (CAAS). Preliminary
correlations were carried out on all the examined variables, as well as
independent t-tests by gender. Then two-step regression analyses (using
the enter method) were performed in order to test whether dispositional
gratitude and envy (as explicative variables) could explain variance in
career adaptability and in each of its components (concern, control,
curiosity and confidence) even controlling for gender and age.
With regard to dispositional measures of gratitude and envy no
correlation with age or difference by gender was detected (p > .05). There
was no association between career adaptability and age; the concern
component of career adaptability was instead higher in females (M =
23.31, SD = 3.89) than in males (M = 21.42, SD = 4.14), t(175) = 2.20, p
= .029. Regression analyses showed that only envy succeeded in
explaining overall career adaptability (β = -.46, p < .001). To expand,
envy predicted lower concern (β = -.23, p < .01), control (β = -.53, p <
.001), curiosity (β = -.29, p < .001) and confidence (β = -.39, p < .001).
Consistent with the theoretical framework, envy seems to reduce
career adaptability levels because envious people may not benefit from
social comparison as a way of improving their adaptive competences
given that the success of ‘the other’ is perceived as unfair. Indeed, envy
could represent emotional functioning which allows the individual to
avoid coping with frustration and consequently to experience relief
without resulting in self-enhancement strategies. However, gratitude
seems to have no role in promoting career adaptability. This result
surprisingly suggests the scarce relevance of gratitude in career
development. Potential explanations are discussed as well as implications
for intervention.
Keywords: gratitude, envy, career adaptability
INTRODUCTION
The literature (Fredrickson, 2004; Lin, 2015; Wood, Joseph, & Linley,
2007) seems to underline the adaptive role of gratitude on the capacity to cope
with challenges by means of internal and external resources. McCullough,
Emmons and Tsang (2002, p. 112) defined dispositional gratitude as a
“generalized tendency to recognize and respond with grateful emotion to the
Gratitude and Envy: Implications for Career Development 77
roles of other people’s benevolence in the positive experiences and outcomes

that one obtains.”
Scholars have detected a positive correlation between gratitude and well-
being (McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001; Emmons &
McCullough, 2003; Watkins, Woodward, Stone, & Kolts, 2003; Wood, Froh,
& Geraghty, 2010), both physical and emotional. Grateful people are more
extraverted, less neurotic, more agreeable, open and conscientious
(McCullough et al., 2002; McCullough, Tsang, & Emmons, 2004; Wood,
Maltby, Gillett, Linley, & Joseph, 2008; Wood, Maltby, Stewart, Linley, &
Joseph, 2008). They benefit from the circumstances of life and reinterpret
critical situations positively, use active coping and planning (Wood et al.,
2007), strengthen social relationships (Caputo, 2015), resort to avoidant
coping style less frequently (Lin, 2015) and may have more resources to tackle
stressful situations (Fredrikson, 1998, 2001). Gratitude tends to enhance
motivation to achievement both in educational (Bono & Froh, 2009) and
organizational fields (Buote, 2014). Indeed, gratitude has been found to predict
school achievement and learning (Froh, Sefick, & Emmons, 2008), academic
self-efficacy, academic self-regulating behaviors (Rey, 2010) and academic
persistence (Shishim, 2013). In this regard, research has demonstrated the
benefits of interventions aimed to promote gratitude in undergraduate students
on determination, attention, enthusiasm and energy (Emmons & McCullogh,
2003), which could in turn affect motivation to achievement.
With regard to work settings, the literature has highlighted the relevance
of positive emotions on cognitive abilities, such as flexibility and creative
problem solving, helping behavior, job satisfaction, lower intention to
withdraw (Andries, 2011; Brief & Weiss, 2002), work engagement and
productivity (Ilies & Judge, 2005). Gratitude positively affects both current job
satisfaction and expectation of future satisfaction (Buote, 2014), negatively
correlates with burnout (Chan, 2010) and has a protective role in burnout
(Bennett, Ross & Sunderland, 1996).
Grateful people are better at perspective-taking and open to new ideas
(Buote, 2014) and favour the task achievement of individuals, groups and
organizations (Emmons, 2003). Gratitude seems to positively affect prosocial
behaviors such as social support, cohesiveness among colleagues and a sense
of community (Buote, 2014), while also inhibiting disruptive behaviors
(McCullough et al., 2001). This could explain a greater sense of responsibility
towards employees and the activation of helpful conduct among colleagues
(Andersson, Giacalone, & Jurkiewicz, 2007; Grant & Wrzesniewski, 2010).
Generosity and helpfulness seem to be incompatible with the presence of
negative interpersonal emotions such as envy (McCullough et al., 2002),

because grateful people report being more willing to part with their
possessions. In this regard, Klein (1957) sustained that gratitude and envy are
opposite and interacting feelings, which influence earliest relationships.
Research has demonstrated that grateful people are less envious of the material
wealth of others, because they tend to focus on the positive contributions of
others to their well-being, devote less attention to comparing their outcomes
situations with those of other people and therefore experience less envy as a
result (McCullough et al., 2002).
In contrast to gratitude, envy is indeed considered as potentially
problematic social emotion for both individual adjustment and interpersonal
behavior (Tangney & Salovey, 1999). Despite different conceptualizations of
envy emerging from scientific knowledge (Caputo, 2014), it can generally be
defined as “an unpleasant and often painful blend of feelings characterized by
inferiority, hostility, and resentment caused by a comparison with a person or
group of persons who possess something we desire” (Smith & Kim, 2007, p.
49).
Envy may lead to harmful and hostile behaviors (Smith & Kim, 2007) and
negative consequences, such as poorer outcomes and personal gains (Parks,
Rumble, & Posey, 2002; Thernstrom, 1998; Zizzo & Oswald, 2001), criminal
behavior (Schoeck, 1969) or ingroup biases (Glick, 2002; White, Langer,
Yariv, & Welch, 2006). Envious hostility seems to play an important role
especially at work (Vecchio, 2000, 2005) because the workplace can be
regarded as one of the most competitive and hierarchical domains. Research
has demonstrated that envy at work acts as a counter-productive behaviour,
which negatively affects individual career and organizational success (Menon
& Thompson, 2010); for instance it increases turnover intentions, job and
supervisor dissatisfaction (Vecchio, 1995) and absenteism (Duffy & Shaw,
2000). In this regard, a study by Erdil and Müceldili (2014) demonstrated that
employees’ feelings of envy were associated with emotional disengagement,
thus influencing the propensity to leave. Indeed, envious people tend to
disentangle themselves from concrete personal goals and to use self-
handicapping strategies (Lange & Crusius, 2015).
Besides, other pieces of research have highlighted the negative
consequences of envy on group effort (Tyler & Blader, 2000), trust and
satisfaction (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2006). People with higher envy towards
teammates are more prone to social loafing, which, in turn, reduces group
cohesiveness and group potency, thus revealing the sabotaging nature of envy
on intragroup relations. These aspects seem to mediate the negative
relationship between envy and group satisfaction, attendance, effort and

performance (Duffy & Shaw, 2000). In contrast to admiration, envy tends to
produce antagonism and begrudging attitudes towards the outgroup’s high
status, dislike towards fellow employees who get promoted (Schaubroeck &
Lam, 2004) and may result in sabotaging a rival’s work, back-stabbing,
harassing or ostracizing (Vecchio, 1995).
As previously stated, gratitude and envy play a significant role in
educational and organizational settings. In particular, gratitude and envy seem
to lead to opposite configurations about adaptability. Grateful people, indeed,
are more flexible, goal and challenge-oriented; instead, envious people are
more prone to goal-avoidance and self-disengagement. These emotions may
also affect attitudes, decisions and engagement about career construction and
future entrance into the labor market (Kidd, 2004). Indeed, career-related
decisions require trust in one’s own abilities and adaptive strategies in order to
prioritize personal goals (Nurmi, Salmela-Aro, & Koivisto 2002). The positive
effect of gratitude on career development could be connected to the capacity to
use internal and external resources, in terms of career adaptability as a meta-
competency making people proactive about their career construction (Coetzee,
2014). To expand, career adaptability refers to a psychosocial construct which
is useful to identify the capacity of people to adapt and tackle work transitions,
as well as to suceeed in the labor market (Koen, Klehe, & Van Vianen, 2012;
Savickas, 2005, 2011).
The present research study specifically aims to explore the contribution of
both dispositional gratitude and envy in explaining university students’ career
adaptability in facing the transition from university to work. For this purpose,
it may be useful to consider the role of other potential confounding factors
which affect career adaptability, such as gender and age. In this regard, the
literature highlighted gender differences in career adaptability, reporting that
females are more adaptable and more prone to plan their career than males
(Coetzee & Harry, 2015; Ferreira, 2012), who seem to be more uncertain
about their career aspirations (Gutman & Schoon, 2012). With regard to age
differences, mature adults seem to be more professionally adaptable than
young people (Navaitienė, 2014; Potgieter, 2014).
This research study could contribute to the literature on gratitude and
envy, with specific attention to their potential role in facilitating/obstacling
transition from university to work. Additionally, it could provide some
preliminary implications for guidance and career-related interventions in the
field of career development.
METHODS
Participants
A convenience sample of 180 undergraduate university students was

recruited from the School of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the
University of Catania in Italy. The sample was mainly composed of females
(86%) and on average was aged 19.54 years old (SD = 2.33). Participants
completed dispositional measures of gratitude (GQ-6, Gratitude
Questionnaire) and envy (DES, Dispositional Envy Scale) and a Career
Adaptabilities Scale (CAAS).
Measures
Gratitude
The Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6; McCullough et al., 2002) is one of
the most commonly used self-report measures of dispositional gratitude in
recent research. It is a six-item 7-point Likert-type scale, with alternatives
ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (“strongly agree”), on which high
scores reflect high levels of gratitude. Items on the GQ-6 assess four facets of
gratitude: (1) intensity, which refers to feeling more intensely grateful than
someone less disposed toward gratitude would; (2) frequency, which refers to
reporting feeling grateful many times each day (3); span, which refers to the
number of life circumstances for which a person feels grateful during a given
time; and (4) density, which refers to the number of persons to whom one feels
grateful for a single positive outcome. For the purpose of this study, the scale
was adapted to the Italian language through translation, back translation and
equivalence evaluation, and showed an acceptable internal consistency (α =
.62). Although McCullough et al., (2002) reported the estimated Cronbach’s
alpha for the GQ-6 as ranging from .76 to .84, other studies have found a
relatively low reliability of the scale mostly for young people due to the lack
of diverse life experiences which could affect their understanding of items
(Chen, Chen, Kee, & Tsai, 2009; Froh et al., 2011; Yüksel & Oğuz Duran,
2012).
Envy
The Dispositional Envy Scale (DES; Smith, Parrott, Diener, Hoyle, &
Kim, 1999) is the most commonly utilized measure of dispositional envy. It
includes eight items which are scored on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly
disagree, 5 = strongly agree); four items explicitly assess frequency and
intensity of envy, and four items implicitly assess reactions associated with
envy without explicitly asking about envy. Dispositional envy has been linked
with neuroticism, depression, resentment and hostility and has also been
negatively correlated with life satisfaction and overall well-being (Smith et al.,
1999). For the purpose of this study, the scale was adapted to the Italian
language through translation, back translation and equivalence evaluation, and
showed a good internal consistency (α = .81).
Career Adaptability
The Career Adaptability Scale (CAAS; Savickas & Porfeli, 2012) is a 24-
item scale aimed at measuring attitude to adaptability concerning one’s career
and personal resources to cope with transitions (e.g., between university and
work contexts). Career Adaptability has been conceptualized as a higher-order,
hierarchical construct with four dimensions (Savickas, 1997) which refer to: 1)
Concern, referring to the tendency to be future oriented and to prepare for
upcoming career tasks and challenges; 2) Control, such as personal
responsibility and the influence which self-discipline, effort and persistence
have on career development; 3) Curiosity, such as the exploration of possible
future selves and opportunities, as well as proactivity towards different work
roles and environments; 4) Confidence, as the ability to turn career goals into
reality, successfully solve problems and overcome obstacles. In the present
study the Italian validated version of CAAS was used (Soresi, Nota, & Ferrari,
2012). Cronbach’s alpha for the entire scale was excellent (α = .91), with a
good reliability for the 4 sub-scales, respectively .81 (Concern), .73 (Control),
.76 (Curiosity) and .84 (Confidence).
Analysis Procedures
Preliminary correlations were conducted on gratitude, envy and career
adaptability measures. Differences by age (Pearson r) and gender
(independent t-tests) were also examined. Then two-step regression analyses
(using enter method) were performed in order to test whether dispositional
gratitude and envy (as explicative variables) could explain variance in career
adaptability and in each of its components (concern, control, curiosity and
confidence) even controlling for gender and age. Therefore, model 1 included
age and gender and model 2 further included gratitude and envy measures.
RESULTS
Preliminary analyses showed a statistically significant (despite modest)
correlation between dispositional gratitude and envy (r = -.32, p < .001). Yet,
while envy was negatively associated with career adaptability and each of its
components; gratitude was associated only with the Confidence subscale
(Table 1).
No statistically significant correlations between age and the examined
variables were found (with Pearson’s r ranging from .01 for gratitude to .12
for the Confidence component of career adaptability). With regard to gender,
the Concern component of career adaptability was instead higher in females
(M = 23.31, SD = 3.89) than in males (M = 21.42, SD = 4.14), t(175) = 2.20, p
=.029 (Table 2).
Table 1. Correlations Between Gratitude (GQ-6), Envy (DES) and Career

Adaptability (CAAS)
GQ-6 DES CAAS CAAS CAAS CAAS CAAS

(Total) (Concern) (Contol) (Curiosity) (Confidence)
GQ- 1 -.320*** 0.129 0.107 0.023 0.112 .178*
6
DES -.320** 1 -.448*** -.246** -.480*** -.290*** -.396***
* p < . 05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
Table 2. Differences by Gender in Gratitude, Envy and Career

Adaptability
Male Female Mean t-test

Mean SD Mean SD difference
(SE)
GQ-6 29.17 4.52 30.24 4.69 -1.07 (1.03) -1.05
DES 16.52 8.11 16.15 5.11 .37 (1.67) .31
CAAS 90.91 14.05 95.66 11.95 4.75 (2.80) -1.70
CAAS (Concern) 21.42 4.14 23.31 3.89 -1.90 (.86) -2.20*
CAAS (Control) 23.79 4.12 24.50 3.47 -.71 (.78) -.90
CAAS (Curiosity) 22.73 3.78 23.41 3.58 -.68 (.82) -.82
CAAS (Confidence) 23.04 4.50 24.53 3.86 -1.49 (.87) -1.72
* p < . 05.
As indicated in Table 3, regression analyses showed that only envy

succeeded in predicting overall career adaptability (β = -.46, p < .001) -
differently from gratitude – with a model explaining for 23% of the total
variance. To expand, envy predicted lower concern (β = -.23, p < .01), control
(β = -.53, p < .001), curiosity (β = -.29, p < .001) and confidence (β = -.39, p <
.001), with a model explaining respectively for 9.5%, 26.1%, 9.3% and 20.1%
of the variance of each component. Therefore, control and confidence seem to
represent the career adaptability dimensions which are mostly affected by
feelings of envy. With regard to the control variables, only gender is
associated with the Concern component; to expand, being female seems to
predict higher concern.
DISCUSSION
As indicated by our results, gratitude does not seem to play a role in career
adaptability or in its different components. Surprisingly, in contrast to the need
for promoting gratitude for career development and career change highlighted
by previous research (Dik et al., 2015; McAdams & Bauer, 2004), in our study
gratitude does not seem to represent a valuable resource for enhancing career
adaptability when imagining future challenges in the transition between
university and the workplace. Some potential explanations are advocated
below to justify this result.
At first, because our study focused on young adults, they may be less
prone to experiencing gratitude. Indeed, other studies revealed that GQ-6 tends
to show low internal consistency in young people due to the lack of diverse
life experiences which could affect understanding of items (Chen et al., 2009;
Froh et al., 2011; Yüksel & Oğuz Duran, 2012). Specifically, young people
may report a reduced span in terms of number of life circumstances for which
they can feel grateful. This is also supported by our study, given the low
(albeit acceptable) reliability of the scale in our sample.
A second explanation could rely on the fact that grateful people, when
exposed to the uncertainty of foreseeing their career adaptability in the future,
may not resort to gratitude as the main resource but may refer to competitive
attitudes in facing the challenges posed by the labor market. This feeling of
uncertainty may evoke a fear of failure more than a hope for success. Indeed,
the measure of gratitude we used mostly refers to already experienced good
life circumstances and received favors. These experiences may not be strongly
generalized to a mainly unknown domain such as a future work setting which
is not fully perceived under the control (Weiner, 2007), thus making the
tendency to gratitude less stable.
Table 3. Summary of Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analyses

for Predicting Career Adaptability and its components
(Standardized Coefficients)
Career Adaptability Model 1 Model 2

Constant 85.662*** 102.325***
Age .096 .112
Gender (Male) -.144 -.123
Gratitude -.029
Envy -.458***
R .171 .480
R² .029 .230
Δ R² .029 .201***
Concern Model 1 Model 2
Constant 21.375*** 23.545***
Age .058 .065
Gender (Male) -.188* -.181*
Gratitude .010
Envy -.235**
R .195 .308
R² .038 .095
Δ R² .038* .057**
Control Model 1 Model 2
Constant 23.568*** 31.424***
Age .030 .048
Gratitude -.126
Envy -.530***
R .078 .511
R² .006 .261
Δ R² .006 .255***
Curiosity Model 1 Model 2
Constant 20.641*** 23.365***
Age .089 .097
Gratitude -.001
Envy -.287***
R .103 .304
R² .011 .093
Δ R² .011 .082**
Confidence Model 1 Model 2
Constant 20.666*** 23.341***
Age .114 .127
Gratitude .046
Envy -.391***
R .186 .449
R² .035 .201
Δ R² .035 .167***
* p < . 05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
Another possible explanation refers to the nature of the dispositional

gratitude measure which does not take into account the tendency to act
positively in terms of prosocial behaviors, acts to repay and positive
interactions but mostly focuses on being the beneficiary of others’ favors. We
could hypothesize that helpful behaviors which are in turn enacted by the
beneficiary could trigger more adaptive attitudes in the approaching career,
because the inclination to act positively better succeeds when grasping
individual resources and capabilities.
Instead, envy seems to represent a relevant predictor for career
adaptability, overall explaining for 23% of its total variance. This result is
consistent with previous research findings (Menon & Thompson, 2010; Smith
& Kim, 2007; Vecchio, 2000, 2005) which highlighted the disadaptive nature
of envy in work settings including career aspirations and a negative impact on
motivation to achieve. Envy is associated with all four dimensions of career
adaptability, suggesting that more envious people seem to have less personal
resources in coping with challenges and transitions related to career
development. In particular, envy is mostly associated with lower control and
confidence. With regard to control, more envious people show a lower degree
of personal responsibility and influence on career development through self-
discipline, effort and persistence. This is in line with the research by Lange
and Crusius (2015) who detected the high tendency of envious people to use
avoidance-based strategies as potential modalities to cope with the threat
posed to self-esteem caused by social comparison (Hepper, Gramzow, &
Sedikides, 2010). Furthermore, according to a research by Duffy and Shaw
(2000) on undergraduate students, envy was associated with the perceived lack
of control over relevant events. In this sense, envy could represent emotional
functioning which allows the individual to avoid coping with frustration and
consequently to experience relief without resulting in self-enhancement
strategies. Indeed, higher envy is associated with lower confidence, the ability
to turn career goals into reality, successfully solve problems and overcome
obstacles, in line with Duffy and Shaw (2000) who stated that envy may be
triggered by a lack of confidence with regard to particular tasks. In addition, as
stated by Smith and Kim (2007), envy is often associated with feelings of
inferiority and diminishing confidence. In this sense, envy seems to be
associated with the reduced use of personal resources employed to achieve.
Therefore, the envy-related functioning results as being particularly
disadaptive because even if it prevents an individual to deal with potential
frustration it does not allow one to rely on personal resources in order to
succeed.
No difference was found between male and female students both for
gratitude and envy. On the contrary, gender partially affected career
adaptability, specifically female students were more concerned about career
than males. This result is not surprising, considering that gender differences
play a significant role in defining a “successful adulthood” that can be
expressed in several fields, such as work and career, community integration,
role expectations and social functioning (Ewalt & Mokuau, 1995; Geenen,
Powers & Lopez-Vasquez, 2001). Although inconclusive, some results from
research have highlighted that women can be more adaptable in regards to
their career (Coetzee & Harry, 2015; Ferreira, 2012) and more purposeful in
planning it (Zhang, 2010) than men, and that adolescent girls are higher on the
construct of career maturity/adaptability than their male counterparts (Hartung,
Porfeli, & Vondracek, 2008). Rossier, Zecca, Stauffer, Maggiori and
Dauwalder (2012) found that women scored higher on the control subscale
than males, which is possibly explained by the fact that women face more
social barriers than men. The same explanation could account for our finding
referring to women’s higher scores on the Concern subscale.
Although the literature has showed differences in age groups in career
adaptability (Navaitienė, 2014; Potgieter, 2014), we found no age-related
difference, as also revealed in a study by Rossier et al., (2012). However, this
is probably due to the narrow age range in our sample whose mean age was
19.54 with a standard deviation of 2.33, which practically contracts the weight
of this variable in our study.
Some limitations of the study should be acknowledged in order to put the
results into perspective. At first, the correlational nature of the study does not
allow the disentanglement of the complex patterns among the examined
variables. Indeed, despite gratitude and envy being regarded as potential
predictors of career adaptability according to the rationale of the present study,
we can only detect meaningful associations without further considering
potential causal relations among these constructs. From what has been
highlighted by our results, envy seems to be a factor which may negatively
affect attitude to adaptability concerning one’s career and personal resources
to cope with transitions; however, we should also consider that lower career
adaptability could in turn trigger envious feelings as a defense strategy.
A second limitation is the low reliability of the GQ-6 scale in our sample,
consistent with previous research findings (Chen et al., 2009; Froh et al., 2011;
Yüksel & Oğuz Duran, 2012), thus suggesting cautious interpretation of the
data. In addition, the specific nature of this dispositional measure - which is
not domain-specific - is not able to accurately grasp attitude to gratitude in
career or work-related fields.
Another limitation refers to the potential role of further unobserved

variables, which may interfere with the relationship between gratitude or envy
and career adaptability, such as locus of control, sense of inferiority and
expectations for success or failure. Furthermore, both gratitude and envy may
be affected by a social desirability bias which could be taken into
consideration, because people may have a tendency to report higher gratitude
and to deny envious feelings. In this perspective, high scores of envy better
succeed in discriminating actual envy-related responses, while high scores of
gratitude might include a higher number of false positives. This pattern may
confound the relationship between gratitude and the outcome variable, as
resulting from our study where gratitude does not seem to play a role in career
adaptability.
In order to overcome the main limitations of this study, future research
perspectives might benefit from some acknowledgments. First, longitudinal
studies could be carried out in order to disentangle the potential causal
relationship between gratitude (and envy) and career development, as well as
to test positive consequences of gratitude in the long run with regard to
entrance into the labor market and to real work settings. It would also be
useful to develop new measures of gratitude, which take into account some
specific domains, such as career development or job setting, in order to better
focus on the potentialities of gratitude for promoting successful adaptation to
work contexts. Besides, these measures may include further contents of the
gratitude construct, such as the tendency to act positively and the reparation as
an emotional state which consents to turn gratitude into generosity towards
others (Klein, 1957), thus drawing the exquisitely relational dynamics related
to gratitude. In this regard, the modest association detected between gratitude
and envy in our study highlights that the dispositional conceptualization of
these two constructs seems to be only partially adequate. This result is also
confirmed by McCullough, Emmons and Tsang (2002) who found a moderate
correlation between measures of dispositional envy and gratitude (r = -.39). A
psychodynamic perspective could be interesting in order to consider envy and
gratitude in a broader and integrative view grasping the complex dynamics of
emotional functioning.
CONCLUSION
This chapter aimed to discuss the potential contribution of gratitude to
career development, based on previous research which supported the gratitude
promotion in educational and work settings as well as the relevance of this

positive emotion for enhancing individual resilience in coping with transitions.
From this perspective, a research study has been presented which has
specifically addressed the role of gratitude and envy in career adaptability
among undergraduate students. The results indicated that gratitude does not
seem to play a role in career adaptability, regarded in terms of concern,
control, curiosity and confidence about one’s future career challenges. Instead,
envy was found to be associated with career adaptability revealing its
disadaptive tendency in managing the transition from university to a work
setting. However, we would recommend exploring gratitude by developing
more complex and accurate measures given the limitations discussed above.
Despite these results being preliminary, they seem to suggest some
implications for practice which highlight the relevance of considering envy in
program design for guidance and career-related interventions. Indeed, envy
could represent a dysfunctional force, which does not allow individual
adaptation and achievement and, in turn, could later negatively affect also
organizational outcomes. Besides, envy was especially found to be a strong
predictor of lower personal responsibility and influence on career development
(control) and of lower ability to turn career goals into reality, successfully
solve problems and overcome obstacles (confidence). This could suggest the
importance of including support activities in career guidance interventions for
university students. This is in order to strengthen the perception of personal
resources and abilities to cope with transitions, before preparing for upcoming
career tasks and challenges and exploring possible future selves and
opportunities with regard to different work roles and environments.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
Name: Viviana Langher
Affiliation: Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, University
of Rome “Sapienza,” Rome, Italy
Viviana Langher is Psychologist, Professor of Clinical Psychology at
University of Rome “Sapienza,” and member of the Regional Council of
Psychologists. She is the Head of several international projects, namely in
Serbia, Macedonia and Mozambique. Her research interests have mainly been
focusing on both clinical and psychosocial fields, including methodologies of
evaluation of psychological intervention, qualitative and quantitative analysis
of inclusive processes, gender-based violence.
Name: Andrea Caputo

Andrea Caputo is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, specialist in
Health Psychology. He is currently a Ph.D. student at the Department of
Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, University of Rome “Sapienza,” Italy. His
research interests have mainly been focusing on the individual-context
relationship, health and quality of life, cultural studies and techniques for text
analysis based on social representations theory, in both clinical and
psychosocial field.
Name: Valentina Nannini

Valentina Nannini is a clinical psychologist. She is currently a Ph.D.
student at the Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, University of
Rome “Sapienza,” Italy. Her research interests have mainly been focusing on
psychosocial and cultural processes, urban quality of life, emotions and
intimate partner violence.
Name: Massimo Sturiale

Affiliation: School of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of
Catania, Catania, Italy
Massimo Sturiale is Associate Professor of English at University of
Catania. Published and current research focuses on English historical
linguistics, Elizabethan translations from Italian, 18th-century English
lexicography (mainly pronouncing dictionaries) and Received Pronunciation.

Together with Nicholas Brownlees (University of Florence), Massimo Sturiale
co-edits the Newsletter webpage of SLIN, the Italian group of English
Historical Linguistics.
INDEX
Big Five personality factors, 61

# Big Five traits, 69
blueprint, 41, 56
academic performance, 45, 49, 53
bond, 24, 37, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54
acculturation, 69, 71
bonding, 13, 20
adaptability, vii, 75, 76, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85,
bonds, 12, 70
86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94
burnout, 12, 77, 88
adaptation, 69, 87, 88
adolescents, 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19,
27, 42, 57, 61, 62, 63, 70, 71, 72, 90, 91 C
adulthood, 51, 57, 86
adults, 1, 2, 8, 79 Career Adaptabilities scale (CAAS), 76, 80,
affective, vii, 16, 24, 37, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 81, 82
54, 62, 92 career adaptability, vii, 75, 76, 79, 81, 82,
American Psychological Association, 14, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94
19, 20, 70, 93 career development, 75, 76, 79, 81, 83, 85,
anxiety, 3, 51, 63 87, 88, 89
Aristotle, 25, 40, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 challenges, 12, 76, 81, 83, 85, 88
assessment, 20, 70 character trait, 25, 45, 50, 52
attachment, 24, 39, 40, 43, 51, 54, 55, 57, childhood, 5, 6, 21, 25, 41, 47, 51, 53, 54,
58 56, 57, 63, 72, 91
attitudes, 44, 79, 83, 85, 94 children, vii, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15,
16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,
30, 33, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45,
B 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56,
58, 59, 71
barriers, 86, 93
China, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 37, 40, 42, 43, 44,
behaviors, 7, 12, 13, 40, 43, 63, 77, 78, 85,
47, 48, 51, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60
94
chores, vii, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 32, 35, 36,
Beijing, 43, 44, 47, 58, 59
37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52,
benefits, vii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14,
53, 55, 57
17, 22, 23, 25, 45, 48, 49, 51, 52, 77
98 Index
cleaning, 12, 26, 38, 48 England, 40, 55, 91

clinical psychology, 15, 19, 20, 93 environments, 11, 13, 81, 88
cognitive ability(ies), 47, 77 envy, vii, 4, 8, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85,
college students, 5, 62, 63, 72, 92 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94
community(ies), 12, 13, 19, 37, 77, 86, 89 evidence, 1, 6, 9, 10, 12, 22, 62, 63, 72
compassion, 24, 51 extraversion, 4, 64, 67, 68
conscientiousness, 4, 64, 67
cooperation, 25, 49, 51
correlation, 24, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 46, F
49, 64, 67, 69, 76, 82, 87
factor analysis, 27, 29
correlations, vii, 21, 26, 27, 36, 37, 67, 76,
families, 22, 24, 28, 37, 41, 47, 48, 69, 71,
81, 82
72
culture, 21, 37, 39, 48, 50, 60
family bond, vii, 37, 45
family members, 26, 39
D feelings, 6, 64, 69, 78, 83, 85, 86, 87
filial acts, vii, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,
daily care, 22, 47, 50, 54 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37
demographic factors, vii, 61, 62, 67, 68, 69 filial piety, 21, 22, 34, 37, 44, 47, 50, 52, 59
depression, 8, 17, 51, 63, 81, 94
depressive symptoms, 3, 15
deprivation, 39, 51, 54 G
discipline, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33,
gender differences, 15, 79, 86
34, 35, 36, 46, 50, 52, 53, 54, 81, 85
grateful, vii, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,
disposition, vii, 1, 2, 16, 24, 37, 45, 49, 50,
14, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 32, 35,
51, 52, 62, 63, 64, 69, 71
36, 37, 41, 42, 45, 49, 51, 54, 56, 57, 62,
Dispositional Envy Scale (DES), 76, 80, 82
63, 64, 66, 69, 70, 71, 76, 78, 80, 83, 92,
dispositional gratitude, vii, 75, 76, 79, 80,
94
81, 82, 85
gratitude, vii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,
diversity, 12, 48, 94
12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25,
domestic tasks, 24, 48, 49
26, 29, 37, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49,
50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63,
E 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 77,
78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,
education, 13, 30, 41, 42, 56, 57, 94 91, 92, 94
educational background, 28, 47 gratitude interventions, 1, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13,
emotion, 2, 6, 15, 16, 22, 50, 62, 76, 78, 88, 14, 69
94 growth, 3, 39, 40, 54, 55
emotional experience, 16, 92 guidance, 30, 79, 88
emotional health, 69, 72 guilt, 7, 40, 55, 90, 93
emotional state, 6, 87
emotional well-being, 8, 91
empathy, 4, 24, 47, 50, 51, 63 H
empirical studies, 22, 46, 48
happiness, 3, 8, 9, 14, 16, 17, 23, 43, 70, 94
employees, 77, 78, 79, 92
harmony, 22, 25, 51, 53
Index 99
health, 4, 12, 38, 71, 95

high school, 8, 21, 27, 55, 60
M
Hong Kong, 22, 41, 47, 89
materialism, 4, 14, 19
human, 41, 42, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 93
mechanism, 17, 24, 26, 29, 30, 42, 50, 53,
human development, 42, 58
54, 57
human nature, 41, 56
medicine, 26, 39
mental health, 23, 51, 63, 69
I meta-analysis, 10, 14, 16, 71
moral development, 25, 41, 52, 56
ideology, 56, 90 moral judgment, 40, 42, 55, 57
individual differences, 16, 92 moral reasoning, 25, 50, 51, 52, 53
individuals, 3, 10, 11, 25, 51, 77 morality, 24, 46, 50, 53
induction, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 33, 34, morality of justice, 24, 46, 50, 53
35, 36, 46, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 motivation, 14, 77, 85
infancy, 39, 54, 57 multiple regression, 36, 61, 62, 67, 68
inferiority, 78, 85, 87 multiple regression analyses, 61, 62, 67, 68
integration, 86, 94
internal consistency, 66, 80, 81, 83
internalised, 21, 25
N
internalization, 41, 56
negative consequences, 25, 36, 53, 78
internalizing, 40, 55
negative relation, 8, 79
intervention, 3, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 76, 89,
New England, 21, 45, 59
95
issues, 12, 15, 30, 40, 42, 55, 58
Italy, 75, 80, 95 O
obedience, 22, 42, 57

L
obstacles, 81, 85, 88
old age, 44, 47, 59
labor market, 79, 83, 87
openness, 4, 64, 67, 69
lack of gratitude, 22, 49, 51
openness to experience, 67, 69
lead, 5, 13, 46, 51, 52, 78, 79
opportunities, 7, 53, 81, 88
learning, 9, 12, 69, 77, 92
lesson plan, 9, 11
life experiences, 80, 83 P
life satisfaction, vii, 2, 8, 15, 61, 62, 64, 67,
68, 69, 70, 81 parallel, 30, 32, 33, 35
lifetime, 15, 25, 54 parental love, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,
Likert scale, 65, 66, 81 33, 34, 35, 36, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53
loneliness, vii, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, parenting, vii, 7, 21, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30,
70, 71, 72 32, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 50, 55, 57
love, 8, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, parenting practices, vii, 21, 24, 27, 28, 37
34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, parents, vii, 2, 5, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22,
54, 55, 63 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39,
100 Index
42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 57, response, 2, 6, 62, 65
59, 70 rights, 25, 45, 48, 51, 52, 53
participants, 3, 6, 28, 64, 66 risk, 3, 16, 69, 72
PCA, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38 risk factors, 16, 72
Pearson correlations, 33, 36 romantic relationship, 13, 18
personal responsibility, 81, 85, 88 Royal Society, 40, 56, 71
personality, vii, 1, 2, 4, 51, 61, 62, 64, 65, rural areas, 42, 47, 57
67, 69, 71, 72, 92, 94
personality factors, 61, 62, 64, 69
personality traits, 2, 4, 62, 67, 69 S
playing, 8, 30, 38
school, 1, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 19, 20, 23, 27,
pleasure, 7, 38, 53
28, 41, 42, 43, 49, 55, 57, 72, 77, 89, 91,
policy, 20, 22, 37, 43, 47, 48, 53
92
Portugal, 61, 71, 72
science, 14, 19, 70
positive correlation, 33, 77
self-control, 25, 38, 52
positive emotions, 12, 24, 40, 50, 51, 55, 56,
self-discipline, 81, 85
77, 90
self-efficacy, 75, 77, 92
prosocial behavior, 1, 8, 11, 18, 19, 41, 56,
self-enhancement, 76, 85, 91
77, 85
self-interest, 25, 52
psychological well-being, 1, 3, 13, 17, 62,
self-reports, 27, 70
73
sensitivity, 62, 63
psychology, 2, 11, 14, 17, 19, 20, 41, 55, 56,
sex, 39, 43, 47, 58, 69
57, 58, 70, 72, 90, 91, 92
social comparison, 76, 85, 94
social context, 63, 69
Q social interactions, 63, 72
social justice, 24, 25, 45, 50, 51, 52, 53
quality of life, 69, 93, 95 social norms, 23, 27
questionnaire, 3, 28, 66 social psychology, 41, 44, 56, 90, 93
social relationships, 62, 77
social resources, 24, 51
R social support, 8, 17, 64, 77, 94
solution, 30, 32, 46, 50, 54
reactions, 65, 81, 93
son, 44, 46, 47, 48, 54, 59
reality, 81, 85, 88
South Africa, 89, 90
reasoning, 25, 30, 36, 52
state, 2, 17, 50, 53, 62, 66
reciprocal love, 46, 53
statistics, 29, 65, 66, 71
reciprocity, 13, 24, 46, 51, 53
stress, 4, 15, 17, 94
regression, 36, 67, 76, 81, 82
structure, 28, 30, 32, 43, 58, 66
relevance, 13, 39, 76, 77, 88
style, 29, 50, 77, 94
reliability, 21, 27, 66, 80, 81, 83, 86, 93
subjective well-being, 3, 8, 14, 15, 17, 58,
relief, 22, 52, 76, 85
62, 72, 90, 92, 94
researchers, 1, 2, 5, 10, 23, 24, 50
support staff, 11, 12
resentment, 62, 78, 81
sympathy, 24, 51
resources, 2, 12, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 85, 86,
symptoms, 3, 5, 8, 40, 55
88
Index 101
T W
Taiwan, 22, 47 Washington, 19, 20, 70, 93

teachers, 11, 12, 13, 23, 28, 30, 38, 41, 56, well-being, 3, 9, 15, 20, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69,
60, 89 70, 77, 78, 81, 94
therapy, 70, 72 workplace, 78, 83, 89, 93, 94
thoughts, 5, 6
traits, 4, 62, 63, 64
translation, 80, 81 Y
young adults, vii, 63, 75, 83

V young people, 79, 80, 83
youth populations, 1, 5, 11
variables, 30, 32, 35, 64, 67, 68, 69, 76, 81,
82, 83, 86, 87

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PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS, MOTIVATIONS AND ACTIONS

Additional books in this series can be found on Nova’s website

Additional e-books in this series can be found on Nova’s website

NOTICE TO THE READER

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

Gratitude is a disposition or mood that enables people to respond

GRATITUDE IN YOUTH: PAST, PRESENT, AND

Samantha Bausert* and Jeffrey J. Froh

indicates that parents play a significant role in promoting gratitude in

PAST GRATITUDE RESEARCH

McCullough, 2003; McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002; Watkins,

formation, maintenance, connection, and satisfaction (Algoe et al., 2008;

can lead to major physical health complications such as cardiovascular disease

GRATITUDE DEVELOPMENT IN YOUTH

of gratitude (e.g., receiving a benefit to positive feelings) as young as 5 years

development in youth. Recent research has made efforts to directly identify

PRESENT RESEARCH OF GRATITUDE IN YOUTH

Children seem to benefit greatly from gratitude. The results of a

Although the studies previously mentioned showed that gratitude

(i.e., the benefits of gratitude in youth populations, gratitude development, and

grateful thinking is related to better goal striving, academic achievement,

Layous, K., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2014). Benefits, mechanisms, and new

Hofstra University (Fall 2015 - Present)

Name: Jeffrey J. Froh, Psy.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Hofstra University (2006 -

intervention that teaches children how to think gratefully [Special Issue:

Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Future Directions]. School Psychology

developments in adolescent gratitude. In J. Tudge & L. Frias (Eds.),

positive psychology and gratitude to work in the schools. In M. Terjesen

interventions: A review and future agenda. In. A. Parks & Stephen M.

TESTING SCALES OF PARENTING PRACTICE

LITERATURE REVIEW ON HOUSEHOLD CHORES

“We’re out of balance,” commented Weissbourd (Breheny, 2015). This is a

THE FILIAL ACT SCALE FOR CHILDREN AND

Based on the theoretical framework of the mechanism for gratitude

THE PRESENT STUDY

A total of 589 seventh- and eighth-grade students aged 12 to16, from a

sample in terms of socioeconomic status of families and educational

In order to ensure confidentiality, there was no direct contact between the

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of Gender and Age of the Total Sample

Number Percent % Missing Mean SD Range

Independent Variable: The Items of the Parenting Practice Scale

Target Variable: The Items of the Filial Act Scale

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics of the Three Dimensions of Parenting

Number Mean Std. Skewness Kurtosis

Factor Analysis Results

The Parenting Practice Scale

Table 3. Pattern Matrixa for PCA with Oblimin Rotation of Three-Factor

Table 4. Comparison of Eigenvalues from PCA and Criterion Values

Component Actual eigenvalue Criterion value from Reference for

The Scale of Filial Acts

Table 6. Comparison of Eigenvalues from PCA and Criterion Values

Component Actual eigenvalue Criterion value from Decision

Correlation, Partial Correlation, Multiple Regression and T-

The relationship between the three dimensions (parental love, induction

Table 7. Pearson Correlations between Parental Love, Induction,

Parental Love Induction Discipline Filial Acts

Partial correlation was used to explore the relationship between each of

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Appendix A. The Survey of Student Family Life (after PCA)

Bowlby, J. (1965). Child care and the growth of love. Harmondsworth,

structure & content (pp. 42-69). East Norwalk, CT: Appleton-Century-