Gratitude In Positive Psychology

1276 Words6 Pages
Gratitude Gratitude, like happiness, is in the core of positive psychology as cited by Sapmaz, et al. 2016. Wood, Joseph and Maltby (2008) define it as “an emotion which is directed towards an external agency, and occurs following aid which is interpreted as costly, valuable and altruistically intended”. This was the result of their study to 389 adults. On the other hand, Froh, et al. (2010) suggested at the dispositional level, gratitude is part of a wider life orientation towards noticing and appreciating the positive in the world and this life orientation should be distinct from optimism, hope and trust. This definition of gratitude was also confirmed in the study of Chinese school teachers in Hongkong (Chan, 2010). The result indicated also correlated positively with a meaningful life orientation to happiness. In the case of the study of Chen & Wu (2013) in “Gratitude Enhances Changes in Athletes’ Self-Esteem: The Moderating Role of Trust in Coach”, the result showed that athletes with higher levels of gratitude increased their self-esteem over time when they their affective trustin their coaches is high as well. KristjánKristjánson (2013), he offers a reconstruction of gratitude as an Aristotelian virtue while Merçon-Vargas, Poelker & Tudge (2017) introduced the concept of gratitude as a virtue. They explained the differences from gratitude viewed as a positive emotion to gratitude viewed as a virtue. Samantha Bausert and Jeffrey Froh in their latest paper