The Study On Status And Influencing Factors Of Gratitude In College Students

Gratitude, a type of positive feeling which usually occurs to beneficiaries after their receiving of benefactions, urges them to reciprocate the givers' good will. In the first 70 years of the 20th century, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists have defined gratitude from their own perspectives. However, the concept of gratitude was not introduced into psychology until the end of the century, and since then it has been being extensively researched, and becomes a hot area in positive psychology.We recruited a total of 300 undergraduate students, and tested them with the "College Students Gratitude Instrument". Our primary focus included the characteristics of college students' gratitude, the relationship among their education manner, personality and gratitude, as well as the path connections among those three. Based on our study results, we concluded: In the three respects of total points, gratitude broadness and gratitude density, Girls' sores are prominently higher than boys', and the freshmen's are prominently higher than sophomore's. The college students with different ages have significant difference in gratitude depth, and as age increases, gratitude becomes deeper. In gratitude depth, the score of students who major science is significantly higher the ones major literal arts, however, no significant difference exist in other facets. Otherwise, in gratitude intensity, the scores of students whose father are intellectuals are notable higher than the ones whose fathers are workers and cadres. Significant reciprocation exists between two variables of gender and subject, girls who major literal arts has higher level of gratitude than boys who major science. Ground source and only-child has also prominent reciprocation, which shows that only-children from small and medium-sized cities have higher level of gratitude than the ones from countryside. Warm emotion and understanding, spoiling and excessively protection all have positive prediction role to gratitude broadness, pushing and refusing all have negative prediction role to gratitude broadness. Among these, warm emotion and understanding are the most important influence factor. Agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness all have positive prediction role to all facets of gratitude. Neuroticism has negative predict role to gratitude broadness. Agreeableness is the most important influence factor. Warm emotion and understanding can predict gratitude directly, as well as influence gratitude indirectly through the two intermediary variables of agreeableness and extraversion. Pushing cannot predict gratitude directly which totally predict gratitude indirectly through the three personality's traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism.