A Research On The Influence Of Trait Gratitude On Pro-social Behavior Of Junior High School Students

Although gratitude and pro-social behavior have served as a hot topic of positive psychology, the research between gratitude and pro-social behavior in China is still in progress. Based on the previous researches, this research, targeted as the junior high school students, mainly focuses on the relationship between gratitude and pro-social behavior. It is concluded that gratitude is a quality as well as a state of emotion. By reviewing the relative literatures, this research, according to the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions and the moral affective theory, is intended to examine both the direct and indirect relationship between trait gratitude and pro-social behavior. Thus a hypothesis has been put forward that trait gratitude can has a direct effect on the pro-social behavior through the situational factors such as emotional states and interpersonal intimacy.By means of questionnaire survey and experiment, three researches, which involved the junior high school students, have been conducted. Expected to know about the direct relationship between trait gratitude and the inclination of pro-social behavior, the first research is centered on339students through questionnaire survey. The second research adopts the experimental methods of gratitude writing to motivate their three different emotional states in an attempt to explore how different it is to fulfill the pro-social behavior of the junior high school students with different trait gratitude in different emotional states (i.e. gratitude emotional state, confused emotional state and daily emotional state). Thus the study has a2(trait gratitude:high and low)×3(emotional state:gratitude emotional state, confused emotional state and daily emotional state) design. The third research, through experiments, focuses on the influence of the trait gratitude and interpersonal intimacy on pro-social behavior. By respectively setting situations where friends and strangers seek help, the research examines the difference of people’s pro-social behavior which will be revealed in their different Interpersonal intimacy. The experiment is designed as:3(advanced, middle and low group)×the degree of interpersonal intimacy of2(friends and strangers).Through the research above, conclusions have been drawn as follows:(1) The result of the research has suggested that both the trait gratitude and pro-social behavior of junior high school students takes on a high level, but still in an ideal state. Trait gratitude has a direct influence on the inclination of pro-social behavior. Those who have high trait gratitude have high inclination of pro-social behavior; those who have low trait gratitude thus have low pro-social behavior. Trait gratitude has a striking significance of predicting of pro-social behavior and the highest variation explanation rate of pro-social behavior is13.1%.(2) Gratitude writing can truly motivate their emotional states. And after gratitude writing, the pro-social behavior scores are significantly different in different emotional states (i.e. gratitude emotional state, confused emotional state and daily emotional state). Trait gratitude has an effect on pro-social behavior through emotional state. The pro-social behavior between high and low trait gratitude has significant difference. Emotional state doesn’t have an effect on the pro-social behavior of students with high trait gratitude, but significantly influence the pro-social behavior of students with low trait gratitude.(3) Trait gratitude has an effect on pro-social behavior through interpersonal intimacy. Interpersonal intimacy doesn’t have an effect on the pro-social behavior of students with high trait gratitude, but significantly influence the pro-social behavior of student’s with middle and low trait gratitude.