Study On Teenagers’ Gratitude Psychology And Its Effect On Helping Behaviors

Positive psychology focuses on the positive energy and virtue of people, whichemphasizes on the study of positive factors in the mental life. The recent studies haveshown that there is a significant correlation between gratitude and helping behaviorsof the individuals. However, the relationship between gratitude psychology andteenagers’ helping behaviors is seldom studied in the current published researchliteratures. Therefore, the teenagers’ gratitude psychology and its effect on helpingbehavior will become the main issue in the study.The study is mainly divided into three parts. The first part is designed to make aTeenagers’ Gratitude Psychology Scale which is suitable for the teenagers in China.The second part discusses the current situation of teenagers’ gratitude psychology.The third part studies the effect of different development level of gratitudepsychology on helping behaviors through the experimental design.Key findings of the study are:There are total23questions in Teenagers’ Gratitude Psychology Scale designedfor the study with five dimensions, including gratitude cognition and behaviortendency of positive experience, gratitude cognition of positive experience (reverseproblem), gratitude cognition of negative experience, emotional feelings of gratitude,emotional feelings of gratitude (reverse problem). Through the verification ofreliability and validity, it is shown that teenagers’ gratitude psychology has afavorable consistency and stability in the study.In the study, it is found that the overall gratitude psychology is above the average,which shows that today’s teenagers have gratitude psychological states inupper-middle level. The scores in Gratitude Psychology Scale for teenagers ofdifferent genders are significantly different. The gratitude psychology of the females is obviously higher than that of the males. Grade variables have no significantdifference in the overall Gratitude Psychology Scale, but have a little difference intwo parts, that is, emotional feelings of gratitude (reverse problem) and gratitudecognition of negative experience. The gratitude psychology for the teenagers who livein the urban is obviously higher than that for those who live in the rural.It comes to a conclusion that the higher the degree of teenagers’ gratitude is, themore they do a favor for others. There are obvious differences between group withhigh degree of gratitude and that with low one on helpers’ and strangers’ helpingbehaviors. That is, for helpers’ instant and sequent helping behaviors, there aredifferences for teenagers in different gratitude psychology, while for strangers’ instantand sequent helping behaviors, there is no difference for teenagers in differentgratitude psychology.