Giacomo Bono

California State University, Dominguez Hills | CSUDH · Department of Psychology

Gratitude interventions can provide cost-effective support for mental health to under-resourced schools. This study aims to better understand the effects of a promising intervention Bono et al. evaluated in 2020. Using a quasi-experimental design (where classes were assigned to a thanking app, gratitude curriculum, app + curriculum, or control cond...

Gratitude has been recognized as virtuous for centuries, but steady psychological research only emerged in the last few decades. Ample evidence has accumulated in a short time that gratitude is associated with better mental health outcomes—in terms of less mental illness and more psychological well-being. This article opens with a broad view of gra...

Schools can use gratitude practices to help students build social and self-awareness skills to connect with and succeed in school. Recent efforts focus on improving equity to achieve wider, sustainable effects. Here we present a way for students and staff to practice gratitude that promotes equity and highlight ways school counselors can work with...

Adolescents face unprecedented wellbeing challenges, compared to previous generations, and many schools are underprepared to meet these needs. Social emotional learning (SEL) programs help, but could better support moral development. Here we propose a modern approach to gratitude interventions (GI) in schools that addresses critical limitations and...

College is filled with opportunity, challenge and growth-as students expand their relationships and social capital, make formative life decisions, and overcome stress to achieve life goals. The current short-term longitudinal study started before campus closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic and ended at the completion of the semester at an urban uni...

Alcohol consumption is known to be prevalent among college students. Previous research has shown that affective states may influence alcohol consumption, and prosocial behaviors are associated with affective states. Therefore, prosocial behaviors may be directly associated with alcohol consumption. The study’s aim was to examine the relationships b...

Why does gratitude matter? When you feel gratitude, you feel a sense of abundance. When you express gratitude—especially when it's heartfelt—you strengthen your relationships with others. Grateful people are happier and more fulfilled. And gratitude leads you to be nicer to other people: more cooperative, patient, and trusting.

Emerging evidence indicates that practicing gratitude contributes to well-being. The goal of this investigation was to develop a comprehensive, effective intervention for promoting gratitude among adolescents and young adults (ages 16–30). Findings from experimental data indicate that three existing gratitude activities (three good things, benefit...

Gratitude provides many advantages throughout development. This study provides a comprehensive review of research on gratitude, with a focus on understanding how it is adaptive in human development. Mounting evidence shows that gratitude is advantageous because it helps reduce antisocial behavior and pathology, protects from stress, promotes physic...

Is gratitude developmentally related to improvements in social behavior? This study examined 566 adolescents (51.6% female, M age = 11.95 years at baseline, 68.0% White, 11.0% African-American, 9.9% Asian-American, 1.9% Hispanic, 8.8% ‘Other’) from middle school to high school for 4 years. Controlling for social desirability, age, SES, and gender,...

Though positive psychology continues to gain recognition within the field of psychology, school psychology has mostly followed a disease-oriented model. Thus, there is still much to be done to promote its presence within the schools. School psychologists should continue to focus on promoting a science that denotes equal attention to curing patholog...

Gratitude has been conceptualized in many different ways. There is evidence to support that gratitude is “a moral virtue, an attitude, an emotion, a habit, a personality trait, [and] a coping response” (Emmons & McCullough, 2003, p. 377). Emmons (2004, p. 554) defines it as “a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether t...

People with a grateful disposition tend to experience the attitude of appreciating life as a gift more frequently, more intensely, toward more people, and for more things in their life at any given moment. This chapter begins with a brief review of basic research on gratitude, focusing first on adult populations and then on youth populations. It th...

Gratitude is highly prized. A small sampling of quotes reveals the power and potential of this virtue. “Whatever you are in search of – peace of mind, prosperity, health, love – it is waiting for you if only you are willing to receive it with an open and grateful heart,” writes Sarah Breathnach in the Simple abundance journal of gratitude. Elsewher...

Gratitude is essential to social life and well-being. Although research with youth populations has gained momentum recently, only two gratitude interventions have been conducted in youth, targeting mostly adolescents. In the current research, we tested a new intervention for promoting gratitude among the youngest children targeted to date. Elementa...

Materialistic youth seem to be languishing while grateful youth seem to be flourishing. High school students (N=1,035) completed measures of materialism, gratitude, academic functioning, envy, depression, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption. Using structural equation modeling, we found that gratitude, controlling for materialism,...

Before the developmental trajectory, outcomes, and related interventions of gratitude can be accurately and confidently studied among the youth, researchers must ensure that they have psychometrically sound measures of gratitude that are suitable for this population. Thus, considering that no known scales were specifically designed to measure grati...

The authors examined how conciliatory gestures exhibited in response to interpersonal transgressions influence forgiveness and feelings of friendship with the transgressor. In Study 1, 163 undergraduates who had recently been harmed were examined longitudinally. Conciliatory gestures exhibited by transgressors predicted higher rates of forgiveness...

Gratitude, a positive response to receiving a benefit, may contribute more to youth than just momentary happiness. It may ignite in youth a motivation for “upstream generativity” whereby its experience contributes to a desire to give back to their neighborhood, community, and world. We tested this notion by longitudinally examining early adolescent...

In two studies, the authors sought to identify the mathematical function underlying the temporal course of forgiveness. A logarithmic model outperformed linear, exponential, power, hyperbolic, and exponential-power models. The logarithmic function implies a psychological process yielding diminishing returns, corresponds to the Weber-Fechner law, an...

Background: The California smoking cessation helpline has helped thousands of adults to quit their habit. Use of the California helpline by adolescent smokers has been less well documented. Data source: Stratified, random sample survey of in-school California youth, involving a 99-item survey about tobacco use in 2005-2006 (N = 29, 279 6th throug...

In two studies, the authors investigated the associations between interpersonal forgiveness and psychological well-being. Cross-sectional and prospective multilevel analyses demonstrated that increases in forgiveness (measured as fluctuations in individuals' avoidance, revenge, and benevolence motivations toward their transgressors) were related to...

In 3 studies, the authors investigated whether within-persons increases in rumination about an interpersonal transgression were associated with within-persons reductions in forgiveness. Results supported this hypothesis. The association of transient increases in rumination with transient reductions in forgiveness appeared to be mediated by anger, b...

Forgiveness and gratitude represent positive psychological responses to interpersonal harms and benefits that individuals have experienced. In the present article we first provide a brief review of the research that has shown forgiveness and gratitude to be related to various measures of physical and psychological well-being. We then review the emp...

Throughout history people have extolled the benefits of interpersonal forgiveness, and within the last two decades social scientists have uncovered many benefits, determinants, and applications of forgiveness. Though psychologists claim that the commonplace practice of forgiveness can prepare people for extraordinary dilemmas of forgiveness, little...