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Forgiveness, Gratitude, and Happiness among College Students
Abstract
Wellbeing is the ultimate goal for everyone, not only for adolescence. Present study explored the relationships between gratitude and forgiveness with happiness among college student. A total of 81 undergarduate psychology students were recruited in this study from a private university in Jogjakarta. 29.6% (24) of the sample were males and 70.4% (57) were females. Regression analysis was used to predict the relationship between all variables. Regression analysis predict relationship between gratitude and forgiveness with happiness, explaining 28.9% of the variance (Adjusted R 2 = 0.289).Gratitude give the biggest contribution to happiness (= .536 p= .000), but forgiveness has no significance relationship to happiness (= .078, p= .414). This result means that gratitude is an important factor contributes to happiness among undergraduate student in this sample.
... Previous studies have indicated that, forgiveness is a virtue in Islam and when applied rightly, it can reduce the tension that one experiences at work since to forgive is to disallow the misbehaviors of others to dwell within oneself and hurt one's emotions or mental state of mind. Forgiveness refers to the process of forgiving the actions of others with no tendency to take revenge (Worthington & Wade, 1999;Safaria, 2014). Forgiveness also reduces the negative effect which one holds due to the negative emotions of resentment, hatred and revenge (McCullough & Wivliet, 2002;Safaria, 2014). ...
... Forgiveness refers to the process of forgiving the actions of others with no tendency to take revenge (Worthington & Wade, 1999;Safaria, 2014). Forgiveness also reduces the negative effect which one holds due to the negative emotions of resentment, hatred and revenge (McCullough & Wivliet, 2002;Safaria, 2014). Thus, the release of negative emotions can lead to a happy feeling and this can get the person to become more relaxed. ...
Forgiveness acts as a protective factor which fosters people's ability to deal with psychological stressors. Meanwhile, resilience as the individual's ability to manage stress and to bounce back from adversity. The purpose of this study was to determine the forgiveness influences on resilience. A sample of this study was 380 recruited from the Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Centres (DTRC) staff throughout the country of Malaysia. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach. The findings reveal that the forgiveness do have positive relationship that influence resilience among DTRC staffs in Malaysia. It proved that, there is a need for resilient individuals to learn to let go of their painful experiences by expressing forgiveness in order to seek healing for the mselves.
... Kavakli et al. (2019) demonstrated a relationship between happiness and forgiveness (r = 0.27; p<0.001). However, Safaria (2014) found no correlation between forgiveness and happiness (r = 0.16; p>0.05). Devassy and Raj (2014) also reported no relationship between forgiveness and happiness among adolescents (r = -0.02;p<0.01). ...
This article presents a meta-analytic study examining the relationship between forgiving others and personal happiness. Data were collected from fifteen sources across thirteen articles, involving a total of 6,651 participants (57% female; 43% male). The results, using a random effects model, indicate a significant positive relationship between forgiveness and happiness (z = 5.793; p < 0.001; 95% CI (0.179; 0.360)). The correlation is moderate, with the confidence interval ranging from 0.179 to 0.361. This meta-analysis supports previous studies that suggest a positive correlation between forgiving others and increased happiness. Specifically, individuals who are willing to forgive tend to experience higher levels of happiness compared to those who do not forgive. Age and country of origin showed no significant differences. The implications of this study suggest that age and country of origin are not relevant factors for justifying a lack of forgiveness
... According to the results of research conducted by Permana (2017), it shows that there is a positive and significant relationship with a significance of (0.019) <0.05 and R = 0.37, which means that this study confirms the relationship between gratitude and happiness in students who are victims of divorce. Further research conducted by Safaria (2014) on forgiveness, gratitude, and happiness also shows that gratitude makes the greatest contribution to happiness. Watkins et al (2003) have also found that grateful people tend to experience greater positive emotions, such as rejoicing more often, being happy, and having hope, and have fewer negative emotions. ...
... College gratitude has positive implications for academic retention, persistence, and success for college students [31]. College gratitude has also been suggested to be a contributor to overall happiness among college students [32]. ...
Undergraduate engineering is a stressful field of study. Mental health and wellbeing (MHW) play an important role in persistence and academic success in higher education. The research into the MHW of engineering undergraduates is in its infancy with most of the attention focused on contributing factors to mental health problems. There is only a handful of studies investigating positive influences on the MHW of engineering undergraduates which may help mitigate or even prevent mental health problems. Among others, subjective wellbeing (SWB) is one of the areas used by positive psychologists to investigate factors contributing positively to mental health. This study focused on four constructs i.e., academic satisfaction, academic efficacy, school connectedness, and college gratitude that contribute to overall SWB. The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of undergraduate engineering faculty about the contributors to the SWB of their students. Five undergraduate engineering faculty interviews were conducted at a western land grand higher education institution in the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022. Qualitative data from the interviews were thematically analyzed resulting in several emerging themes. Four emerging themes from the interviews highlighted the importance of several contributors to the SWB of engineering undergraduates as perceived by their faculty. These themes pointed towards the importance of student motivation and willingness to interact with their faculty, the flexibility of faculty's attitude, peer interactions, and hands-on learning experiences for future career prospects to be important ingredients for the SWB of engineering undergraduates and ultimately their mental health and wellbeing. The outcomes from this research provide us with insight into what undergraduate faculty perceived to be important to the SWB of their students.
... However, relatively little attention has been paid to happiness among young adults and the limited research that has been done has focused on college students [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] , overlooking young adults who have not received higher education. ...
Given the increasingly unstable labor market, South Korean young adults are facing a variety of difficulties. This study investigates health, financial, psychological, and social factors affecting happiness among South Korean young adults in poverty. Using a sample of 722 young adults in poverty receiving welfare benefits, multiple regression analysis results indicate that financial stress, employment hope, perceived health condition, social capital, family support, and resilience are significantly associated with happiness level. Particularly, the psychological and social factors are strongly associated with happiness. These findings highlight the necessity and importance of intervention to empower psychological strengths and social relationships to improve happiness among vulnerable young adults in poverty.
... Gratitude is considered one of the most powerful ingredients of аbundаnсе, hеаlth, and hаррinеѕѕ among various samples such as employees serving in the health sector (Behzadipour et al., 2018) adolescents (Gottlieb & Froh, 2019) and students (Kausar, 2018;Toepfer & Walker, 2009;Safaria, 2014). ...
The said piece of work is based on the concept behind gratitude and its various facets.
... Gratitude brings positive emotional states [41], is related to prosocial behavior [42], satisfaction and acceptance of difficult circumstances [43], happiness [44], and long-term subjective well-being [39,40]. In college students, being grateful contributes to their happiness [45], improves retention and academic performance [46], and promotes social support [47]. In the context of the pandemic, the evidence available shows that gratitude lessened mental health difficulties and promoted resilience [48], and that interventions fostering gratitude were effective in improving the mental health of college students during the crisis [49]. ...
College students face unique challenges that the consequences of COVID-19 might aggravate. To explore the pandemic’s consequences on college students’ well-being, we conducted an online survey with 634 students from a private university in Cali, Colombia. The study sought to assess students’ well-being due to COVID-19, and to explore the mediating effects of optimism, gratitude, and emotional closeness on college students’ well-being. Results showed that COVID-19 affected students’ mental health and well-being. Being optimistic and grateful mediated with life satisfaction and happiness. Optimism, emotional closeness, and gratitude also mediated the negative effect of fear of infection and the pandemic’s impact on students’ academic performance. The results of this analysis will promote discussion of the implementation of coping strategies to help students thrive, promote resilience, and contribute to students’ well-being and better mental health.
Happiness is everyone’s need, therefore everyone wants it, including teenagers in orphanages. Happinessis related to gratitude, teenagers in orphanages who have a high level of gratitude will have a high level of happiness.Likewise, teenagers in orphanages who have a high level of gratitude will have a high level of forgiveness. Teenagers inorphanages who forgive tend to be happier than teenagers who don’t forgive. The purpose of this study was to determinethe role of forgiveness as a mediator in the relationship between gratitude and happiness in adolescents in orphanages.This study uses a quantitative approach. Subjects were determined through a saturation sampling technique consistingof 100 teenagers at an orphanage in Malang City. The research instrument uses The Gratitude Questionnaire-SixItemForm (GQ-6), the Heartland forgiveness scale and the Indonesian version of The PERMA-Profiler scale. Mediationanalysis using Process model 4 by Hayes. The results show that gratitude has a positive and significant relationship tohappiness. The results of this study also prove that forgiveness is able to mediate the relationship between gratitude andhappiness with a value.The conclusion from the results of this study forgiveness can be a mediator of the relationshipbetween gratitude and happiness in adolescents in orphanages
Over the past ten years, positive psychology has advanced quickly all throughout the world. Forgiveness, Optimism, Spirituality, Gratitude are positive psychological characteristics that are connected to happiness. It is a conscious decision to forgive someone who has wronged us, even if it means that we first feel inadequate or tricked, but then we work to change our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes towards them and try to get over negative emotions like resentment or the need for vengeance. It has an impact on our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. A state of mind linked to emotions like contentment, joy, fulfilment, and well-being is called happiness. Over time, the definition of spirituality has changed. Put simply, it's the pursuit of the sacred, includes accepting the idea that there is something greater than ourselves. Happiness, spirituality, Optimism, gratitude and forgiveness were measured using standardised questionnaires. For the present study a sample of 158 participants (77 boys and 81 girls) was collected. Participants were of the age group 15-19 studying in schools of Haryana. The findings showed that happiness is significantly positively connected with forgiveness, gratitude, and all other psychologically attributes. Students should prioritise their happiness. They should take a break from their busy schedules, reflect on their lives, and develop healthy habits like eating well, sleeping well, meditating, talking to loved ones about their problems, and so on.
Engineering education is perceived to be a tough field of study with detrimental effects on the mental health of undergraduate engineering students. High levels of anxiety and depression are reported among this population. Overall, mental health research is often biased toward looking at mental health from a deficit perspective and investigating mental health as a negative phenomenon. This trend also persists in engineering education research. The purpose of this exploratory study
therefore, is to investigate the condition of subjective wellbeing (SWB) of undergraduate engineering students to understand the factors that they perceive as positively contributing to their overall wellbeing in an engineering college environment. Qualitative data from eight undergraduate engineering students interviewed in fall 2021 in the college of engineering at a land grant public institution in the western USA were thematically analyzed. The resulting 11 themes were then re-grouped and conceptualized into 7 factors (faculty support, learning experiences, support environment, financial support, engineering practice opportunities, task organization, and task orientation) for clear mapping, understanding, and explanation. The outcomes from this research have positive implications for the SWB of undergraduate engineering students, with support from their educational institutions.
In four studies, the authors examined the correlates of the disposition toward gratitude. Study 1 revealed that self-ratings and observer ratings of the grateful disposition are associated with positive affect and well-being prosocial behaviors and traits, and religiousness/spirituality. Study 2 replicated these findings in a large nonstudent sample. Study 3 yielded similar results to Studies 1 and 2 and provided evidence that gratitude is negatively associated with envy and materialistic attitudes. Study 4 yielded evidence that these associations persist after controlling for Extraversion/positive affectivity, Neuroticism/negative affectivity, and Agreeableness. The development of the Gratitude Questionnaire, a unidimensional measure with good psychometric properties, is also described.
Self esteem has become a household word. Teachers, parents, therapists, and others have focused efforts on boosting self-esteem, on the assumption that high self-esteem will cause many positive outcomes and benefits-an assumption that is critically evaluated in this review. Appraisal of the effects of self-esteem is complicated by several factors. Because many people with high self-esteem exaggerate their successes and good traits, we emphasize objective measures of outcomes. High self-esteem is also a heterogeneous category, encompassing people who frankly accept their good qualities along with narcissistic, defensive, and conceited individuals. The modest correlations between self-esteem and school performance do not indicate that high self-esteem leads to good performance. Instead, high self-esteem is partly the result of good school performance. Efforts to boost the self-esteem of pupils have not been shown to improve academic performance and may sometimes be counterproductive. Job performance in adults is sometimes related to self-esteem, although the correlations, vary widely, and the direction of causality has not been established. Occupational success may boost self-esteem rather than the reverse. Alternatively, self-esteem may be helpful only in some job contexts. Laboratory studies have generally failed to find that self-esteem causes good task performance, with the important exception that high self-esteem facilitates persistence after failure. People high in self-esteem claim to be more likable and attractive, to have better relationships, and to make better impressions on others than people with low self-esteem, but objective measures disconfirm most of these beliefs. Narcissists are charming at first but tend to alienate others eventually. Self-esteem has not been shown to predict the quality or duration of relationships. High self-esteem makes people more willing to speak up in groups and to criticize the group's approach. Leadership does not stem directly from self-esteem, but self-esteem may have indirect effects. Relative, to people with low self-esteem, those with high self-esteem show stronger in-group favoritism, which may increase prejudice and discrimination. Neither high nor low self-esteem is a direct cause, of violence. Narcissism leads,to increased aggression in retaliation, for wounded pride. Low self-esteem may contribute to externalizing behavior and delinquency, although some studies have found that there are no effects or that the effect of self-esteem vanishes when other variables are controlled. The highest and. lowest rates of cheating and bullying are found in different subcategories of high self-esteem. Self-esteem has a strong relation to happiness. Although the research has not clearly established causation, we are persuaded that high self-esteem does lead to greater happiness., Low self-esteem is more likely than high to lead to depression under some circumstances. Some studies support the buffer hypothesis, which is that high self-esteem mitigates the effects of stress, but other studies come to the opposite conclusion, indicating that I the negative effects of low self-esteem are, mainly felt in good times. Still others find that high self-esteem leads to happier outcomes regardless of stress or other circumstances. High self-esteem does not prevent children from smoking, drinking, taking drugs, or engaging in early sex. If anything high self-esteem fosters experimentation, which may increase early sexual activity or drinking, but in general effects of self-esteem are negligible. One important exception is that high self-esteem reduces the chances of bulimia in females. Overall, the benefits of high self-esteem fall into two categories: enhanced initiative and pleasant feelings. We have not found evidence that boosting self-esteem (by therapeutic, interventions or school programs) causes benefits. Our findings do not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved outcomes. In view of the heterogeneity of high self-esteem, indiscriminate praise might just as easily promote narcissism, with its less desirable consequences. Instead, we recommend using praise to boost self-esteem as a reward for socially desirable behavior and self-improvement.
Psychology after World War II became a science largely devoted to healing. It concentrated on repairing damage using a disease model of human functioning. This almost exclusive attention to pathology neglected the idea of a fulfilled individual and a thriving community, and it neglected the possibility that building strength is the most potent weapon in the arsenal of therapy. The aim of positive psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. To redress the previous imbalance, we must bring the building of strength to the forefront in the treatment and prevention of mental illness.
Experimental evidence suggests that when people are transgressed against interpersonally, they often react by experiencing unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is conceptualized as a stress reaction. Forgiveness is one (of many) ways people reduce unforgiveness. Forgiveness is conceptualized as an emotional juxtaposition of positive emotions (i.e., empathy, sympathy, compassion, or love) against the negative emotions of unforgiveness. Forgiveness can thus be used as an emotion-focused coping strategy to reduce a stressful reaction to a transgression. Direct empirical research suggests that forgiveness is related to health outcomes and to mediating physiological processes in such a way as to support the conceptualization that forgiveness is an emotion-focused coping strategy. Indirect mechanisms might also affect the forgiveness-health relationship. Namely, forgiveness might affect health by working through social support, relationship quality, and religion.
Do changes in the performance of professional sports players relate to changes in their moods? Thirty-three professional county cricketers from four teams used pocket computers to provide ratings of their moods and performance three times a day for up to 4 days during a championship match. Pooled time-series analysis and correlation analysis showed that players' subjective and objective performances were related to their happiness, energy, enthusiasm, focus and confidence during the match. The majority of players also performed better when they felt less tense, but some performed better when they felt more tense. Differences in players' recollection of their moods during best and worst performances reinforced the findings. The results suggest that professional cricketers' performances are influenced by their moods.
The purpose of these studies was to develop a valid measure of trait gratitude, and to evaluate the relationship of gratitude to subjective well-being (SWB). Four studies were conducted evaluating the reliability and validity of the Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test (GRAT),
a measure of dispositional gratitude. This measure was shown to have good internal consistency and temporal stability. The GRAT was shown to relate positively to various measures of SWB. In two experiments, it was shown that grateful thinking improved mood, and results also supported the predictive
validity of the GRAT. These studies support the theory that gratitude is an affective trait important to SWB.
This contribution offers a review, comprehensive to date, of a 15-year research program on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Although centered on evidence that has emerged from Fredrickson's Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (PEP Lab), it features key findings from other laboratories as well. It begins with a description of 10 representative positive emotions, alongside approaches for assessing them, both directly with the modified Differential Emotions Scale and indirectly through physiological and implicit measures. Next, it offers the seeds of the broaden-and-build theory, including work on the undo effect of positive emotions. It then reviews the state of the evidence for the twin hypotheses that stem from the broaden-and-build theory, the broaden hypothesis and the build hypothesis, including a focus on upward spiral dynamics. It touches next on new frontiers for the theory, including deeper investigations into the biological resources that positive emotions build as well as clinical and organizational applications. Finally, this contribution closes with a brief presentation of two offshoots from the broaden-and-build theory, namely, the upward spiral model of lifestyle change and work on love as positivity resonance between and among people. Both are targets of increasing work in the PEP Lab.
A laboratory experiment tested whether conciliatory behavior predicts lower blood pressure following spouses' discussion of a recent marital transgression. Sixty‐eight married couples discussed unresolved transgressions—with random assignment determining whether the husband or the wife was in the victim role—and then rated victim and perpetrator conciliatory behavior (with the former akin to forgiveness and the latter akin to amends) while watching a videotape of their just‐completed discussion. Participants' blood pressure was measured 40 min later. Actor–partner interdependence modeling analyses revealed that victim conciliatory behavior during the discussion predicted not only lower victim blood pressure but also lower perpetrator blood pressure after the discussion. Perpetrator conciliatory behavior during the discussion was not associated with victim or perpetrator blood pressure.
3-5-year-old children were given instructions designed to evoke either a positive, negative, or neutral mood. They were then given a choice between an immediately available but less preferred reward or a delayed, preferred reward. It was found that positive-mood subjects were more likely to choose the delayed reward, while negative-mood subjects were more likely to choose the immediate reward. Results were interpreted in terms of processes of affect and self-gratification.
Unforgiveness and forgiveness are distinct. One cannot forgive unless unforgiveness has occurred, but one might reduce unforgiveness by many ways-only one of which is forgiveness. We present a model intended to further assist and guide subsequent empirical exploration. The model explains the personal, relationship, and environmental factors that lead people to either unforgiveness or forgiveness. Related areas are reviewed to stimulate as yet unexplored research and clinical efforts related to forgiveness. Clinical protocols for promoting forgiveness in enrichment, preventative, and therapeutic contexts are described.