Why Do People with High Dispositional Gratitude Tend to Experience High Life Satisfaction? A Broaden-and-Build Theory Perspective

Yanhui Xiang () and Rong Yuan ()
Additional contact information
Yanhui Xiang: Hunan Normal University
Rong Yuan: Hunan Normal University

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2021, vol. 22, issue 6, No 4, 2485-2498

Abstract: Abstract Life satisfaction refers to people’s overall judgements on their own life experiences, which is considered to be a relative stable aspect of subjective well-being. Though a robust of literature has identified that gratitude predicts life satisfaction positively, the underlying mechanism remains to be explored from a powerful theoretical perspective. Following the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this study explored the mediation role of benign envy, malicious envy and mindfulness in the relationship between dispositional gratitude and life satisfaction among 991 Chinese undergraduates (692 females and 299 males; M = 19.05, SD = 1.543, from 17 to 26 years old). The results revealed that benign envy, malicious envy and mindfulness were mediators between dispositional gratitude and life satisfaction. Importantly, dispositional gratitude linked to life satisfaction through the sequential intermediary of “mindfulness→benign envy” and “mindfulness→malicious envy”. These findings are not only valuable for understanding how dispositional gratitude is linked to life satisfaction according to the broaden-and-build theory, but also contributes to the development of psychological intervention programs aiming at improving people’s life satisfaction.

Keywords: Dispositional gratitude; Benign envy; Malicious envy; Mindfulness; Life satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-020-00310-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:22:y:2021:i:6:d:10.1007_s10902-020-00310-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-020-00310-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().