Abstract
While gratitude in adulthood has been widely studied, less is known about gratitude among adolescents, particularly when it comes to its determinants. Previous work suggests that feeling thankful implies some kind of comparative judgment. Given that downward social comparison and downward counterfactual thinking share many similarities, we assumed that both types of comparative thinking would be related to increases in adolescents’ levels of state gratitude. Two scenario-based studies conducted on Romanian high school students are reported. In Study 1, participants read vignettes depicting daily life events which resulted in small benefits for the main characters. Relative to the control group, adolescents in downward social comparison and downward counterfactual thinking conditions felt more grateful and estimated that the benefit was more valuable. In Study 2, we used a pretest–posttest design to test the same hypotheses and to examine whether the experimental manipulation could also be linked to increases in negative affect. Results show that after engaging in downward comparative thinking, participants reported more gratitude, as well as decreased levels of negative emotion. In both studies, the relation between downward comparative thinking and state gratitude was mediated by the perceived value of the benefit. These findings draw attention to the relative nature of gratitude, by pointing to the fact that it can be easily influenced by changes in the reference point with which one compares oneself.
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17 August 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-021-00423-z
Notes
We conducted an a priori power analysis using G*power (Faul et al. 2007) in order to determine the required sample size. For a Repeated Measures MANOVA, with 80% power (1-β), α = 0.05, and a correlation of 0.1 among the repeated measures (as indicated by the pretesting of the scenarios), a sample of 354 participants would have been needed in order to detect a small (η2p = 0.02) between-subjects effect. Given the same parameters, a sample of 635 participants would have been needed to detect a between-subjects*within subjects interaction effect. However, we only had access to 306 participants when conducting Study 1. As a result, Study 1 lacked sufficient power to detect the effects of interest, thus increasing the probability of a Type II error. This is one of limitations we aimed to solve by designing and conducting Study 2.
The significant order effect suggests the possible need to control for this variable. Consequently, we included scenario order as a covariate in the other analyses. However, this did not change the results.
An a priori power analysis performed with G*power (Faul et al. 2007) was used to determine the sample size. For a Repeated Measures MANOVA to reach 80% power in detecting within-subjects effects, a sample size of 204 participants would have been required (α = 0.05, correlation among the repeated measures = 0). A sample of 560 participants would have been needed in order to detect a small (η2p = 0.02) between-subjects*within subjects interaction effect.
We also ran two additional mediation analyses, one for each gratitude scenario separately. In both cases, the indirect effect was significant – transpersonal gratitude, ab = 0.91, 95%CI [0.71, 1.13]; interpersonal gratitude, ab = 1.36, 95%CI [1.08, 1.67].
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Nicuță, E.G., Constantin, T. Take Nothing for Granted: Downward Social Comparison and Counterfactual Thinking Increase Adolescents’ State Gratitude for the Little Things in Life. J Happiness Stud 22, 3543–3570 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-021-00382-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-021-00382-5