GRATITUDE AND WELL-BEING OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN THE UNITED STATES AND SOUTH KOREA

Author

Jungsun Lee, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

12-1-2024

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Education

First Advisor

Pender, Debra

Abstract

Gratitude has become one of the most central concepts in positive psychology and counseling. Most of all, gratitude positively influences the well-being of human beings. Despite growing interest in dispositional gratitude and well-being in cultural frameworks, these relationships have not been systemically compared across cultures. Thus, in order to investigate the cross-cultural similarities and differences in dispositional gratitude and well-being, this study systemically examined the associations between dispositional gratitude and well-being indicators, including subjective well-being such as life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, and psychological well-being such as purpose in life, autonomy, personal growth, environmental mastery, positive relationships with others, and self-acceptance, of university students in the United States and South Korea, representing each individualistic and collectivistic culture. Moreover, increased knowledge of the moderators provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between gratitude and well-being in cultural contexts. Thus, this study also investigated the moderating effects of indebtedness on the relationship between dispositional gratitude and subjective well-being in two countries. This study utilized a web-based survey and included a valid sample of 307 American and 306 Korean college students. The independent samples t-test analyses indicated that American and Korean university students differed significantly in the mean levels of all study variables. Specifically, compared to the American participants, Korean participants reported higher mean levels of dispositional gratitude, life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, total score of psychological well-being, environmental mastery, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. On the other hand, American participants reported higher mean levels of autonomy and personal growth than Korean participants. Second, the results from Pearson coefficients revealed that dispositional gratitude was significantly associated with all indicators of subjective and psychological well-being in both the United States and Korea. Third, the results from Fisher Z analyses showed that the differences in the associations of dispositional gratitude with negative affect, total psychological well-being score, environmental mastery, and personal growth between American and Korean participants were statistically significant. These associations of American university students were significantly more robust than those of Korean university students. Lastly, the results from multiple hierarchical analyses indicated that indebtedness did not moderate the relationship between dispositional gratitude and three subjective well-being indicators for American and Korean college students. This study is also meaningful in that it provides insight into how counselors or educators should intervene with their clients with gratitude interventions within cultural contexts. Moreover, these results could also stimulate future empirical work to replicate and extend more representative and larger samples from different cultures and other moderators. Lastly, limitations and future research directions are discussed.