The Lit-Review Section of my Research Project:
To get a better understanding as to how practicing gratitude does not necessarily improve a person’s wellbeing let’s look at some key terms that are relevant to this investigation, the first of which being “positive psychology.” Christopher Peterson, a University of Michigan psychology professor, defines positive psychology as “the scientific study of what makes life most worth living.” Putting this into perspective, it is highly likely that Peterson possibly refers to this “scientific study” as taking a survey of a certain group of people and gather their personal beliefs or opinions as to what they think makes their lives worth living, to which some might say their families, their friends, financial security and stability, etc. However, given that certain things have a different level of importance to different people, it’s important to know that positive psychology for one class of people may differ from that of another. The next term we will examine is “gratitude.” Interestingly, when we think of the word “gratitude” our minds generally tend to veer toward the act of saying “thank you” to someone when they pay us a compliment or to someone who has allowed you to borrow her cell phone charger when you are without yours. However, psychologists would argue that the term “gratitude” has a far deeper, much more intuitive meaning behind it while agreeing with the overall “thank you” ideology. Dr. R. Sansone, MD, a Director of Psychiatry Education at Kettering Medical Center in Kettering, Ohio, defines that gratitude “has been conceptualized as a moral virtue, an attitude, an emotion, a habit, a personality trait, and a coping response. 1. A number of researchers have defined gratitude as a positive emotional reaction in response to the receipt of a gift or benefit from someone.” This said, even in feeling this type of an emotional response to something positive, it will not be enough to improve someone’s wellbeing because after the satisfaction of positive event, gift, or circumstance has shortly-subsided, my wellbeing remains unchanged, thus, emotional wellbeing lasts longer than gratitude. Let’s now take a look at what wellbeing is. This is University of Cambridge Psychology Professor Felicia A. Huppert’s description of psychological wellbeing: Psychological well‐being is about lives going well. It is the combination of feeling good and functioning effectively. Sustainable well‐being does not require individuals to feel good all the time; the experience of painful emotions (e.g. disappointment, failure, grief) is a normal part of life, and being able to manage these negative or painful emotions is essential for long‐term well‐being. Psychological well‐being is, however, compromised when negative emotions are extreme or very long lasting and interfere with a person's ability to function in his or her daily life. This stated, assuming Huppert’s definition of wellbeing is accurate, wellbeing is essentially how well everything is going in our day-to-day lives and how well we can function as a person. A research study done at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov conflicts the opinion of the aforementioned research. In the section of this article entitled “Conflicting Empirical Data” there is no correlation or connection between gratitude and wellbeing, or at least not much. Here are their findings: Gurel Kirgiz compared a gratitude condition (i.e., composing a letter to someone who made a positive difference in the life of the participant) with a neutral emotional condition, but present levels of gratitude did not evidence a relationship with well-being. Among divorced middle-aged women, Henrie compared those who journaled gratitude experiences with those who read educational materials and those on a wait-list group; the treatment groups showed no improvement in their satisfaction with life. Finally, Mallen Ozimkowski examined the effect of a ‘gratitude visit’ (i.e., the writing and delivering of a letter of gratitude to someone in their lives who was never properly thanked) in children and adolescents. In this study, the gratitude exercise was not associated with enhanced well-being. Despite this one portion of the article makes the claim that gratitude does not improve a person's overall well-being, I'm inclined to agree, as the “Three Good Things” process did not improve mine as the week went on, the process felt more and more like a chore.
1 Comment
12/6/2018 07:36:05 am
This rocks!!!! I had such a hard time with my Lit Review. Did you define the terms first and then add them as you went? Or talked about them in a different order? I couldn't decide which order to use at first.
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