Abstract
How important gratitude is in terms of helping people to overcome their mental discomfort and behave adaptively? Conflicting evidence has appeared about the effects of gratitude on work engagement, and other aspects of life. In the present study, gratitude intervention was introduced to test it in the Nepali population who experienced a natural disaster, the Gorkha earthquake in 2015. Positive and negative affect, work engagement, and perceived damage were measured before, during, and after the intervention. Participants were sampled from the employees of 5-star hotel in Kathmandu valley and were assigned to one of the three conditions: Gratitude, Job Diary, and No Exposure. In gratitude, they were asked to write the names of 3 grateful people. Participants of Job Diary were instructed to write 3 major duties. No intervention was given to participants in No Exposure. This exercise lasted for two weeks. Only those in Gratitude showed increased positive affect and work engagement and decreased negative affect during this intervention. These positive changes seemed related to decreased perceived damage of a natural disaster. Even though there have been mixed results about the effect of gratitude, findings of the present study showed that it is robust even against a real disaster. Conducting research with survivors against natural disasters is extremely difficult, but more effort should be made with those who have similar experiences.
Highlights
Gratitude has been getting a great deal of attention practically as well as theoretically in various areas
No difference in positive or negative affect and in work engagement was found through 3 phases in Job Diary and No Exposure
The unique associations of perceived damage appeared with positive affect, negative affect, and work engagement for gratitude: a negative relation with positive affect and work engagement and a positive relation with negative affect
Summary
Gratitude has been getting a great deal of attention practically as well as theoretically in various areas. Gratitude has been differently conceptualized, such as a moral virtue, an attitude, an emotion, a habit, a personality trait, a coping response, and even a life orientation [1, 2] It is beyond the purpose of this study, but we would like to define gratitude as the appreciation of valuable and meaningful things in one’s life [3]. Being grateful was helpful for college students to reappraise their unpleasant emotional memories and to process them in an adaptive way [5] Those with dispositional gratitude were likely to reframe negative events, Psychological impairment from traumatic events, such as death of a family member, divorce, war, terrorism, natural disaster, etc., is another important topic in gratitude research. The reported level of gratitude was higher for Vietnam veterans without PTSD than those with PTSD [13]
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