Gratitude influences happiness through mindfulness in Korean high school students: the moderated mediation model of grit

Abstract

Introduction. There are many ways to enhance happiness for people. Recently, mindfulness, gratitude and grit contribute to several psychological areas such as wellbeing and success. In addition, Korean high school students suffer from hard work like university entrance examination. Therefore, it is important to study the new ways to increase happiness using recently emerging psychological variables. The purpose of the study aimed to determine whether grit moderates the mediating effect of mindfulness in the association between gratitude and happiness targeting high school students in Korea. Study participants and methods. The participants were 435 high school students purposively selected from four high schools at Seosan city, Chungnam province in Korea. There was 50.6% for males and 49.4% for females, and men and women were evenly distributed. In this case, the 3rd grade was 71.3%, more than 28.7% of 2nd grade, and 1st grade was not included in the survey. Data were analyzed using SPSS PC+ Win. Ver. 25.0 and SPSS PROCESS macro Ver. 3.5. The statistical techniques applied were frequency analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis and a moderated mediation effect analysis. Results. First, as a result of correlation analysis, happiness was significantly positively correlated with gratitude (r=.494, p<.001), grit (r=.299, p<.001) and mindfulness (r=.452, p<.001), and the correlation between happiness and gratitude showed the highest coefficient. Second, as a result of the moderated mediation effect analysis, the grit moderated the mediating effect of mindfulness in the link between gratitude and happiness (.6118, .0311~.1806). Practical significance. Based on these findings, this study discussed methods for improving the happiness of high school students through the gratitude, grit and mindfulness. Therefore, this results will be useful to policy making and program development for happiness.