Abstract
Only-child generations in China are widely perceived as self-centered and lacking a grateful heart. Edward Gibbon says that gratitude may sometimes be costly. This article argues that family responsibility education with a focus on a sense of justice is a key solution for this social problem. The article examines the correlation between justice, responsibility, and gratitude by looking into the existing conceptual works on these aspects.
Highlights
What is the root of this issue and how do you make a grateful child? This article examines the psychological development of a sense of gratitude that is regarded as a moral affect associated with one’s personality traits
The issue of lack of gratitude in the younger generations of China, school gratitude education, and the government’s measures to solve this issue are briefly introduced; existing conceptual studies on gratitude are reviewed in the hope of revealing their properties and practice in other countries; after that, the correlation between justice, responsibility, and gratitude is examined to establish the psychological development of gratitude
It can be seen, in the psychological development of the one-child generations of China, there has been no element of justice education, which will naturally result in no sense of responsibility and an ungrateful child
Summary
“gratitude seems out of fashion in modern life” (McAdams & Bauer, 2004) is a bit overstated, unlike empathy, sympathy, or shame, gratitude is one of the most neglected emotions and virtues in psychology (Emmons, 2004; Lewis & Haviland-Jones, 2000; Solomon, 2004). Moral development theories make clear that discipline is the first and foremost factor to imbed a sense of justice in moral development, which enables a sense of responsibility to come forward naturally through mutual understanding and respect of law and morality, leading to gratitude. This is not to deny the importance of other moral emotions such as love and empathy in one’s moral development, but confirms that responsibility originates in forms of interdependence through the development of a sense of justice (Rawls, 1963)
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