RESUMEN
A growing body of research has documented positive outcomes of gratitude in personal and interpersonal domains. To uncover the dynamic process of gratitude and relational well-being, we examined the interplay of grateful disposition, grateful mood, and grateful expression in ongoing close relationships. Hong Kong Chinese couples (n = 100) participated in a three-wave study across three consecutive weeks. Adopting the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, we found that at Time 1, grateful disposition not only predicted one's own grateful mood but also the perceived grateful mood of one's spouse, both of which predicted marital satisfaction. At Time 2, the couples were randomly assigned to two conditions over 2 weeks: having one spouse keeping a private gratitude journal or overtly expressing gratitude to the other. Couples' grateful mood increased at Time 3, indicating the effectiveness of both interventions. However, the resulting changes in marital satisfaction differed for the beneficiaries (enactors) and benefactors (targets), such that husbands who perceived their wife's expressed gratitude as less sincere declined in their marital satisfaction. The results reveal the boundary conditions in evaluating expressions of gratitude and improvement of relationships and provide implications for social exchange and couple therapy.
Asunto(s)
Afecto , Relaciones Interpersonales , Satisfacción Personal , Esposos/psicología , Adulto , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Matrimonio/psicología , Persona de Mediana EdadRESUMEN
This brief report examined how the likelihood of destructive anger responses varied with age across relationship contexts. Seventy-six older adults and 100 younger adults from Hong Kong and Mainland China reported their responses to anger-eliciting scenarios elicited by a kin, a close or a casual friend. Results indicated that compared with their younger counterparts, older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report direct aggression toward kin, but older Mainland Chinese were more likely to do so. Older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report malevolent and fractious motives than were younger Chinese across all relationships; Older Mainland Chinese were less likely to do so only in friendship. Findings have implications for conceptualizing age-related emotion regulation across relationships and cultures.
Asunto(s)
Agresión/psicología , Ira , Relaciones Interpersonales , Adolescente , Factores de Edad , Anciano , Anciano de 80 o más Años , China , Comparación Transcultural , Inteligencia Emocional , Familia/etnología , Familia/psicología , Femenino , Amigos/etnología , Amigos/psicología , Hong Kong , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana Edad , Pruebas Psicológicas , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
Testing the hypothesis that individuals develop their personal characteristics according to what their cultures emphasize, this cross-sectional study aimed at investigating how dispositional optimism varied with age among Americans and Hong Kong Chinese. The sample included 84 younger adults and 55 older adults that were equally distributed across the two cultures. Results revealed that older Americans displayed a higher level of dispositional optimism than did younger Americans; whereas older Chinese showed a lower level of dispositional optimism than did their younger counterparts. Findings shed light on the mixed findings on age-related dispositional optimism in the literature.