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Understanding the Relation between Gratitude and Life Satisfaction among Adolescents in a Post-Disaster Context: Mediating Roles of Social Support, Self-Esteem, and Hope

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Abstract

The present study assesses the underlying mechanism of gratitude on life satisfaction among adolescents in a post-disaster context. The mediating roles of social support, self-esteem, and hope are also examined in the relation between gratitude and life satisfaction. Two and a half years after the Ya’an earthquake, 397 adolescents were selected from the most severely affected county of Lushan to answer self-reported questionnaires. After controlling for trauma severity, gratitude can have a positive association with life satisfaction through the following routes: one one-mediator paths of hope, two two-mediator paths of social support via self-esteem and self-esteem via hope, and one three-mediator path from social support to hope via self-esteem. These findings suggested that following a natural disaster, adolescent survivors’ gratitude may have an indirect and positive relation with life satisfaction by social support, self-esteem, and hope.

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Funding

This research was supported by the General Research Program of Education Department of Zhejiang Province, China (Grant number: Y201840094).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310028, China

    Xiao Zhou

  2. Institute of Psychological Science, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 311121, China

    Rui Zhen

  3. Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing, 100875, China

    Xinchun Wu

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Zhou, X., Zhen, R. & Wu, X. Understanding the Relation between Gratitude and Life Satisfaction among Adolescents in a Post-Disaster Context: Mediating Roles of Social Support, Self-Esteem, and Hope. Child Ind Res 12, 1781–1795 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-018-9610-z

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