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Article history: This research was the rst to examine whether appreciation explains variance in life satisfaction after
Received 22 August 2011 controlling for gender, age, ethnicity, the Big 5 personality factors, and gratitude. Participants (N = 243)
Received in revised form 17 February 2012 completed the Satisfaction with Life Scale, Big 5 Inventory, GQ-6 gratitude measure, and Appreciation
Accepted 22 February 2012
Scale, including subscales measuring have focus, awe, ritual, present moment, self/social comparison,
Available online 19 March 2012
gratitude, loss/adversity, and interpersonal appreciation. Appreciation made a signicant unique contri-
bution (11% of the variance, p < .001) to life satisfaction, controlling for demographic variables, the Big 5
Keywords:
personality factors, and gratitude. This is consistent with the theoretical stance that appreciation is more
Gratitude
Appreciation
than just gratitude or the Big 5 personality factors and is important in its own right for life satisfaction.
Appreciation scale 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Life satisfaction
Big 5
Well-being
SWB
Positive psychology
0191-8869/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.02.019
60 N.S. Fagley / Personality and Individual Differences 53 (2012) 5963
Tucker, 2007; Watkins et al., 2003). People with a greater tendency 2.2. Instruments
to be grateful/appreciative also report greater LS. Wood, Joseph
et al. (2008) showed this was not due to gratitudes common var- 2.2.1. Appreciation
iance with the Big 5 personality traits. Brown and Ryan (2003) The Appreciation Scale (Adler & Fagley, 2005) measured appre-
found that mindfulness (the essence of the present moment aspect ciation via subscales assessing eight theoretically-based aspects of
of appreciation) was related to greater LS. As noted earlier, Adler appreciation described earlier (see Table 1 for sample items). Adler
and Fagley (2005) showed that appreciation is signicantly related and Fagley (2005) reported reliabilities ranging from .73 for loss/
to LS and positive affect, even when optimism, spirituality, and adversity to .84 for ritual, with the exception of self/social Compar-
self-awareness are controlled. Experimental manipulation of as- ison, which was .62. They also reported evidence of validity based
pects of appreciation have suggested its role may be causal (e.g., on principal components analysis, correlations with variables in
Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Watkins et al., 2003). the nomological net, and known groups. The 57 items are rated
Some aspects of appreciation are represented in the VIA classi- 17.
cation of character strengths developed by positive psychologists
(i.e., Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004). For example, the awe as- 2.2.2. Gratitude
pect includes appreciation of beautyone of 24 character strengths The GQ-6 (McCullough et al., 2002) measured dispositional
of the VIA classication. Similarly gratitude is included in the VIA. gratitude, viewed here as an aspect of appreciation. McCullough
Interpersonal appreciation captures the essence of the character et al. (2002) dened the grateful disposition as a generalized ten-
strength love, as dened in the VIA. According to Peterson and Park dency to recognize and respond with grateful emotion to the roles
(2009) love is dened as valuing close relations with others. Park of other peoples benevolence in the positive experiences and out-
et al. (2004) found that love and gratitude were two of the ve comes that one obtains (p. 112). They reported coefcient alpha of
strengths most related to LS (Park et al., 2004), supporting the .82, and evidence of validity from several studies. Its six items are
importance of appreciation in LS. rated 17.
Table 3 .06; F(1, 230) = 22.73, p < .001. In block 4, the appreciation sub-
Correlations (N = 243). scales were added to the regression. The change in R2 was .11;
Appreciation subscales F(8, 222) = 6.35, p < .001. This indicates appreciation makes a sig-
H A R P S G L I nicant unique contribution to LS, even after controlling for age,
ethnicity, gender, the Big 5 personality factors, and gratitude.
Big 5
O .30** .32** .14 .47** .26** .32** .21** .26**
C .37** .10 .24** .22** .22** .26** .24** .21**
E .33** .21** .20** .29** .14 .19* .27** .36**
4. Discussion
A .33** .19* .19* .32** .18* .40** .26** .29**
N .23** .11 .07 .16 .02 .06 .09 .10 Results support the importance of the Big 5 personality traits,
GQ-6 .60** .38** .37** .48** .36** .70** .47** .43** gratitude, and appreciation for LS. The Big 5 personality factors ac-
Life satisfaction .60** .35** .27** .41** .27** .28** .37** .41**
counted for about 31% of the variance in LS, over-and-above age,
*
p < .01. gender, and ethnicity. Gratitude added another 5.9%. Appreciation
**
p 6 .001. explained another 11% of the variance in LS after controlling for
gratitude, the Big 5 personality traits, and demographic vari-
ablesalmost twice as much as gratitude, as measured by the
in Table 3. Correlations between appreciation scales and the Big GQ-6. This is consistent with the theoretical stance that apprecia-
5 personality factors ranged from .03 to .47, in absolute value. So tion is more than just gratitude or the Big 5 personality factors and
although the appreciation scales were correlated with most of is important in its own right for LS.
the Big 5 personality factors except neuroticism, the sizes of The signicant contribution of gratitude replicates and extends
the correlations indicated only modest overlap. Neuroticism the results of Wood, Joseph et al. (2008). Current results provide
showed little relation to appreciation, with the exception of additional support for their nding, as the same result was ob-
have focus with which it correlated .23. tained even after controlling for sex, age, and ethnicity and a differ-
A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was computed. All ent instrument measured the Big 5 personality traits. However,
tolerance values exceeded .10 (and VIFs < 10) indicating no prob- this result is only obtained if gratitude enters the regression prior
lems with multicollinearity (Meyers et al., 2006). Also, the largest to appreciation, as demonstrated by the alternate analysis pre-
correlation between predictors was .71, less than .8, the heuristic sented next.
gure suggesting possible multicollinearity (Meyers et al., 2006). An alternate regression analysis in which appreciation was en-
In block 1, LS scores were regressed on the demographic variables tered in block 3 and gratitude in block 4 revealed that appreciation
(age, gender, and ethnicityrepresented as four dichotomous vari- accounts for 16% of the variance in LS, over-and-above the Big 5
ables). The R2 of .04 was not signicant; F(6, 236) = 1.59, p = .15. In personality factors and demographic variables (p < .001). When
block 2, the Big 5 personality factors were added to the regression the GQ-6 is entered in block 4, its contribution of 1.3% is not signif-
(see Table 4). The change in R2 was .31; F(5, 231) = 21.98, p < .001. icant at the .01 level, indicating gratitude contributes no unique
In block 3, gratitude (the GQ-6) was added. The change in R2 was variance, beyond appreciation, the Big 5 traits, and demographic
variables.
Table 4 The study is the rst to document the correlations between
Hierarchical multiple regression of life satisfaction onto demographic variables, Big 5 appreciation subscales and the Big 5 personality factors (see Table
traits, gratitude, and appreciation subscales.
3), and they correlate in expected ways. For example, the largest
Variable Beta t p R2 change correlation between an appreciation scale and Big 5 factor was
Block 1: .04; F(6, 236) = 1.59, .47 between present moment and openness to experience. That
p = .15 is, the more one focuses with mindful awareness on the present
Sex .08 1.25 .21 moment, the greater ones openness to experience. Similarly, the
Age .10 1.46 .15
greater ones interpersonal appreciation (valuing others and
African American .02 0.17 .87
Asian .18 1.41 .16 expressing it), the more extraverted one tends to be. Finally, as ex-
Latino/Hispanic .05 0.51 .61 pected, neuroticism had little relation to any appreciation subscale,
White .03 0.19 .85 with seven of eight correlations 6.10.
Block 2: .31; F(5, 231) = 21.98, As expected, the Gratitude subscale exhibited the highest corre-
p < .001 lation with the GQ-6 measure of gratitude. The correlation of .7
Openness to .05 0.84 .40
was the highest observed. When looking at the correlations with
experience
Conscientiousness .20 3.24 .001
LS, it is interesting to note that the have focus aspect of appreci-
Extraversion .24 3.99 <.001 ation exhibited the highest correlation with LS (r = .60)higher
Agreeableness .12 1.91 .06 than any of the Big 5 personality factors, which ranged from .19
Neuroticism .26 4.08 <.001 to .41 in absolute value, or the GQ-6. This suggests the key compo-
Block 3: .06; F(1, 230)= 22.73, nent of the appreciative worldview for LS is its focus on what one
p < .001 has.
Gratitude (GQ-6) .30 4.77 <.001
Block 4: .11; F(8, 222)= 6.35,
p < .001 4.1. Limitations and future directions
Have focus .56 5.49 <.001
Awe .04 0.58 .56 One limitation of the study is its reliance on self-report. It would
Ritual .17 2.50 .01
be valuable for future research to consider using peer or spouse
Present moment .06 0.67 .50
Self/social .12 1.70 .09 ratings. Also, inducing various aspects of appreciation, such as
comparison gratitude or awe, then studying relations over time could provide
Gratitude .16 2.26 .03 more information about causal connections. Another limitation is
Loss/adversity .07 0.93 .36 that a single population of participants was sampled. Subsequent
Interpersonal .01 0.13 .90
research could examine whether the same results would be ob-
Note. Signicant effects are bolded. Final R2 = .52; F(20, 222) = 11.91, p < .001. tained from samples differing in age or culture/nationality.
N.S. Fagley / Personality and Individual Differences 53 (2012) 5963 63
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