This study compared a gratitude intervention approach with a coping intervention approach in promoting subjective well-being in a sample of 78 Hong Kong Chinese school teachers. Forty teachers were randomly assigned to the eight-week count-your-blessings condition and 38 teachers to the eight-week count-your-misfortunes condition. Increases in life satisfaction were observed in the post-intervention assessment for both approaches. However, statistically significant changes were observed on life satisfaction and the experience of negative and gratitude-related emotions only for the gratitude intervention approach, suggesting the relative effectiveness of the count-your-blessings exercise. Implications of the findings on developing intervention approaches that encompass counting positive and negative events for promoting subjective well-being are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2013.785046]

This study investigated whether gratitude and the 'good-enough mindset' added to the contribution of perfectionism in predicting life satisfaction in 245 Chinese highly achieving students in Hong Kong. Participants completed self-report questionnaires that included scales on life satisfaction, positive and negative perfectionism (perfectionistic striving and perfectionistic concerns), gratitude and the good-enough mindset. Measures of gratitude and the good-enough mindset explained a substantial amount of unique variance in the prediction of life satisfaction in addition to the contribution of age and measures on positive and negative perfectionism. Implications of the findings for integrating gratitude and the good-enough mindset in the development of effective positive interventions to cope with negative perfectionism in youth and adolescents are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2012.685451]

This study investigated the effectiveness of a gratitude intervention programme in promoting life satisfaction and reducing burnout symptoms. Sixty-three Hong Kong Chinese school teachers aged 22-54 participated in an eight-week count-your-blessings study that used a pre-test/post-test design. Increases in life satisfaction and the sense of personal accomplishment and decreases in emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation were observed in the post-intervention assessment. Significant changes were observed on life satisfaction and emotional exhaustion as a result of intervention interacting with the meaningful-life orientation to happiness. These changes favoured teachers who put higher value on the meaningful-life orientation, suggesting that the promotion of a meaningful-life orientation could be an important element in the repertoire of gratitude intervention efforts. Implications of the findings on developing gratitude intervention programmes that focus on human positives and the promotion of gratitude and the meaningful-life orientation in combating teacher burnout are discussed.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2011.608525]

This study assessed the dispositional gratitude and its relationships with orientations to happiness and burnout in a sample of 96 Chinese school teachers in Hong Kong and investigated the effectiveness of an eight-week gratitude intervention programme using a pre-test/post-test design with outcome measures of subjective well-being in the same sample of teachers. The results indicated that the dispositional gratitude of teachers correlated substantially and positively with a meaningful life orientation to happiness and with personal accomplishment, and correlated substantially and negatively with the two negative components of burnout: emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. The effects of the gratitude intervention were evident in the increase in scores on satisfaction with life and on positive affect, especially for teachers in the low-gratitude group. Implications of the findings on the relationships between gratitude and burnout and the effectiveness of gratitude intervention for teachers of different levels of dispositional gratitude are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410903493934]