Psychological wellbeing (PWB) is an indicator of mental conditions in aspects of inter-individual and intra-individual, incorporating different situations since the concept of PWB is multidimensional and complex. Two types of PWB are developed as hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Hedonic wellbeing has been equated as happiness, which this philosophy could be chased back to Aristippus. Evaluation of subjective wellbeing (SWB) is adopted to estimate hedonic wellbeing among new research even there are alternatives to measure happiness or discomfort (Diener & Lucas 1999).
Life satisfaction, the existence of positive emotions, and the nonexistence of negative emotions are encompassed in SWB, together frequently concluded as happiness. Eudaimonic wellbeing is referring to the six categories of Carol Ryff (1989) has divided, including self-acceptance, personal growth, purpose in life, positive relationship with others, environment mastery and autonomy. Hereby, expressing gratitude to others appears relating to the aspect of positive relationship with others and positive emotions, which may result in promoting one’s own PWB, agreeing with Sally’s argument. This essay will deliberate this theory by exanimating how gratitude improves hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky (2007) has indicated that there is an association between happiness and gratitude in “The How of Happiness” which is written based on wide-ranging scientific research. Happiness occurs when one is expressing gratitude to others.
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As there is limited capacity in our brains, through expressing gratitude, individuals are experiencing the happiness that is accompanied meanwhile diminishing negative deliberations, which in other words is boosting happiness as there is less capacity for unenthusiastic moods. Above concludes expressing gratitude can engender happiness to one individual in which happiness is under the aspect of hedonic wellbeing items of PWB, leading promotion of one’s PWB. Individuals who express gratitude frequently are more sociable, agreeable and tend to have a better relationship than others. To support this point, Lambert and his team (2009) conducted an experiment by asking participants to express gratitude to their friends. The result shows when expressing gratitude, the concepts of participants of how they view relationships might be altered to a concept of treating relationships as a link to endorse and to assist each other generously, leading to greater communal strength and a better positive relationship with others. Additionally, Wood and his team (2010) have concluded that gratitude is related to positive wellbeing and multifarious personality characters which are contributive to establish and cultivate positive relationships.
Hence, via expressing gratitude to others, positive relationships could be built, resulting in fulfillment of the area of positive relationship with others in eudaimonic wellbeing, thus it promotes one’s own PWB. Survey method could be performed to verify this argument. While positive psychology investigations have numerous alternative ways to conduct, for instance, naturalistic observation or archival data, yet, dozens of studies tend to use survey as their methodology. By using self-report questionnaires, two types of PWB could be measured. Asking respondents to rate their own PWB is easy to conduct, yet, the rating could be diverse due to the unique mindset of each individual. Valuing the existence of happiness more weightily than the nonexistence of discomfort and vice versus could result in a dissimilar rating of their own happiness. Yet, participants might contemplate the time periods when valuing their happiness, from very recent history to a long-term view.
In order to avoid this, when the questionnaires are being designed, indicators of time length should be specified for each question. In spite of the time length, individuals’ particular concepts of happiness would result in distinctive measure of their own wellbeing, even if asked detailed questions. By asking qualitative questions about the concepts about happiness of participants can resolve the above problem in order to complement the quantitative questions.