Gratitude Intervention and Subjective Well-Being in Indian Adolescents: Examining the Moderating Effects of Self-Esteem

In the past decade, positive psychology interventions (PPIs) have been a subject of research focusing on methods for increasing individual’s well-being and happiness. To date, however, the findings are conflicting vis-a-vis the efficacy of these interventions. Thus, a 6-week longitudinal study (N = 385) was designed to examine the immediate and long-term payoffs of practicing specific PPIs, such as counting one’s blessings (CB) and visualizing best possible selves (BPS) in promoting subjective well-being (SWB) in Indian sample. Adolescents performed one of the three exercises for 2-weeks and were asked to continue performing it at home until follow-up (4-weeks). Following extant theory and research, the practices of CB and BPS were expected to boost short-term and long-term SWB, relative to the control condition. Furthermore, we hypothesized that baseline self-esteem would moderate the effects of performing exercise on sustained satisfaction with life (SWL), positive experience (PE), and negative experience (NE) – indicators of SWB. Results supported these hypotheses and suggested that the CB exercise may be the most beneficial for raising and maintaining PE and decreasing NE. The results also revealed that participants with low baseline self-esteem practicing CB exercise experienced the largest increase in SWL over time. Implications of the findings for practice are discussed, and the limitations of the study are reviewed. Moreover, areas that could be further build-up in prospective research are proposed.