Abstract
Gratitude has several benefits on the physical and mental health of adolescence. However, only a few studies have explored how to promote the gratitude of adolescents from the perspective of a family. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between parental warmth and adolescents’ gratitude and its underlying mechanism. We recruited 357 adolescents to complete the questionnaire survey on parental warmth, gratitude, perspective-taking, and friendship quality. The following results were obtained. (1) Parental warmth positively predicted adolescents’ gratitude. (2) Friendship quality played a partial mediating role between parental warmth and adolescents’ gratitude. Specifically, parental warmth could not only directly predict adolescents’ gratitude, but also affect adolescents’ gratitude through friendship quality. (3) Perspective-taking negatively moderated the relationship between parental warmth and gratitude and positively moderated the relationship between friendship quality and adolescents’ gratitude. The present study clarified how and when parental warmth affected adolescents’ gratitude and also indicated that the latter could be improved by cultivating friendship quality and perspective-taking ability.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Research Program Funds of the Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality at Beijing Normal University (KJ02252019-0801) and the Planning Fund of the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science (2022YJA190006). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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FK conceptualized and revisited paper, HZ analyzed the data and wrote the original manuscript, SM provided some constructive suggestions and revised the manuscript, YG provided some constructive suggestions, GL analyzed the data and modified the second manuscript.
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Kong, F., Li, H., Ge, Y. et al. Parental warmth and adolescents’ gratitude: the mediating role of friendship quality and the moderating role of perspective taking. Curr Psychol 42, 30093–30101 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03966-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03966-3