Gratitude and Happiness among Indonesian Youngster

Tengku Nila Fadhlia, Dina Puspita Surya

Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Islam Riau, Pekanbaru, Indonesia

Keywords:

Happiness. Gratitude, Adolescent, Resilience

Abstract:

Changes in the millennial era should not destabilize the development of Indonesian youngster as citizens.

Indonesian youngster is the next generation who will continue the national struggle. Previous research showed

that adolescents who have a positive mindset tend to live healthier as adults rather than unhappy one. Moreover,

as the next generation of Indonesia, the youngster needs to be resilient in facing globalization challenges. The

more resilient youngster the more resilient Indonesia as a nation. This article describes correlation between

gratitude and happiness based on empirical data from 329 adolescents in Pekanbaru, Riau Province, Indonesia,

who were selected by random sampling technique. The data were collected by two questionnaires which

measured gratitude and happiness, then analyzed using Pearson’s correlation product moment. This research

showed a positive correlation between gratitude and happiness in adolescent. The higher gratitude the higher

happiness in adolescent, and vice versa. It can be concluded that gratitude is one of the inﬂuencing factor in

happiness, the more we feel grateful the happier we will be.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to the data from Central Statistics Bureau

of Indonesia (BPS), index of happiness of Indonesian

citizen is currently at the level of 68.28%, up from

last year’s level of 65%, of which increased by

3.17 percent. Head of Indonesia Central Statistics

Bureau explained several aspects of life forming the

composite level. These aspects are 71.74% free time

availability, 74.29% having social relations, 78.89%

family harmony, 76.63% security condition, and

74.86% environmental condition.

The interview result with Head of BPS showed

that the happiness index in Indonesian from social

relation aspect was high. This is to explain why

Indonesian citizens tend to have a high social relation,

they love to build friendship and secure when leaving

the house. This is the basic component that makes

Indonesian citizen happy.

Adolescents whose psychological needs are met

will gain life satisfaction such as feeling joy, harmony,

and productiveness. Conversely, the adolescent will

experience disappointment, dissatisfaction, or even

frustration, at the end will disrupt their growth and

development if their psychological needs are not met

(Ali and Asrori, 2012). As the needs of adolescents

is increasing, resulting in new tasks that must be

completed by adolescents, called developmental task.

Adolescents who have a positive outlook tend

to live healthier as adults than an unhappy one.

This conclusion is based on a survey in 2001 over

10,000 adolescents in America. Adolescents who

feel happy are fewer in having problematic behavior,

such as smoking, alcohol, or drug abuse. In general,

happiness resulted in adolescents’ good physical

health.

In majority, adolescents’ problems are failure in

relationship, impulsivity, and depression (Kim, 2008).

Failure in solving their problems will result in low

level of happiness. Adolescents with high level

of happiness shows good functioning in personal

aspects, such as high motivation, positive thinking,

prejudice free, and high acceptance of environmental

condition (Argyle, 2013).

Happiness is one of the measuring constructs in

psychology. The development of positive psychology

study in the new millennium era has led to the

emergence of various kinds of psychological research

publications with the theme of happiness. One

of them is the concept of subjective well-being,

which is then widely used in studies of individual

happiness (Diener and Schwarz, 2008). Some

psychology studies tend to equate the term happiness

with the term subjective well-being (Uchida et al.,

2004). Nevertheless, there are also those who argue

that subjective well-being is a broader and more

136

Fadhlia, T. and Surya, D.

Gratitude and Happiness among Indonesian Youngster.

DOI: 10.5220/0009096401360139

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education and Humanity (ICoSEEH 2019) - Sustainable Development in Developing Country for Facing Industrial

Revolution 4.0, pages 136-139

ISBN: 978-989-758-464-0

comprehensive concept that covers happiness itself.

(Seligman, 2013), one of the founders of positive

psychology, deﬁnes happiness as an emotional charge

and positive activity.

According to Seligman (2013), happiness is a

pleasant life by believing what we choose for the

choice itself. Whereas about feeling happy and

that the way we choose our way of life is to try

to maximize our feelings. Happiness is usually

characterized by life satisfaction, high positive affect

such as happy, content, and proud. Someone who

feels his life is not joyous will experience negative

affects such as feeling disappointed, anxious, and

frightened. Happiness is not only seen objectively,

but happiness can also be seen subjectively because

happiness depends on how much a person is able to

measure and create happiness by himself.

Suryamentaram (Saksono, 2013) states that the

lower the level of desire, the higher the level of

happiness. Thus it can be said that looking for a

happy life is not the same as trying to meet the needs

or abundance of life. Happiness is the extent to

which a person evaluates the overall quality of his life

positively (Seligman, 2002)(Seligman, 2002).

(Eddington and Shuman, 2014) explain that the

frequency of positive events correlate with positive

affect. Someone who experiences a pleasant event

tends to have a high level of happiness. Furthermore,

Eddington & Shuman (2005) state there are several

factors that inﬂuence happiness, such as gender, age,

education, income level, and important events in life.

Gratitude makes a person have more positive

thoughts and perspectives on life, the thought that

life is a gift (Peterson et al., 2004). Being grateful

can make someone get emotional and interpersonal

beneﬁts in their lives. If someone considers suffering

as something positive, then he will improve his new

coping skills consciously or unconsciously, this can

lead to the emergence of self-views that will direct

one’s life in a more positive direction (Krause, 2006).

Furthermore, several studies also show that being

grateful can prevent depressive and pathological

conditions (McCullough et al., 2004; Peterson et al.,

2004).

According to the American Heritage Dictionary

of the English Language (2009)(NN, 2009), the

word gratitude comes from Latin, namely gratus

or gratitude which means thanking or praise. In

Indonesian, thankful can be equated with grateful.

Referring to Emmons and Shelton in (Snyder and

Lopez, 2001), gratitude shows the tendency of

individuals to see their lives as valuable. Gratitude has

several concepts, which are emotions, attitudes, virtue

morals, habits, personality traits, and coping actions.

As a psychological state, gratitude is a feeling of awe,

thanks and appreciation for life. Gratitude can be

expressed to others and also to other beings such as

nature or other sources other than humans.

Someone who has gratitude will usually have

higher control over their environment, personal

development, life goals, and self-acceptance. Grateful

people also have positive coping in facing life’s

difﬁculties, seeking social support from others,

interpreting experiences with different perspectives,

having plans to solve problems (McCullough, Tsang,

& Emmons, 2004).

Therefore, the authors came to the research

question ”Is there any correlation between gratitude

and happiness among late adolescent?”. So, the aim

of this research is to get empirical evidence about the

correlation between gratitude and happiness among

late adolescent.

Based on the description of the theory above, the

authors put the hypothesis that there is a relationship

between gratitude and happiness in a late adolescent.

The higher gratitude, the higher happiness in the late

adolescent, on the contrary, the lower gratitude, the

lower happiness in the late adolescent.

2 METHOD

2.1 Population and Sample

The population in this research was 17-20 years

old adolescents, domicile in Rumbai Pesisir District,

Pekanbaru, Indonesia. It consisted of 1.869 college

students in one private university in that district.

The sample in this study were 329 college students

selected by simple random sampling technique based

on the Slovin formula (Bungin, 2005) with an error

rate of 5% so that the sample determination was 95%.

2.2 Data Collection Method

The data was collected by using questionnaire to

assess gratitude and happiness. The questionnaire

adopted the Likert model scale using ﬁve

categorizations; very agree, agree, neutral, disagree

and strongly disagree. Happiness was measured by

Scale of Happiness which consisted of 25 items with

aspects proposed by Seligman (2002): (a) satisfaction

of the past, (b) happiness in present and (c) optimism

of the future. Meanwhile, gratitude was measured

by 30 items scale which consisted of three aspects

proposed by (Fitzgerald, 1998): (a) having a sense of

appreciation to others or God and life, (b ) Positive

Gratitude and Happiness among Indonesian Youngster

137

feelings towards life owned and (c) Acting positively

as an expression of positive feelings and appreciation

that is owned.

2.3 Data Analysis

The statistical technique used in this study is

Pearson Product Moment correlation technique, to

test the hypothesis of the relationship between one

independent variable and one dependent variable

simultaneously and partially to the dependent

variable.

3 RESULT

The correlation between two variables of this research

was examined using Pearson correlation coefﬁcient.

Table 1 displays a positive correlation between

gratitude and happiness in moderate level (r= 0.529;

p=0,00; p <0.05).

Table 1: Hypotheses Test Result

Variable Correlation Coefﬁcient (r) Sig. (2-Tailed)

Gratitude 0,529 0,00

Happiness 0,529 0,00

Meanwhile, the regression analysis was conducted

to know effective contribution of gratitude to

happiness, as seen on the table 2 below:

Table 2: Determination Test Result Model Summary

Model R R Square Adjusted R Square

Std. Error

of the

Estimate

1 0,529

0,280 0,278 7,097

The table depicts effect size of gratitude towards

happiness, which is 28% and the remaining 72%

is inﬂuenced by other variables which is not

included in this study. Based on previous research,

other inﬂuencing factors could be positive affection,

family support, peer interaction, optimism, subjective

well-being, prosocial, and religiosity.

4 DISCUSSION

Result of data analysis indicated a positive correlation

between gratitude and happiness in late adolescents.

The higher gratitude, the higher happiness, and vice

versa. Thus, the hypotheses in this study is accepted.

It means that gratitude plays a role in creating

happiness. This is in line with research by (Safaria,

2014) that the biggest source of happiness is gratitude.

Gratitude becomes one important contributing factor

to happiness.

(Kristanto, 2016), grateful individual is be able to

enjoy a positive life experience because gratitude is

one form of expression of happiness which is closely

related to well-being. Grateful individual tend to

show expression of happiness (Rohma, 2013). Study

conducted by (Eriyanda and Khairani, 2018) also

found that there is a relationship between gratitude

and happiness. This means that the higher the

gratitude, the higher the happiness. This happens

because gratitude affects happiness.

Gratitude as a cognitive construction is shown by

acknowledging mercy and kindness for the blessings

that we have received and focusing on the positive

things. As an emotional construction, gratitude

is characterized by the ability to change emotional

response to make an event becomes more meaningful

(McCullough et al., 2004). Gratitude involves feeling

of amazement, thankful, appreciation, and happiness

for abundant gifts in life. Gratitude as construction of

behavior is expressed by giving something in return

to others.

Being grateful can help someone to improve

their ability to solve problems and to manage daily

life challenge. (Watkins et al., 2003) state that

gratitude indicates someone’s well-being and life

satisfaction. Gratitude is conceptualized in various

ways, most often as moral traits or emotional states

(Froh et al., 2009). The two constructs are clearly

subjective-welfare, suggesting that happy people tend

to be grateful people (Watkins et al., 2003). Research

conducted by (Rusdiana, 2017) showed that 11% of

adolescents have high concept of authentic positive

happiness according to Myers’ happiness indicator.

As much as 30% of adolescents have concept of

authentic happiness in the middle level, while 59%

of adolescents have the concept of negative authentic

happiness. With this percentage, adolescents are still

vulnerable to the threat of problems, both personal

and social.

Being thankful is also one way to acknowledge

life meaning, since gratitude becomes predictor of

happiness. In addition, gratitude causes individual to

have a positive view of life and a spirit to improve and

beneﬁt from life (Froh et al., 2009).

5 CONCLUSION

There is a positive correlation between gratitude and

happiness in late adolescents. It is concluded that the

higher gratitude the higher happiness, in contrary, the

lower gratitude the lower happiness.

ICoSEEH 2019 - The Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education, and Humanity

138

REFERENCES

Ali, M. and Asrori, M. (2012). Psikologi remaja

perkembangan peserta didik, jakarta, pt. Bumi Aksara.

Argyle, M. (2013). The psychology of happiness.

Routledge.

Bungin, B. (2005). Metodologi penelitian kuantitatif.

Jakarta: Kencana.

Diener, E. and Schwarz, N. (2008). Well-being: The

foundation of hedonic psychology. Russell Sage

Foundation, New York.

Eddington, N. and Shuman, R. (2014). Subjective well

being (happiness. Retrieved on 28.

Eriyanda, D. and Khairani, M. (2018). Kebersyukuran

dan kebahagiaan pada wanita yang bercerai di aceh.

PSIKODIMENSIA, 16(2):189–197.

Fitzgerald, P. (1998). Gratitude and justice. Ethics,

109(1):119–153.

Froh, J. J., Yurkewicz, C., and Kashdan, T. B.

(2009). Gratitude and subjective well-being in early

adolescence: Examining gender differences. Journal

of adolescence, 32(3):633–650.

Kim, E. (2008). Aggressive in Children European

Psychiatry. London: SAGE Publication.

Krause, N. (2006). Gratitude toward god, stress, and health

in late life. Research on Aging, 28(2):163–183.

Kristanto, E. (2016). Perbedaan tingkat kebersyukuaran

pada lakilaki dan perempuan. In Dipresentasikan

pada seminar ASEAN 2nd Psychology and Humanity,

Malang.

McCullough, M. E., Tsang, J.-A., and Emmons, R. A.

(2004). Gratitude in intermediate affective terrain:

links of grateful moods to individual differences and

daily emotional experience. Journal of personality

and social psychology, 86(2):295.

NN (2009). American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language. Hoghton Mifﬂin.

Peterson, C., Seligman, M. E., et al. (2004). Character

strengths and virtues: A handbook and classiﬁcation,

volume 1. Oxford University Press.

Rohma, N. H. (2013). Hubungan antara kepuasan hidup

remaja dengan bersyukur pada siswa SMAIT Abu

Bakar boarding school Yogyakarta. Empathy, 2:1–16.

Rusdiana, I. (2017). Konsep authentic happiness pada

remaja dalam perspektif teori myers. Ibriez:

Jurnal Kependidikan Dasar Islam Berbasis Sains,

2(1):35–44.

Safaria, T. (2014). Forgiveness, gratitude, and happiness

among college students. International Journal of

Public Health Science (IJPHS), 3(4):241–245.

Saksono, G. (2013). Kaya Miskin (Bisa) Hidup Bahagia.

Yogyakarta: Ampera Utama.

Seligman, M. E. (2002). Authentic happiness: Using the

new positive psychology to realize your potential for

lasting fulﬁllment. Simon and Schuster.

Seligman, M. E. (2013). Beyond authentic happiness,

menciptakan kebahagiaan sempurna dengan psikologi

positif. Bandung: Kaifa.

Snyder, C. R. and Lopez, S. J. (2001). Handbook of positive

psychology. Oxford university press.

Uchida, Y., Norasakkunkit, V., and Kitayama, S. (2004).

Cultural constructions of happiness: theory and

emprical evidence. Journal of happiness studies,

5(3):223–239.

Watkins, P. C., Woodward, K., Stone, T., and Kolts, R. L.

(2003). Gratitude and happiness: Development of a

measure of gratitude, and relationships with subjective

well-being. Social Behavior and Personality: an

international journal, 31(5):431–451.

Gratitude and Happiness among Indonesian Youngster

139