Abstract
Introduction
Gratitude has been studied as a disposition that reflects the extent to which people appreciate what they have in life knowing that it has not been given to them forever. Being grateful has been found to promote quality of life, which is why it may be used to cope in difficult times including during breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Methods
Dispositional gratitude was examined in relation to the well-being of women with breast cancer. In the current study, 119 women with breast cancer completed questionnaires that measured gratitude, well-being, coping styles, depression, and anxiety.
Results
Correlational analyses found that dispositional gratitude was positively correlated with well-being (p < 0.001) and was negatively correlated with depression (p < 0.05) and anxiety (p < 0.05). Gratitude was also positively correlated with the use of task-oriented (p < 0.05) and socially oriented coping (p < 0.01) techniques. Analyses of mediation using PROCESS found that the use of task-oriented and socially oriented coping mediated relationships between gratitude and well-being, between gratitude and anxiety, and between gratitude and depression.
Conclusion
In terms of application, the present results suggest that among women who have breast cancer, increasing dispositional gratitude may increase adaptive coping, which in turn will increase their well-being.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the National Science Center, Preludium Grant 2016/21/N/HS6/02840 to Joanna Tomczyk. Open access to this article was financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland under the 2019-2022 program “Regional Initiative of Excellence” project number 012/RID/2018/19.
We thank the foundation Fundacja Onkocafe-Razem Lepiej for their help in conducting this study.
Data Accessibility
The data discussed in this paper are available at https://osf.io/jv8dr/?view_only=49720b1e100b415fb3a89e6e1aab8cf6.
Disclosure
The authors declare that this research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.