Gratitude is its own reward: how grateful students have better motivation and engagement

Abstract

Gratitude has mostly been explored in relation to well-being but whether it is associated with school-related outcomes such as motivation and engagement has seldom been explored. Motivation and engagement, however, are critical to students’ academic success. Hence, the aim of this study was to examine how gratitude is associated with different types of academic motivation (amotivation, controlled motivation, and autonomous motivation) and engagement (cognitive, behavioural, and emotional). We recruited 1099 Chinese university students and asked them to answer questionnaires assessing their levels of gratitude, motivation, and engagement. Structural equation modelling revealed that gratitude was positively associated with controlled motivation, autonomous motivation, and academic engagement but negatively associated with amotivation. Autonomous motivation partially mediated the relationship between gratitude and academic engagement. The findings of this study elucidate the theoretical linkages among gratitude, motivation, and engagement, demonstrating the importance of gratitude for school-related outcomes.

Keywords:

• Gratitude
• motivation
• amotivation
• controlled motivation
• autonomous motivation
• academic engagement

Author contributions

Conceptualisation: [Ronnel King, Yuyang Cai, Rong Zhang, Jianping Wen]; Methodology: [Yuyang Cai, Ronnel King]; Formal analysis and investigation: [Yuyang Cai, Rong Zhang, Jianping Wen, Feng Xie]; Writing - original draft preparation: [Ronnel King, Yuyang Cai]; Writing - review and editing: [Ronnel King, Yuyang Cai, Rong Zhang, Jianping Wen]; Funding acquisition: [Yuyang Cai]; Resources: [Rong Zhang, Jianping Wen, Feng Xie]; Supervision: [Yuyang Cai]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported the Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning (Code: TP2018068) given to the fifth author

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