Poster #207 - Gratitude and Indebtedness: Differential Associations with Personality Traits and Subjective Well-Being in Korean Cultures

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Although both gratitude and indebtedness are emotional and cognitive responses after receiving a benefit or favor and often have been considered as the same experience in the social science literature, recent studies (Bell & Watkins, 2016; Mathews & Shook, 2013) have distinguished between the concepts of gratitude and indebtedness. Gratitude is a positive emotion and has a relationship with an active commitment to society and well-being, whereas indebtedness, feeling obligated to repay, is more unpleasant affect and associated with reduced gratitude and well-being. However, there is still ambiguity regarding whether gratitude and indebtedness are distinct emotions in collectivistic cultures like South Korea. Because of the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism, the concept of “to return or repay a favor” is often considered as the basis of social relations and expressing the debt of gratitude along with thankfulness is often emphasized in East Asian cultures (Naito & Washizu, 2015). This current study focuses on the differences between gratitude and indebtedness in Korean cultures. To investigate whether gratitude and indebtedness are distinguishable, we analyzed the interrelations between gratitude and indebtedness as well as the relations of these two emotions with personality traits. Also, we examined the effects of gratitude and indebtedness on subjective well-being controlling for personality traits to explore the functions of gratitude and indebtedness in Korean cultures.
The participants were 294 undergraduate students (50% male) aged from 19 to 28 years (M = 22.37) in South Korea. Self-report questionnaires were used to assess gratitude (K-GQ-6; Kwon, Kim, & Lee, 2006), indebtedness (The Indebtedness Scale; Kim & Lim, 2018), personality traits (The Big Five Inventory; Kim, Kim, & Ha, 2011), and subjective well-being (SWLS; Gim & Kim, 1997).
Pearson’s correlation analyses indicated that gratitude was not associated with indebtedness (r = -.09, n.s.). The relation patterns of these two emotions with Big-5 personality traits were distinctive (see Table 1). That is, gratitude showed moderate positive associations with agreeableness (r = .33, p < 001), extraversion (r = .20, p < .001), and openness (r = .18, p < .01), whereas indebtedness did not show associations with these traits. Also, gratitude was negatively linked to conscientiousness (r = -.19, p < .01) as well as neuroticism (r = -.15, p < .05), but indebtedness was strongly positively linked to conscientiousness (r = .45, p < .001) and neuroticism (r = .27, p < .001). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after controlling for Big-5 personality traits, gratitude (β = .47, p < .001), not indebtedness (β = -.05, n.s.), was the influential factor in explaining the level of subjective well-being (see Table 2).
These findings suggest that gratitude and indebtedness are distinct constructs in Korean cultures consistent with findings (e.g., Bell & Watkins, 2016; Mathews & Shook, 2013) in Western cultures. Also, differential effects of gratitude and indebtedness on subjective well-being underscore the fact that gratitude could be a universal feeling that is positively regarded in most human cultures, whereas there might be some cultural differences in the function of indebtedness.

Authors

• Joo Hyun Kim, Graduate School of Korea University
  Presenting Author

• JungHa Lim, Korea University
  Non-Presenting Author