I recently
attended the 31st Annual Association for Psychological Sciences
(APS) Convention in Washington D.C. My passion for positive psychology and
involvement in Dr. Short’s research lab lead me to become an APS poster
presenter. The experience was eye-opening and a great opportunity for me as an
undergraduate. I was able to learn about tools for analyzing psychological data
through a workshop. Attending poster presentation sessions also opened my
interests and stimulated new ideas.
The poster
I presented at APS is titled Gratitude,
Stress Mindset, and Self-Rated Health in College Students. This study
examined whether 104 college students’ self-reports of gratitude and stress as
enhancing mindsets were related to their self-rated health. We also assessed
the relationship of gratitude to self-rated health for college students over
one month. All participants completed a Stress Mindset Measure, Gratitude Questionnaire, and a single self-rated health question.
College students’ reports of self-rated health correlated .26 with stress
mindset and .19 with gratitude at time 1. Stress mindset was uncorrelated with
gratitude. Stress mindset and gratitude were significant predictors of self-rated
health in regression analyses. The regression showed that the predictors
accounted for 10.4% of the variance in self-rated health (F=5.728, p<.001).
Stress mindset (B=.263, t=2.768, p<.01) was a significant predictor of
self-rated health and gratitude was nearly significant (B=.186, t=1.951,
p=.054) cross-sectionally. After controlling for initial self-rated health
scores, the predictors explained 4.1% of the change in self-rated health scores
(F change=5.157, p<.01). Gratitude emerged as a unique predictor of the
change in self-rated health over time (B=.187, t=2.911, p<.01) after
controlling for initial self-rated health scores. The results suggest the value of interventions to increase
students’ gratitude and stress is enhancing mindsets to help increase self-rated
health.
