Search Results (37)

Background: Concerns over women’s mental health have intensified globally, especially among mothers managing dual careers and family responsibilities. Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs), such as gratitude journaling and well-being workshops, have demonstrated promise in enhancing mental health; however, their applicability in Arab contexts remains underexplored. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of PPIs on mothers’ well-being, gratitude, depression, anxiety, and stress in Saudi Arabia. Methods: This quasi-experimental, one-group pretest–posttest study assessed the effects of a four-week PPI on 37 Saudi working mothers (aged 21–50 years) employed at a private school in Riyadh. The intervention included guided gratitude journaling thrice weekly and two workshops on positive psychology and gratitude. Pre- and post-intervention assessments used validated Arabic versions of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21), WHO-5 Well-being Index, and Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6). Results: Significant improvements were found post-intervention: depression, anxiety, and stress scores decreased (p < 0.001), while well-being and gratitude increased (p = 0.001). However, participants with lower household income (<50,000 SAR) showed less improvement, indicating a potential moderating effect of socioeconomic status. Conclusions: The intervention demonstrated promising short-term improvements in mental health and well-being among Saudi mothers. The findings underscore the importance of culturally appropriate PPIs and highlight the need for further research using controlled, long-term designs. Limitations include the small, non-random sample, absence of a control group, and restriction to a single geographic region. Full article

The essay explores the theme of suffering from an Eastern Patristic perspective, focusing on its spiritual and communal dimensions. It draws on the works of Maximos the Confessor, a famous 7th-century Byzantine theologian, particularly on his Amiguum 8. Maximos presents suffering not only as an inevitable consequence of the lapsarian human condition but also as a providential opportunity for moral and spiritual growth. Through suffering, individuals can reorient themselves towards God, fostering virtues like compassion and gratitude. This kenotic love, modeled after Christ’s sacrificial love, reveals the inherent dignity and equality of all human beings. Maximos’ perspective is at odds with the modern technological and political systems, which often depersonalize care and diminish the role of spiritual transformation, especially in the end-of-life context. The essay suggests that, while technological advancements address suffering, they may overlook the spiritual truth that suffering reveals—a truth central to human dignity and salvation. This perspective invites further exploration into the interplay between Christian theology, suffering, and modern biopolitics. Full article

At the beginning of the 21st century, there were sensational discoveries in two palaces located in Ciechanowice and Struga in Silesia (Poland). During their renovations, Renaissance fresco cycles of portraits of emperors from the Roman, medieval, and early modern times appeared under the layer of plaster in the representative dining rooms (27 in the palace in Struga and about 50 in the palace in Ciechanowice). They were painted in the 1580s (in Ciechanowice, the date is 1588) by the same unknown artist. This article is the first to attempt to establish the most important facts related to the creation of both fresco cycles. The frescoes were founded by representatives of influential Silesian Protestant nobility: Heinrich von Reichenbach (Ciechanowice) and Abraham von Czettritz und Neuhaus (Struga). Both nobles attended the funeral of Emperor Maximilian II, which took place in Prague in 1577. This is where they purchased a work by the Dutch printmaker, painter, and numismatist, Hubert Goltzius, Lebendige Bilder Gar Nach Aller Keysern […] (published in Antwerp in 1557), whose specially prepared copy had been solemnly presented to Emperor Maximilian II in 1562. The book contains 133 monochrome woodcut illustrations with portraits of emperors in circular frames by the Dutch artist Joss van Gietleughen, which—together with accompanying inscriptions—were used as models for fresco paintings in both Silesian palaces. The foundation of the cycles of portraits of the emperors of the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in the representative halls of the palaces in Ciechanowice and Struda, which ended with a joint representation of Emperor Maximilian II and the King of Spain, Philip II Habsburg, was a way to show the gratitude of both prominent and wealthy Protestant nobles towards Emperor Maximilian II. During his reign, imperial power was the source and guarantee of religious freedoms for Protestants in Silesia. It is significant that both cycles left out the person of emperor regnant, Rudolf II, who soon after assuming the imperial throne abandoned his father’s tolerant policy towards Protestants. Although the author of both series of frescoes was probably a local painter, they are a unique artistic realization not only in Silesia but also in the whole of Central Europe, and they can only be compared to the popular Renaissance portrait galleries of “famous men” (uomini famosi). Full article

Career crafting offers a new approach for individuals to cope with changing career situations. However, few studies have focused on personality-related antecedents that stably predict career proactivity. Additionally, as individuals’ careers are embedded in various social relationships, career crafting involves significant social interaction. Our study focuses on gratitude, which is related to social interaction, suggesting that gratitude fosters an appreciation for interpersonal relationships, providing a beneficial impetus for career crafting. A quantitative approach was adopted with a three-wave survey with 825 responses, and SPSS 26 and Mplus 8.3 were used as the analytical software for confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical regression analysis, and path analysis. We conducted an empirical examination employing a moderated mediation model grounded in the framework of proactive motivation. The results revealed a positive correlation between gratitude and career crafting, with prosocial motivation mediating this relationship. Simultaneously, intrinsic motivation moderated the relationship between prosocial motivation and career crafting. Our study emphasizes gratitude’s role in career crafting and explores how it, along with prosocial motivations, drives proactive behaviors, responding to calls for relational work redesign and examining interactions between intrinsic and prosocial motivations in careers. It has important practical implications for individuals, organizations, and career counselors. Full article

Elderly people make up an increasingly large part of society and the Church. The theme of old age is also increasingly present in papal teaching. This is evidenced, for example, by the series of Wednesday Catecheses on old age delivered by Pope Francis in 2022, or by the establishment of the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly. Given the importance of the presence of the elderly, this article aims to present old age in the perspective of faith, and the importance of the presence of the elderly in the life of the Church. The author will therefore focus, first and foremost, on the view of old age as a time of thanksgiving and gratitude to God for the gift of life, for the goods received, the experiences lived, and the people encountered. Viewed from the perspective of faith, old age is also a time of preparation for death and for meeting the Risen Christ. It is therefore a time to adopt a new outlook on faith and the call to holiness. Old age is, at the same time, a period of life in which individuals can still contribute a lot to the life of the family, society, and the Church through their commitment, service, bearing witness to the faith, bearing witness to the Gospel and the values that flow from living the Gospel, through works of charity and, above all, through sharing the awareness that life is a beautiful gift from God that is worth using well and wisely. And, through the wisdom gained over the many years of their lives, elderly people become authentic witnesses of God’s love. The experience of long life and gratitude for this gift is not only relevant to Catholics and Christians, but has a universal appeal, since in any society, regardless of faith, human life should also be valued in old age. Full article

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) helps enterprises achieve sustainable development in the current competitive environment. Premised on social exchange theory, we argue that CSR also contributes to employees’ sustainable development, which can be gauged by thriving at work. We conducted a three-wave questionnaire survey to examine our hypothesized model. We found that employees’ perceived CSR helps employees to build a good social exchange with their company, which in turn contributes to enhanced thriving at work. Further, for employees with higher levels of trait gratitude, CSR is more likely to facilitate their social exchange and subsequent thriving at work. Our findings enrich the nomological network of CSR and thriving, and provide insights for organizations to build a thriving and sustainable workforce. Full article

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the novel coronavirus had an impact not only on public health but also on the mental health of the population. Public sentiment on mental health and depression is often captured only in small, survey-based studies, while work based on Twitter data often only looks at the period during the pandemic and does not make comparisons with the pre-pandemic situation. We collected tweets that included the hashtags #MentalHealth and #Depression from before and during the pandemic (8.5 months each). We used LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) for topic modeling and LIWC, VADER, and NRC for sentiment analysis. We used three machine-learning classifiers to seek evidence regarding an automatically detectable change in tweets before vs. during the pandemic: (1) based on TF-IDF values, (2) based on the values from the sentiment libraries, (3) based on tweet content (deep-learning BERT classifier). Topic modeling revealed that Twitter users who explicitly used the hashtags #Depression and especially #MentalHealth did so to raise awareness. We observed an overall positive sentiment, and in tough times such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, tweets with #MentalHealth were often associated with gratitude. Among the three classification approaches, the BERT classifier showed the best performance, with an accuracy of 81% for #MentalHealth and 79% for #Depression. Although the data may have come from users familiar with mental health, these findings can help gauge public sentiment on the topic. The combination of (1) sentiment analysis, (2) topic modeling, and (3) tweet classification with machine learning proved useful in gaining comprehensive insight into public sentiment and could be applied to other data sources and topics. Full article

To regain overall well-being in the post-pandemic era, the priorities should not be only economic growth but also human physical and mental health. This study investigates how to incorporate the concept of well-being into the circular economy to facilitate the pursuit of individual/personal and social growth, and sustainable consumption. We begin with a systematic search of the literature on well-being and sustainable product–service systems, model the well-being components in peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing and reuse platforms, and propose design guidelines for platform development. According to our findings, (1) allocentric well-being components (such as gratitude, contribution, and altruism) serve as the antecedents of sharing behaviors, while egocentric components (such as pleasure and attachment) serve as the consequences, and (2) information sharing is crucial to initiating the flow of well-being perceptions and sustainable sharing and reuse behaviors. Based on the findings, we suggest a data-driven approach and active inference theory to facilitate related studies. This study sheds light on the potential to develop well-being within the circular economy and facilitate the sustainable working of the sharing and reuse ecosystem. Full article

Numerous studies have examined the risks for anxiety and depression experienced by physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, qualitative studies investigating physicians’ views, and their discovered strengths, are lacking. Our research fills this gap by exploring professional and personal reflections developed by physicians from various specialties during the pandemic. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with physicians practicing in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada, during November 2020–July 2021. Thematic analysis identified core themes and subthemes. Seventeen physicians, including nine males and eight females, from eleven specialties completed the interviews. The pandemic brought to the forefront life’s temporality and a new appreciation for life, work, and each other. Most physicians found strength in values, such as gratitude, solidarity, and faith in human potential, to anchor them professionally and personally. A new need for personal fulfilment and hybrid care emerged. Negative feelings of anger, fear, uncertainty, and frustration were due to overwhelming pressures, while feelings of injustice and betrayal were caused by human or system failures. The physicians’ appreciation for life and family and their faith in humanity and science were the primary coping strategies used to build adaptation and overcome negative emotions. These reflections are summarized, and implications for prevention and resilience are discussed. Full article

Although work satisfaction has been largely studied, gratitude is an emerging field within multiple sciences, including positive psychology, organizational behavior, and human resources marketing. This ex post facto study aims to characterize gratitude and understand its relations to job satisfaction in a non-probabilistic sample of 521 Portuguese workers (62.2% women), 30.90% and 69.10% in the public and private sector, respectively, mean ages of M = 43, SD = 12.6. Data were collected using anonymous questionnaires during the COVID-19 lockdown. Statistical analyses were performed in SPSS 26, and include Student’s t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s correlations, and a hierarchical linear regression model. Results confirm that Portuguese workers are grateful and satisfied at work. There were statistically significant differences between groups in sociodemographic (p < 0.001 and p < 0.05), professional (p < 0.01 and p < 0.001), and perceived living conditions variables (p < 0.05) regarding gratitude. Gratitude, alone, explains 8% of job satisfaction. According to the regression model (32.4%), perceptions of satisfaction initiatives and greater job security are also associated with higher levels of job satisfaction (23.6%). Implementation of gratitude-promoting strategies may increase job satisfaction, especially in the post-pandemic period. The investment in workers’ organizational happiness, after the impacts of COVID-19 on work dynamics, is a differentiating organizations success dimension. Full article

Gratitude is a promising resource from a healthy organizational perspective. It is related to many positive outcomes at work. The Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test-Revised Short (GRAT-RS) is the most widely used self-report questionnaire to detect gratitude. The present study examined GRAT-RS (the Italian version) by implementing multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) analyses to explore its psychometric properties. The participants were 537 Italian workers. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) of the GRAT-RS and MIRT analyses using the Grade Response Model were run. The MIRT discrimination and MIRT difficulty parameters were calculated. A test information function (TIF) and measure of reliability associated with (TIF) scores were also implemented. CFA highlighted that a bifactor model showed the best fit. Hence, MIRT analyses were carried out by implementing a bifactor model. The MIRT bifactor structure showed a good data fit with discrimination parameters ranging from good to excellent and adequate reliability. The good psychometric properties of GRAT-RS were confirmed, highlighting the questionnaire as a reliable tool to measure gratitude in Italian workers. Full article

Despite the Korean government’s investment in childcare facilities for dual-earner households, maternal grandmothers are increasingly taking on the responsibility of caring for their grandchildren. This trend is examined in the current research. While many studies have been conducted on grandparents’ experiences providing childcare for their grandchildren, significantly less research has been conducted on adult daughters’ experiences with their mothers’ childcare provision. This study utilized the concepts of intergenerational solidarity and a life-course approach to understand the experiences of 24 working adult daughters in Korea (ages 30–43) whose mothers provide childcare. Three major themes were identified following a grounded theory approach: gratitude vs. guilt, dependence vs. independence, and closeness vs. disagreement. The results indicated that adult daughters were found to have ambivalence toward their mothers, reflecting the lack of alternative options for childcare. The results from this study suggest that not only improving the quality of public childcare services, but also diversifying services to reflect the needs of dual-income families. Full article

One of the important factors that can affect employee performance (EP) is the employee’s perception of organizational justice (OJ) in the workplace and the employee’s willingness to carry out the employee’s primary role (in the role) optimally and the employee’s willingness to carry out tasks outside the employee’s primary job (extra-role), commonly called organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). OCB is divided into two dimensions: OCB at the individual level (OCBI) and OCB at the organizational level (OCBO). In educational organizations, the OCB of teachers is a strategic matter, so it needs to be a concern for school management if schools want to continue to survive and develop in the era of globalization characterized by changes in a dynamic and competitive environment. OCB from teachers can be said to be a form of teacher gratitude because the school has supported the welfare of teachers a lot, appreciates the contributions of teachers, and feels organizational justice practiced by the school. The respondents to the study were 820 full-time teachers from high schools and vocational high schools spread across several regions in East Java Province and Central Java Province, Indonesia, who were taken using convenient sampling techniques. This study aims to analyze: (1) the effect of OJ on OCBI and OCBO; (2) the direct effects of OJ and indirect effects on EP with OCBI and OCBO as mediation. Data analysis used the structural equation model (SEM) and Sobel test. The results of hypothesis testing show that: (1) OJ can significantly improve OCBI; (2) OJ can significantly improve OCBO; (3) the OJ was found to have a significant positive effect on EP; (4) OCBI can significantly improve EP; (5) OCBO can significantly improve EP; (6) OCBI partially mediates the influence of OJ on EP; (7) OCBO partially mediates the influence of OJ on EP. The results of this study explain the essential aspects of behaviour in the workplace, such as OJ, OCB, and EP, with a particular focus on high schools and vocational high schools in several regions in East Java Province and Central Java Province, Indonesia. The results showed that improving the EP of teachers can be achieved by organizational management through OJ practices in the work environment as well as organizational management efforts in improving the OCB of employees, considering that employees play an essential role in improving organizational performance. Full article

The positive psychology movement has increased and deepened our understanding of gratitude and its contribution to human well-being. Most of the literature to date has focused on gratitude to human benefactors, and the same has been true of philosophical analyses of gratitude. More recently, scholars of gratitude have turned their attention to gratitude to God, but relatively little work has been done on the relationship between particular theologies and spiritualities on the one hand and the phenomenology and structure of gratitude on the other. This essay makes a contribution to that strand of investigation by surveying the work of six Christian theologians, each of whom make bold, sometimes cryptic, claims about the distinctiveness of Christian gratitude and gratitude to God. The essay challenges universalist assumptions about the structure and phenomenology of gratitude, including gratitude to God. Full article