This study investigated the extent to which purpose in life predicted African American women's loneliness over time. Using data from 661 African American women ( = 44.92, = 8.10) across four waves of the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS), latent growth mixture modeling was employed to explore the trajectories of loneliness across approximately 10 years and whether level of purpose in life was a significant predictor of the trajectories. This study also accounted for potent influential factors such as positive and negative social support, religiosity, racial discrimination, and financial strain as covariates. Findings revealed significant between-individual differences in loneliness trajectories, with individuals reporting a higher initial level of purpose in life tending to have lower levels of loneliness over time. Thus, greater purpose in life predicted lower loneliness among African American women, highlighting the importance of these factors in their psychosocial well-being.

We examined early developmental pathways to compassionate concern for others in emerging adulthood by integrating child individual (gender, empathy), parental (positive parenting), and broad contextual (resources and stresses perceived by mothers) characteristics in childhood using a 17-year longitudinal data. Participants were 241 children (49% girls) and their mothers. Data were collected at 3, 6, and 19 years of child age, using multiple methods and informants. Results of structural equation modeling indicated an indirect pathway from early childhood maternal adjustment to child empathy three years later via positive parenting. In addition, having high levels of empathy in middle childhood and being a female predicted higher levels of compassionate concern in emerging adulthood. Our findings highlight the importance of maternal resources and support, in addition to parenting behaviors, in enhancing children's prosocial behaviors, and provide hints for early intervention to promote compassionate concern for others in emerging adulthood.

Positive psychology interventions have demonstrated efficacy in treating Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), but the relationship between dispositional optimism and antidepressant treatment response remains unclear. In this study, optimism (Revised Life Orientation Test, LOT-R) and depression severity (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, HDRS) were assessed in healthy unmedicated MDD participants (N=86) and healthy controls (N=65). Treatment response (≥50% reduction in HDRS) was measured in 46 of these MDD participants after 8 weeks of open-label selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) treatment. MDD participants reported significantly lower pre-treatment optimism than healthy controls. Higher pre-treatment optimism, as well as greater increase in optimism (pre-treatment to 8 weeks), were associated with greater likelihood of being an SSRI responder versus non-responder (=0.21, =0.013; =0.32, =0.01, respectively), even when ratings of optimism/pessimism were excluded from depression severity/response ratings. The findings are consistent with the importance of aspects of positive psychology in treatment response. Possible mechanisms are discussed.

Knowledge of the association between wellbeing and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment outcomes can guide recovery definitions, measurement strategies, and intervention development. This study recruited individuals in treatment for SUD (N = 81, M=39 years old, 53% female, 26% BIPOC). Wellbeing indicators included positive affect, serenity, flourishing, satisfaction with life, gratitude, quality of life, commitment to sobriety, and confidence staying sober. Outcomes included abstinence during treatment and treatment retention. After adjusting for urges to use, recruitment site, previous treatment episodes, legal issues, and days of sobriety in logistic regression analyses, only happiness with recovery remained significantly associated with either outcome (and was significantly associated with both outcomes: OR = 1.8 and 1.5, respectively, <.05). Assessed via a single item ("In general, I am happy with my recovery"), this construct shows promise as a novel, simple indicator of wellbeing in recovery and a potential target for intervention.

Two studies were designed to test whether moral elevation should be conceptualized as an approach-oriented emotion. The studies examined the relationship between moral elevation and the behavioral activation and inhibition systems. Study 1 ( = 80) showed that individual differences in moral elevation were associated with individual differences in behavioral activation but not inhibition. Study 2 ( = 78) showed that an elevation-inducing video promoted equally high levels of approach orientation as an anger-inducing video and significantly higher levels of approach orientation than a control video. Furthermore, the elevation-inducing stimulus (vs. the control condition) significantly promoted prosocial motivation and this effect was sequentially mediated by feelings of moral elevation followed by an approach-oriented state. Overall the results show unambiguous support for the proposal that moral elevation is an approach-oriented emotion. Applied and theoretical implications are discussed.

Despite growing interest in interventions aimed at enhancing emotional well-being, little research has addressed the question of engagement. This study explored engagement in a 7-day online well-being intervention study involving 24,180 participants from 195 countries/territories (78% female, = 49, 62% White). Following an onboarding survey, participants completed a morning well-being practice and an evening follow-up survey for a week. Overall, 76% of the participants initiated the intervention (i.e., returned to the platform after enrollment to start the intervention), completing an average of four daily practices. Several demographic (e.g., being older, White) and psychological variables (e.g., lower financial strain, higher life satisfaction) emerged as common predictors of initiating the intervention and completing more practices. Age was a particularly important predictor across outcomes. These findings offer novel insights into how individual characteristics relate to engagement in online well-being interventions and have implications for both designing the interventions and interpreting findings.

Major theories informing conceptions of psychological well-being draw heavily from Western-centric perspectives, which often neglect culturally bound frameworks. We investigated how U.S. Hispanics/Latinos conceptualize well-being, how psychosocial and behavioral aspects may increase well-being, and how psychosocial stressors may impact positive emotional states. Spanish-speaking Hispanic/Latino adults were recruited from a church in an urban city in the U.S. and invited to participate in focus groups. Two groups of women (n=19) and one group of men (n=8) participated. The importance of harmonious social relationships emerged as a theme with the central family unit as the fundamental force influencing long-lasting emotional well-being. Additional correlates of well-being included: faith/religiosity; physical health; self-love and -esteem; effective/open communication with family and friends; and financial security. Programs aimed at increasing well-being may need to be adapted before administration in Hispanics/Latinos to include a heightened focus on interpersonal factors. Delivery in religious institutions may also be particularly beneficial.

During a period of newly attained freedom preceding commitments expected in adulthood, emerging adults are faced with the major task of identity development. Leisure provides a context with relative freedom wherein emerging adults explore new experiences and access opportunities not always available in more constrained environments like work and school. In this case study of 40 emerging adults from 18 countries ( =23.14 years), qualitative interviews were used to investigate the role of leisure as a context for identity development. Results indicate five major themes for leisure-based identity development in emerging adulthood: discovering identity, forming identity, defining identity, positioning identity, and forgoing opportunities. These themes support leisure as an additional context wherein emerging adults may flourish on the pathway toward adulthood. Access to both novel and familiar leisure provide a context for emerging adults to actively direct their identity development through decisions made in leisure time.

Gratitude has been described as an adaptive evolutionary mechanism that is relevant to healthy psychological and interpersonal outcomes. Questions remain as to whether the presence and benefits of gratitude are consistent from young adulthood to old age; prior research has yielded mixed evidence. We examined the magnitude and direction of age differences in gratitude in three samples (combined = 31,206). We also examined whether gratitude was associated with greater/lesser well-being at different periods in the life course. We found that the experience of gratitude was greatest in older adults and least in middle aged and younger adults. Further, we found that the associations between gratitude and subjective well-being remained relatively constant across the lifespan. Findings are discussed from a developmental perspective.

Gratitude may be associated with beneficial health outcomes, but studies of this association have been mixed, and in these studies gratitude has often been conceptualized as a stable, unidimensional trait. We used four specific items to examine the prospective association of state- and domain-specific gratitude with medical outcomes among 152 patients with a recent acute coronary syndrome. State gratitude for one's health 2 weeks post-event was associated with increased physical activity (measured via accelerometer) 6 months later, controlling for relevant demographic, social, medical and psychological factors (β=340.9; 95% confidence interval=53.4-628.4; p=.020). Gratitude for one's life was associated with increased self-reported medical adherence at 6 months on the maximally adjusted model (β=.60; 95% confidence interval=.16-1.04; p=.008); no gratitude items were associated with rehospitalizations. In contrast, dispositional gratitude, measured by the Gratitude Questionnaire-6, was less dynamic and responsive to change over the 6-month period and was not associated with physical activity.

Gratitude is a rich socioemotional construct that emerges over development beginning in early childhood. Existing measures of children's gratitude as a trait or behavior may be limited because they do not capture different aspects of gratitude moments (i.e., awareness, thoughts, feelings, and actions) and the way that these facets appear in children. The current study evaluates a battery of new measures assessing children's gratitude to address these limitations. Parent-child dyads (=101; children aged 6-9) completed a lab-based assessment followed by a 7-day online parental diary and 18-month follow-up survey. In addition to newly developed measures of children's gratitude, the battery included indicators of convergent, concurrent, divergent, and predictive validity. Results demonstrate the complexity of gratitude as a construct and the relative benefits and limits of various assessment modalities. Implications for the measurement of children's gratitude and suggestions for future research on the development of gratitude are discussed.

This study examined effects of experimentally-induced optimism on physical activity and stress reactivity with community volunteers. Using an intervention to induce short-term optimism, we conducted two harmonized randomized experiments, performed simultaneously at separate academic institutions. All participants were randomized to either the induced optimism intervention or to a neutral control activity using essay-writing tasks. Physical activity tasks (Study 1) and stress-related physiologic responses (Study 2) were assessed during lab visits. Essays were coded for intensity of optimism. A total of 324 participants (207 women, 117 men) completed Study 1, and 118 participants (67 women, 47 men, 4 other) completed Study 2. In both studies, the optimism intervention led to greater increases in short-term optimism and positive affect relative to the control group. Although the intervention had limited effects on physical activity and stress reactivity, more optimistic language in the essays predicted increased physical activity and decreased stress reactivity.

A growing body of research has focused on distinguishing general forms of gratitude from gratitude to God. We contributed to this area of research by examining correlates of personality traits and meaning in life in a cross-sectional study ( = 1,398). General gratitude was more strongly positively related to honesty-humility, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and meaning in life than gratitude to God. Moreover, gratitude to God moderated the positive relationship between general gratitude and meaning in life such that the relationship was stronger at lower than higher levels of gratitude to God. The results suggest that general forms of gratitude may be more important for well-being and positive traits than gratitude to God. General forms of gratitude may be particularly beneficial among less religious people, while gratitude to God may be particularly beneficial for people's well-being among those who are less grateful in general.

Positive psychology interventions (PPIs) are effective at increasing happiness and decreasing depressive symptoms. PPIs are often administered as self-guided web-based interventions, but not all persons benefit from web-based interventions. Therefore, it is important to identify whether someone is likely to benefit from web-based PPIs, in order to triage persons who may not benefit from other interventions. In the current study, we used machine learning to predict individual response to a web-based PPI, in order to investigate baseline prognostic indicators of likelihood of response ( = 120). Our models demonstrated moderate correlations (happiness: = 0.30 ± 0.09; depressive symptoms: = 0.39 ± 0.06), indicating that baseline features can predict changes in happiness and depressive symptoms at a 6-month follow-up. Thus, machine learning can be used to predict outcome changes from a web-based PPI and has important clinical implications for matching individuals to PPIs based on their individual characteristics.

Gratitude is associated with a host of positive outcomes; yet, little is understood about the ways in which parents may foster gratitude in their children. The current study allows for the examination of one possible mechanism, namely parent-child conversations, that may be used to encourage gratitude in children. Using a rigorous experimental design, we tested whether an online program that was designed to enrich parents' skills in having conversations about gratitude with their children was effective in changing parents' socialization behaviors and children's gratitude. Results demonstrated that parents can successfully utilize an online program to enhance their gratitude-related communication. This training permeates other aspects of how parents socialize gratitude in children and positively impacts children's gratitude moments. Implications for program development and understanding the role of parents in the development of children's gratitude are discussed.

Burnout in healthcare workers (HCWs) is costly, consequential, and alarmingly high. Many HCWs report not having enough time or opportunities to engage in self-care. Brief, engaging, evidence-based tools have unique potential to alleviate burnout and improve well-being. Three prospective cohort studies tested the efficacy of web-based interventions: Three Good Things ( = 275), Gratitude Letter ( = 123), and the Looking Forward Tool ( = 123). Metrics were emotional exhaustion, depression, subjective happiness, work-life balance, emotional thriving, and emotional recovery. Across all studies, participants reported improvements in all metrics between baseline and post assessments, with two exceptions in study 1 (emotional thriving and happiness at 6 and 12-month post) and study 3 (optimism and emotional thriving at day 7). The Three Good Things, Gratitude Letter, and Looking Forward tools appear promising interventions for the issue of HCW burnout.

Recovery from substance use disorders is an arduous, lengthy process, yet there exist few interventions specifically designed to make recovery more reinforcing. This single-group mixed-methods study describes the development, feasibility, acceptability, and impact of a novel journaling intervention that combines aspects of positive psychology and behavioral activation to make recovery more reinforcing. We taught the journaling to women in residential treatment for substance use disorders during eight group sessions, after which participants journaled independently for 2 weeks. The journaling practice was found to be feasible and acceptable. Quantitative data showed improvement in a range of well-being, recovery, and mental health-related factors. Qualitative data showed that the intervention helped participants to recognize what was positive about recovery, to achieve meaningful short-term goals, and to experience a sense of optimism and pride in their accomplishments.

This study performs an outcome-wide analysis to prospectively examine the associations of forgiveness (including forgiveness of others, self-forgiveness and divine forgiveness) with a range of psychosocial, mental, behavioral and physical health outcomes. Data from the Nurses' Health Study II and the Growing Up Today Study (Ns ranged from 5,246 to 6,994, depending on forgiveness type and outcome) with 3 or 6 years of follow-up were analyzed using generalized estimating equations. Bonferroni correction was used to correct for multiple testing. All models controlled for sociodemographic characteristics, prior religious service attendance, prior maternal attachment and prior values of the outcome variables. All forgiveness measures were positively associated with all psychosocial well-being outcomes, and inversely associated with depressive or anxiety symptoms. There was little association between forgiveness and behavioral or physical health outcomes. Forgiveness may be understood as a good itself, and may also lead to better subsequent mental health and psychosocial well-being.

Marriage has been linked to higher well-being. However, previous research has generally examined marital status at one point in time or over a relatively short window of time. In order to determine if different marital histories have unique impacts on well-being in later life, we conducted a marital sequence analysis of 7,532 participants from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (54.2% women; = 66.68, SD = 8.50; 68.7% White/Caucasian). Three different marital sequence types emerged: a "consistently-married" group (79%), a "consistently-single" group (8%), and a "varied histories" group (13%), in which individuals had moved in and out of various relationships throughout life. The consistently-married group was slightly higher in well-being at the end of life than the consistently-single and varied histories groups; the latter two groups did not differ in their well-being. The results are discussed in the context of why marriage is linked to well-being across the lifespan.

Experienced well-being measures tap a distinct form of subjective well-being (SWB) and have different age-related properties than the more widely studied evaluations of life satisfaction. Unlike evaluations of the quality of life as a whole, experiential measures capture affective reactions soon after they occur. Recent advances in measurement have allowed for the inclusion of such experiential measures even in large-scale studies. However, respondent burden remains a concern; hence, surveys have also employed shorter experiential modules. The psychometric properties of these brief measures are not well understood. We examine the psychometric characteristics, including the factor structure and correlations with theoretically relevant criteria, of experienced wellbeing measures included in two supplements to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The first supplement included a detailed time diary whereas the second included a brief review of the prior day. Results show that for the detailed time diaries a single index of affective experience provides a useful summary of the associations among individual affect items, both within and between participants. For the abbreviated method, two or more subscales better describe the underlying structure.

People with social anxiety disorder (SAD) display maladaptive attitudes towards emotions. In this experience-sampling study, we explored the extent to which people with SAD viewed anxiety and pain as an impediment to pursuing personal strivings and deriving meaning in life. Participants were adults diagnosed with SAD and a control comparison group who completed baseline questionnaires and daily surveys for 14 consecutive days. People with SAD perceived anxiety and pain as interfering with progress towards their strivings to a greater degree than healthy controls. Perception of emotion-related goal interference was inversely associated with daily meaning. This relationship was moderated by diagnostic group such that there was a strong, inverse association with daily meaning in life for people with SAD; for controls, no association was found. Results suggest that negative beliefs about the value of anxiety and pain are pronounced in people with SAD and may impede derivation of meaning in life.

Optimism is prospectively associated with superior health outcomes in cardiac patients, making it an attractive target for well-being interventions in this population. However, optimism measured by the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) has largely been considered a static, dispositional construct. Among 125 patients with a recent acute coronary syndrome who received a positive psychology intervention, we assessed the properties of a modified LOT-R that changed the timeframe of items from general dispositional statements to queries about 'right now.' We aimed to learn whether this modified LOT-R was more dynamic than the original LOT-R via administration of both instruments at three timepoints over the 16-week study period. Contrary to our hypothesis, this modified LOT-R showed no greater change in mean score or intra-individual variance than the original LOT-R over 16 weeks. This suggests that simply changing the timeframe of the LOT-R may not facilitate assessment of more state-like optimism in medical patients.

Researchers can characterize people's well-being by asking them to provide global evaluations of large parts of their life at one time or by obtaining repeated assessments during their daily lives. Global evaluations are reconstructions that are influenced by peak, recent, and frequently occurring states, whereas daily reports reflect naturally occurring variations in daily life. The present research compared the averages of individual global evaluations and corresponding aggregated daily states from an ordinary two-week period and used a range of well-being measures (life satisfaction, meaning in life, and affect) and related constructs (searching for meaning in life and nostalgia). Across all measures, global reports were significantly higher than aggregated daily states. That is, life is considered more satisfying, more meaningful, and is characterized to a greater extent by more intense positive and negative emotions when reflecting on life in general than when reflecting on daily life in real time.

Fun activities are commonly sought and highly desired yet their affective side has received little scrutiny. The present research investigated two features of fun in two daily diary studies and one laboratory experiment. First, we examined the affective state associated with fun experiences. Second, we investigated the social context of fun, considering whether shared fun is more enjoyable than solitary fun. Findings from these studies indicated that fun is associated with both high-activation and low-activation positive affects, and that it is enhanced when experienced with others (especially friends). However, social fun was associated with increases in high-activation but not low-activation positive affect, suggesting that social interaction emphasizes energizing affective experiences. We also found that loneliness moderated the latter effects, such that lonely individuals received a weaker boost from shared compared to solitary fun. These results add to what is known about the impact of social contexts on affective experience.

Empathy is known to motivate prosocial behavior. This relationship, however is complex and influenced by the social context and the type of prosocial behavior. Additionally, empathy is a complex psychological capacity, making it important to examine how different components of empathy influence different prosocial behaviors. The current study uses a unique longitudinal sample to assess how changes in cognitive and affective components of empathy relate to charitable giving. Measures of empathy were collected from medical students in the fall and spring of students' first three years of medical school. After this time, students had the opportunity to donate to charity. Positive changes in students' cognitive empathy predicted their charitable giving, with students who demonstrated greater increases in cognitive empathy giving more money. This study points to an important role for cognitive empathy in certain prosocial behaviors, and suggests that long term changes in empathy influence individual differences in prosocial behavior.

Recent correlational evidence implicates gratitude in personal and relational growth, for both members of ongoing relationships. From these observations, it would be tempting to prescribe interpersonal gratitude exercises to improve relationships. In this experiment, couples were randomly assigned to express gratitude over a month, or to a relationally-active control condition. Results showed modest effects of condition on personal and relational well-being. However, those whose partners were perceived as being particularly responsive when expressing gratitude at the initial lab session showed greater well-being across a range of outcomes, whereas this was not so for people in the control condition. Notably, evidence raises concerns about the effectiveness of artificial injections of gratitude when the partner is perceived to be low in responsiveness. Given the importance of close relationships, this work highlights the need for more theory-driven basic research tested in context before assuming what appears to work naturally will also work artificially.

The (IRISS) and other positive psychological interventions (PPIs) have demonstrated psychological and physical health benefits. However, meta-analyses suggest that PPIs may have differential effects depending on participants' sociodemographic and psychological characteristics. We therefore examined potential moderators of effects of IRISS for adults newly diagnosed with HIV (=159). While IRISS had similar effects on positive emotion across most subgroups (age, race, education, stress), depression was a significant moderator for positive emotion. When examining effects of IRISS on antidepressant use, age, race, education, depression, and perceived stress emerged as significant moderators. Neither optimism nor life events significantly moderated effects of IRISS on any outcome. Results have clinical implications that practitioners can use to inform which patients are most likely to benefit from PPI.

Happiness-increasing interventions demonstrate significant variation in outcomes, suggesting that the people who use them might be as important as the interventions themselves to determine efficacy. In light of this, instructive interventions might not be necessary to increase happiness given a population with knowledge of happiness-increasing strategies. We recruited 270 participants with knowledge of positive psychology to receive six weeks of online psychoeducation. We explored participants' use of the website, reported use of happiness strategies, and changes in well-being. Those who spent more time on the website reported smaller changes in well-being than those who spent less time on the website. Conversely, those who reported employing more happiness strategies reported greater increases in well-being than those who used fewer strategies. This shows that for those already familiar with positive psychology, information, rather than instruction, might increase well-being. This has implications for studies evaluating the efficacy of happiness-increasing interventions more broadly.

The objective of this study was to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects of an intervention, Skills to Enhance Positivity (STEP) that aims to increase attention to positive emotions and experiences and to decrease suicidal events. STEP involves four in-person individual sessions delivered during an inpatient psychiatric admission, followed by one month of weekly phone calls and daily text messages with mood monitoring and skills practice. A pilot randomized controlled trial of STEP vs. enhanced treatment as usual (ETAU) was conducted with 52 adolescents. Results indicated that on average 83% of sessions were completed and that on 70% of days, participants engaged with the text-messaging component of the intervention. Acceptability for both in-person and text-messaging components were also high, with satisfaction ratings averaging between good and excellent. STEP participants reported fewer suicide events than ETAU participants (6 vs. 13) after six months of follow-up.