Why Do People with High Dispositional Gratitude Tend to Experience High Life Satisfaction? A Broaden-and-Build Theory Perspective

Life satisfaction refers to people's overall judgements on their own life experiences, which is considered to be a relative stable aspect of subjective well-being. Though a robust of literature has identified that gratitude predicts life satisfaction positively, the underlying mechanism remains to be explored from a powerful theoretical perspective. Following the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this study explored the mediation role of benign envy, malicious envy and mindfulness in the relationship between dispositional gratitude and life satisfaction among 991 Chinese undergraduates (692 females and 299 males; M = 19.05, SD = 1.543, from 17 to 26 years old). The results revealed that benign envy, malicious envy and mindfulness were mediators between dispositional gratitude and life satisfaction. Importantly, dispositional gratitude linked to life satisfaction through the sequential intermediary of "mindfulness -> benign envy" and "mindfulness -> malicious envy". These findings are not only valuable for understanding how dispositional gratitude is linked to life satisfaction according to the broaden-and-build theory, but also contributes to the development of psychological intervention programs aiming at improving people's life satisfaction.