Gratitude and Athletes’ Life Satisfaction: A Intra-individual Analysis on the Moderation of Ambivalence over Emotional Expression

Research on gratitude usually focus on how trait gratitude can contribute to higher subjective well-being, but rarely focus on the role of state gratitude in shaping one’s subjective well-being at a given moment. Focusing on intra-individual differences, the first aim of this study is to examine whether state gratitude will contribute to higher state life satisfaction. Nevertheless, state gratitude may not always contribute to higher state life satisfaction. The second aim of this study is to determinate that when ambivalence over emotional expression in a given moment becomes higher, the association between state gratitude and state life satisfaction will become weaker. Twenty-nine elite student athletes were recruited and completed weekly questionnaires measuring gratitude, life satisfaction, and ambivalence over emotional expression across 10 weeks. Results of hierarchical linear modeling support hypotheses, showing that weekly gratitude positively predicted weekly life satisfaction, but this association was weaker when weekly ambivalence over emotional expression was higher than lower. Contributions to gratitude studies are discussed.