Role of Gratitude and Forgiveness in Spiritual Well-being of Teachers
Amna Ajmal1, Shumaila Abid2, Satwat Zahra Bokhari1, Aafia Rasool
Department of Applied Psychology, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan1 Department of Applied Psychology, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Sub Campus Vehari2
The present study was conducted to investigate the role of gratitude and forgiveness in the spiritual well-being of the lecturers in the region of Multan, Pakistan. Convenient sampling was used and the sample of 100 teachers, (60 males and 40 females) was drawn from the faculty members of Bahauddin Zakariya University in Pakistan. Gratitude Questionnaire comprising of six items (GQ-6; McCullough, 2004), Heartland Forgiveness scale (HFS; Thompson & Synder, 2003) and scale of Spirituality Index of well-being (SWBS; Daaleman & Frey, 2004) were administered to measure the relationship among gratitude, forgiveness and spiritual well-being. The findings indicated that gratitude and forgiveness are positively correlated with the spiritual well-being and the level of gratitude was greater in female lecturers. Gratitude and forgiveness are strongly associated with spiritual well- being of teachers.
Keywords: forgiveness, gratitude, spiritual well-being, lecturers
Gratitude is the nature of being grateful; status to show thankfulness for and to return consideration. It is a feeling communicating gratefulness, for what one has as opposed, to what one needs. In the Dictionary of Oxford English gratitude signifies “It is the condition or it can be considered a quality of thankful; appreciation to return toward kindness.” Gratitude is a feeling of ponder, gratefulness and thankfulness, forever (Emmons, 2003). It is indicated by a number of researchers that gratitude is acknowledged as the parent of every
single other virtues. Goodness is characterized, as a character that permits a man to think and to represent, advantage herself /himself and society (Chun, 2005; Shryack et al., 2010).
Moreover gratitude is an all-around regarded goodness in all the religions of the world, including Christianity, Judism and Islam. Christianity gives the message to Christians to be thankful for the wellspring of their lives. Also, people demonstrate their gratefulness in various setting. For instance, in United States, Thanksgiving Day is commended for indicating thankfulness. Judaism highlights the significance of saying thanks to God from old Israel. In Islam, in the Quran, the need of appreciation and gratefulness to Allah is stressed.
In the Quran Surah Al’Imran, Allah clearly stated Muslims that reward will be given to those that serve Him with gratitude.
Many researchers have given the concept that gratitude can be considered a state of emotion and it is directed to praise the other people’s helpful actions (McCulloug & Larson, 2001). But this concept failed to describe the sources of gratitude which people report. Emmons and McCullough's (2003) did a study on gratitude and participants were instructed to maintain a list of daily events, for which they were grateful, participants consider it a source of gratitude (Emmons & McCullogh, 2003).
Forgiveness is a procedure (or the after effect of a procedure) that includes an adjustment, in feeling and disposition, with respect to a wrongdoer. Most of the researchers consider it as a purposeful and willful process. It is a matter of choice. The process of forgiving results in decreased motivation to maintain estrangement from an offender in spite of their actions, and the negative thoughts about the offender are also decreased.
Forgiveness is characterized as prevention of unforgiving emotions by encountering exceptional, positive, loving emotions while reviewing a transgression (Worthington, Berry, & Parrott, 2001). Forgiveness is not an easy and nuanced process including not just the demonstration of forgiveness or the sentiment of being excused, additionally thoughts about the conditions under which forgiveness can occur (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000). Forgiveness is a pro-social change which reduces the negative thoughts and events (and in some cases it is helpful in increasing of positives) like thoughts, motivation and emotions toward the offender that brings change in behaviors (Davis, Worthington, Hook, & Hill, 2013). Forgiveness is a virtue because it is
helpful in strengthening relationships and to maintain relationships (Dwiwardani et al., 2014).
Un-forgiveness consists of many negative outcomes and it results in very painful emotions like having a desire to seek revenge for a hurt, strong feeling of dislike, anger, hostility or extreme hatred towards an offender, and the desire to breakup from the offender (McCullough et al., 1998; Wade & Worthington, 2005).
Forgiveness is customarily an idea which is inserted in almost all the religion and all the significant religions talk about forgiveness. Ethicists and Scholars have discussed the theme of forgiveness and it has been conceptualized at a time as a value and as a weakness.
Legislators and all the adorable personalities like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, all rehearsed forgiveness.
For some people, religious undertones go with the idea of mercy and compassion (McCullough & Worthington, 1999). Man significant world religious customs have since, quite a while ago, talked about forgiveness, including Islam, Hinduism, Budhism, Judaism, and Christianity (Rye et al., 2000). Many researches on psychological theme have inspected the part of religion and deep sense of being in interpersonal forgiveness. An assortment of research builds up that people with more religious inclincation give too much importance to forgiveness than the people with less spiritual inclination (Edwards et al., 2002).
Researchers have different conclusions in the matter of spiritual well-being. A school of thought accepts that there are no such differentiation among the spiritual well-being and religious practices, they agree that spiritual well-being includes a link with an unequivocally Christian God. While according to the other school of thought, divinity or higher power or the idea of God appears to have been completely extracted from comprehension of spiritual well-being, and it is characterized as an important or reason in life (Crisp, 2008).
Spiritual well-being is about wholeness, which includes the physical, enthusiastic, mental and profound measurement. This doesn't mean, however, that we should be well in each region to be spiritually well. For instance, somebody might be physically unwell yet, have a positive spiritual well-being which, helps them adapt to their physical challenges. A few researchers comment that, spiritual well-being can also be utilized to enhance the performance of organization (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000; Garcia-Zamor, 2003; Giacalone & Jurkiewicz, 2003a;
Fry, 2005); and spiritual well-being examination ought to show deep sense of being's connections with efficiency and benefit (Giacalone, Jurkiewicz & Fry, 2005).
Accorsing to literature, there exists a conceptual conflict in existing literature. People with high levels of well-being infer causes of their success to the circumstances which are short lived, uncontrollable, and are mostly due to the someone else’s actions as well. This style of inferring causes results in depression, anxiety, and negative effect (Abramson, Alloy Whitehouse, & Hogan, 2006; Ralph & Mineka, 1998; Sanjuan, Perez, Rueda, & Ruiz, 2008). If the concept of gratitude is simply involved in interpersonal thankfulness, a person with high levels of gratitude may actually have deficits in well-being, because they attribute the causes of their success to the others’ actions and do not take credit themselves (McCullough et al., 2002).
Gratitude is appeared to identify the origin of prosperity which emerges from the view point of humanistic counseling, it offer a substitute origination of human instinct and abnormality (Joseph &Wood, 2007). The concept to be genuine (Wood, Linley, Maltby, Baliousis, & Joseph, 2008) speaks to the Rogers concept of "Congruence", representing (1) not knowing oneself, estrangement from self, lacking in self-identity, conflicting beliefs, and not accurately described symbolization of experiences, (2) to accept the environmental influences, and (3) to behave in manners which are predictable with individual beliefs and values ("real living"); with genuine living being characteristic of genuineness, and self-distance. Wood et al. demonstrated that gratitude was strongly positively associated with real living and is inversely associated with self-alienation. The discoveries are fascinating in the presence of arguments that gratitude fills a developmental need. It is a peculiar social characteristics and it has the value of adaption to facilitate humans to cooperate with the people others than their families (McCullough & Hoyt, 2002) and to maintain reciprocal selflessness (Nowak & Roch, 2006; Trivers, 1971).
In the working environment setting, spiritual well-being has been characterized as our inner consciousness (Guillary, 2000). It is a feeling at workplace that motivates to do work (Dehler & Welsh, 1994), access to the holy force of life (Nash & Mclennan, 2001) and it is your exceptional inner strength for your personal growth (Delbecq, 1999).
Rationale of the Study
The aim behind this study is to discover the relationship of forgiveness, gratitude and spiritual well-being of the Muslim teachers in the area of Pakistan. Gratitude, forgiveness and spiritual well-being are essential in the conduct and the performance of the instructors. There are several researches conducted on forgiveness and gratitude with college, university students, and adolescents and on the population of managers concluding that gratitude, forgiveness and spiritual wellbeing are positively and strongly associated with each other (Kumari & Madnawat, 2016). All the past researches have been directed in western societies. But the teachers are ignored while without teachers there is no existence of any profession. This review will attempt to help in discovering this relationship in teachers of Pakistan in respect to gender differences also.
Objectives of the Study
Hypotheses
Method
Research Design
Quantitative research strategy is used as a part of this review. Co-relational review is led and the sample was taken through non probability sampling procedure. In Non Probability sampling procedure, convenience sampling is used; because only those participant were selected who were convenient to respond.
Sample
The sample comprises of 100 members (N=100) 60 males, 40 females. The members were included into the study on their eagerness
to take an interest and were guaranteed that the data with respect to them would be classified.
Instruments
Gratitude Questionnaire six item scale (GQ-6). The Gratitude Questionnaire six item scale (GQ-6) is a short, comprehensive Questionnaire. It has six-item. It is a self-report questionnaire that judges the one's experience of gratitude. It is a 7 point Liker-style questionnaire with the ranges of (1 =strongly disagree and 7=strongly agree). The GQ-6 is linked positively to satisfaction of life, optimism, trust, spiritual well-being, forgiveness, sympathy and other’s people helping behavior, and it is linked negatively to materialism, envy and anxiety. From the six, two items are reversed scored to inhibit reaction bias. The GQ-6 has reportedly great internal reliability and this questionnaire has alphas between .82 and .87 (Mccullogh, 2004).
Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS). The Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS) contains 18-item. It is a self-report scale. The purpose is to evaluate a man's forgiveness (e.g, one's usual style to forgive), instead of forgiveness of a specific occasion or individual. The HFS contains things that describe a man's tendency to forgive himself or herself, circumstances that are not in the control of person (e.g. Natural Disaster) and other people.It contains three sub scales. a) HFS forgiveness of other’s subscales b) HFS Forgiveness of Self subscale c) Total of four scores are calculated for the HFS d) and HFS Forgiveness of Situations. One score is for the Total HFS and other three scores are for each of the three HFS subscales. The total Scores for the HFS can range from 18 to 126 while the range of scores for three others HFS subscales is from 6 to 42
The factors of this questionnaire have Cronbach’s Alpha changes in ranges from 0.76 to 0.83. The coefficient of the forgiving to others is 0.65 and forgiving in different situations is 0.52 (Akbari, Golparvar and Kamkar, 2008). In the recent research the Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.85.
Spirituality Index of Well-being. Spiritual well-being is a feeling of significance or reason from an extraordinary source. It has 12- item. It measures one's view of their spiritual quality of life. The instrument is divided into two parts: (1) it measures the self-efficacy (2)
it measures the life-scheme. Each item is answered on a 5-point scale running from 1 (Strongly Agree) to 5 (Strongly Disagree). The Cranach’s Alpha is greater than 0.85 and the questionnaire’s repeatability result was 0.89 (Biglari, 2018). This questionnaire has also a good face validity. Its relationship with the other related measures like Crumbaugh test of Purpose for the life test (r=.68) and Allport’s measure of the intrinsic religion is reported r=.79 (Schoenrade, 1995).
Procedure
The information is gathered through the survey method. The teachers were contacted in their duty time, in which both genders participated on their willingness. The study contains 3 set of questionnaires. Gratitude questionnaire 6 item scale, Heartland Forgiveness 18 items scale and Spiritual well-being (SWB) scale along with the consent form and demographic factors, which were available in the booklet given to the members. All the data about the study was given to the members and were ensured that their data will stay confidential. SPSS (Statistical Package of Social Sciences 21.00 ) is utilized for the examination of information gathered from the teachers.
Results
Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
As the table above shows that the Gratitude in females is high and its mean gender difference is significant because p-value (0.000) is smaller than the level of significance (0.01), similarly, the ratio of forgiveness in females is not greater than males it mean HFC difference is not significant because p-value is greater than the level of significance (0.01).
Discussion
Gratitude and Forgiveness affect the Spiritual well-being of the teachers or some other utilize in the working scene. Gratitude means being grateful for everything and Forgiveness implies a version of unforgiving feelings by encountering serious, positive, cherishing feelings while reviewing a transgression.
The purpose behind this was to investigate the part of both Gratitude and Forgiveness on the spiritual well-being of teachers in Pakistan. The information was gathered through probability sampling in which everybody had an equivalent shot of being chosen for the study and the data given was guaranteed to be secret. The sample comprised of 100, both males and females took part in the study. It was directed to explore the connection amongst Gratitude and Forgiveness and to examine the proportion of Gratitude and forgiveness in both males and females
The first hypothesis of the study was that Gratitude, Forgiveness and spiritual well being are correlated with each other. The results of the review support the hypothesis that Gratitude and Forgiveness are positively associated with spiritual well being. The previous studies done with the Turkish students also support the results of the present study (Uysal & Satici, 2014).
Gender differences in forgiveness may be normal for a few reasons. To begin with, gender difference might be an ancient rarity of methodological arbitrators. For instance in which way forgiveness is examined, not itself forgiveness might bring about the differences in male and female. The other thing is that innate predispositions might be a differentiating factor (McCullough, Rachal, Sandage, Worthington, Brown, & Hight, 1998). Thirdly attachment style can also influence the tendency to forgive (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). Fourth, males might be more attracted to Kohlberg's (1984) justice based moral quality while females might be more attracted to warmth–based virtues, which are more in accordance with Gilligan's (1994) ethic of care. Religion may add to inclination to forgiveness as Freese (2004) shared that females are reported to be more religious than men (Freese, 2004). Our belief system and religion matters a lot. In our religion system it is taught to us to be thankful and to forgive others is admired. So forgiving
Furthermore, a meta-analysis regarding forgiveness and gender differences demonstrated that sympathy is a trait more prevalent in females than males. Potential methodological mediators such as focus of forgiveness, type of sample, and state, familial or trait forgiveness etc. were focused. No methodological factors directed the relationship amongst gender and forgiveness. Be that as it may, there were bigger gender differences on retribution than some other forgiveness–related measure. Other potential mediators were proposed as conceivably affecting the gender orientation distinction including, practical differences preparing forgiveness, differences in dispositional qualities, and situational signs (Freedman, Enright, &Knutson, 2005).
The second hypothesis of this study demonstrates that there are significant gender differences in males and females in the levels of forgiveness and gratitude. The results supported that female teachers are more thankful then males however; there is no difference between the levels of forgiveness between them. The previously mentioned study confirms this hypothesis
Conclusion
The statistical analysis of the exploration confirms that there is a relationship between the two factors i.e. Gratitude and Forgiveness, which is positive. Gratitude and forgiveness are positively correlated
with the spiritual well being of the teachers. There are significant gender differences in gratitude. The females are more thankful then males but there are found no gender differences in forgiveness in males and females. It also expresses that the females are all the more lenient then males and there is no critical distinction in the levels of forgiveness in them.
Gratitude and forgiveness are basic for the spiritual well-being of each one, uncommonly, the teachers. Well-being is made out of being grateful for everything positive and to excuse each hateful thing done or said. This review demonstrates that being grateful and forgiving is essential for the prosperity of teachers.
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