Flourishing

Forgivingness is an important character strength in interpersonal relationships. Our panel study showed heightened forgivingness followed the Christian conversion experience, indicating a directional effect of religious conversion on forgivingness. Interestingly, our findings also suggested a bidirectional relationship between pessimism and unforgivingness. On one hand, a pessimistic worldview prevents people from being forgiving; on the other hand, the unwillingness to forgive may entrap us in a vicious cycle of interpersonal conflicts, thus strengthening one’s expectation of negative things to happen across various areas of life. Of note, being forgiving can reduce one’s pessimistic and cynical view of the world, as well as induce optimism, regardless of religious faith. Hence, having a deeper understanding of these character strengths (i.e. forgivingness, optimism and spirituality) offers therapists and educators alternative routes in achieving character growth. 

This research investigated the antecedents and consequences of forgivingness and its associations between mood states and Big Five personality traits. The data revealed that conscientiousness is the only significant, albeit relatively weak, predictor of forgivingness. Supported by the data, conscientiousness may also foster forgivingness in a given specific time frame. It may be explained by the possibility that individuals who take one’s character and relationship with others seriously and responsively may tend to forgive others. Conversely, the data showed that forgiveness could predict emotional stability, agreeableness, and less negative moods longitudinally. Supported by the result, forgivingness can predict future desirable changes in positive moods and personality characteristics. In the current study, there are other interesting findings that forgiveness could promote better moods over six years. These findings highlight the potential positive effects of forgiveness on mental issues. Individuals who have mood issues may benefit from intervention cultivating forgiveness. Last, the finding indicated that neither personality traits nor moods explained the antecedents of forgivingness, which remains largely unknown. 

Our study invited 2,804 students from local primary and secondary schools to investigate the associations of sleep with strengths and difficulties, hope and happiness. Well-slept children and teens reported 

• More prosocial behaviors

• Fewer emotional problems

• Fewer behavioural and conduct problems

We observed that sleep quality and sufficiency predicted hope and happiness. Our findings also highlighted the dual pathways by which good sleep contributes to hope and happiness both directly and indirectly through reducing emotional symptoms in school-aged children. Of note, students of senior grades sleep significantly less than those of junior grades. "

In this controlled group prospective study, 2,077 Chinese responded to six waves of survey. At Wave 3, 198 reported having lost a family member recently. Fate control predicted depressive mood at all four post-loss measurements, anxiety at three post-loss measurements, and stress at two post-loss measurements. Bereavement status predicted the psychological symptoms only at Wave 3. Latent growth modeling showed that the bereaved people’s mood trajectory depended on whether they believed in fate. The harmful effects of holding a strong belief in fate control on depressive mood are aggravated by losing someone significant.

In this three-year longitudinal prospective study, we compared 46 Chinese Christian converts who, at the beginning of the study, were non-Christians with a matched sample of 92 individuals who had always been Christians and a matched sample of 92 individuals who remained as non-believers throughout the duration of the study. Findings showed tha­t neither personality, personal values, nor social axioms predict whether one would become converted. However, experiencing anxiety and having religious friends were precursors. Several personal values, depressive mood, and anxiety, but not personality, can predict conversion to a certain extent during the three-year period.

2074 students (706 males), filled out the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), the Future Disposition Inventory-24 (FDI-24), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS). We found that only the Presence of Meaning subscale in the MLQ mediated the relation between hopelessness and suicidal behaviours, while both the Presence of Meaning subscale and Search for Meaning subscales within FDI-24 mediated Positive Focus, Suicide Orientation, and Negative Focus and suicidal behaviours, respectively.

536 Hong Kong university students completed questionnaires measuring their experiences of compassion from others, self-compassion, resilience, psychological distress, flourishing, and meaning in life. Serial mediation analyses revealed that compassion from others was associated positively with self-compassion, which was, in turn, linked to greater resilience and consequently lower levels of psychological distress and higher levels of flourishing and meaning in life. 

Positive psychological traits are closely related to human flourishing. In this survey
study, participants were 1,107 4th-6th graders from 34 primary schools in Hong Kong.
Structural equation modeling showed that student covitality, a construct of four school
experience-grounded positive psychological traits namely gratitude, optimism, zest and
persistence, predicted flourishing directly, and also indirectly through resilience and
prosocial behavior. The findings also suggest that student covitality better captures the
mechanisms that drive student flourishing than the four individual positive psychological
traits.