The Investigation on the Relationship between Personality Traits with Gratitude: The Mediating Role of Academic Self-Efficacy

Introduction: As one of the most important topics of positive psychology in recent years, gratitude has attracted the attention of researchers. Gratitude is a positive orientation to life in which attention is paid to positive things and a sense of gratefulness is expressed toward them. The purpose of this study was to explain gratitude by personality traits with the mediating of academic self-efficacy. Methods: This study was a descriptive correlational research. Four hundred and seventy four students (186 males and 288 females) were selected from Secondary School Students in Yazd in academic year of 2017 using multistage cluster random sampling. The participants completed the Multi-component Gratitude Measure (Morgan et al, 2017), NEO Questionnaire Short Form (Khormaei & Farmani, 2015) and the Academic Self-Efficacy Inventory (Zajacova et al, 2005). The data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling approach in AMOS software (version 21). Results: The results of path analysis indicated that the model had a good fitness and big five personality as exogenous variable agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness predicted gratitude directly. In addition conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion and agreeableness predicted gratitude indirectly by the mediation role of academic self-efficacy And a total of 45% of the variance of gratitude is explained in this way. Conclusion: As a result, personaliy traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and openness to experience increase academic self-efficacy. Therefore, students have more self-efficacy to face the problems. As a result they would behave more grateful.