Sense of Abundance effect on Happiness
Faculty Mentor
Philip Watkins
Presentation Type
Poster
Start Date
4-14-2026 2:00 PM
End Date
4-14-2026 4:00 PM
Location
PUB NCR
Primary Discipline of Presentation
Psychology
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to see how sense of abundance affects overall happiness. Understanding this can help us to understand how our subjective well-being is connected to gratitude. A sense of abundance has been proposed to be crucial to trait gratitude (Watkins, 2014), but few studies have investigated the importance of this construct. Our data comes from a related study that we conducted analyzing interpretation biases characteristic of gratitude. We had 165 participants complete all parts of the administered survey online. It contained two measures of abundance, happiness, and trait gratitude. The happiness scales were the Subjective Happiness Scale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. We used the Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test (GRAT) which contains a subscale of “Sense of Abundance.” Wong’s Abundance scale served as our second measure of abundance. We also used the GQ-6 as a measure of trait gratitude. After our simultaneous multiple regression analyses, we found that the two measures of subjective well-being both independently predicted increased variance in in both subjective well-being measures. This result was also seen in the partial correlation analyses. This shows that these scales are measuring two distinct constructs. We conclude that both are important to subjective well-being and both contribute independently to trait gratitude. This further shows that they are two different constructs and that both are equally important to trait gratitude. Correlation and regression analyses showed that these two measures independently contributed to both happiness and trait gratitude. We propose that Wong’s Abundance measure more directly assesses a sense of abundance, and that the subscale of the GRAT measures a lack of resentment. We conclude that a sense of abundance is important to an individual’s happiness and their disposition for gratitude.
Recommended Citation
MacNeil, Samantha, "Sense of Abundance effect on Happiness" (2026). 2026 Symposium. 41.
https://dc.ewu.edu/srcw_2026/ps_2026/p3_2026/41
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Sense of Abundance effect on Happiness
PUB NCR
The purpose of this study was to see how sense of abundance affects overall happiness. Understanding this can help us to understand how our subjective well-being is connected to gratitude. A sense of abundance has been proposed to be crucial to trait gratitude (Watkins, 2014), but few studies have investigated the importance of this construct. Our data comes from a related study that we conducted analyzing interpretation biases characteristic of gratitude. We had 165 participants complete all parts of the administered survey online. It contained two measures of abundance, happiness, and trait gratitude. The happiness scales were the Subjective Happiness Scale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. We used the Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test (GRAT) which contains a subscale of “Sense of Abundance.” Wong’s Abundance scale served as our second measure of abundance. We also used the GQ-6 as a measure of trait gratitude. After our simultaneous multiple regression analyses, we found that the two measures of subjective well-being both independently predicted increased variance in in both subjective well-being measures. This result was also seen in the partial correlation analyses. This shows that these scales are measuring two distinct constructs. We conclude that both are important to subjective well-being and both contribute independently to trait gratitude. This further shows that they are two different constructs and that both are equally important to trait gratitude. Correlation and regression analyses showed that these two measures independently contributed to both happiness and trait gratitude. We propose that Wong’s Abundance measure more directly assesses a sense of abundance, and that the subscale of the GRAT measures a lack of resentment. We conclude that a sense of abundance is important to an individual’s happiness and their disposition for gratitude.
