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Little research has focused on torture survivors’ re-traumatization experiences in health and hospital units that treat somatic diseases, though any medical procedure can re-traumatize survivors. This study’s purpose was to summarize qualitative research evidence on torture survivors’ somatic healthcare experiences and to identify “triggers” or “reminders” that can lead to re-traumatization. The study’s search strategies identified 6,326 citations and eight studies, comprising data from 290 participants, exploring encounters with healthcare providers from torture survivors’ perspectives, which were included in the present research. Dallam’s Healthcare Retraumatization Model was used as a framework for data extraction and analysis. Five main themes were elicited from the findings: (1)invisibility,silence,and mistrust; (2)healthcare providers’ attitudes and a lack of perceived quality in healthcare; (3)disempowerment; (4)avoidance; and (5)satisfaction and gratitude. An analysis of the study’s findings revealed that torture survivors do not receive adequate healthcare and may experience challenges during treatment that can result in re-traumatization. The findings of this literature review provide a basis for understanding the difficulties that survivors experience in receiving somatic healthcare, as well as an explanation of the re-traumatization process.

Based on Social Learning Theory and the General Aggression Model, this study aims to explore the relationship between parental emotional warmth and the cyberbullying perpetration attitudes of college students and the mediating roles of trait gratitude and empathy. Using the stratified cluster random sampling method, 1198 college students (716 boys and 482 girls with an average age of 20.44 years) were tested using the subscale of the Parenting Styles Instrument, the Basic Empathy Scale, the Gratitude Questionnaire-6, and the Cyberbullying Attitude Questionnaire. Results: Emotional warmth, trait gratitude, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy all demonstrated significantly positive relationships with each other (rs from .175 to .403, ps < 0.01) and negative correlations with cyberbullying perpetration attitudes (rs from -.137 to -.306, ps < 0.01). Emotional warmth can exert an impact on cyberbullying perpetration attitudes through three fully mediating paths: the mediating roles of trait gratitude (41.91% of the total effect), cognitive empathy (14.5% of the total effect), and the chain mediating roles of trait gratitude-cognitive empathy (19.5% of the total effect). The results may have important implications for future studies to develop effective interventions for cyberbullying.

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a non-invasive functional brain imaging technique. NIRS is suitable for monitoring brain activation during social interactions. One of the omnipresent social interactions for employees is saying thank you and being thanked. It has been demonstrated that expressing and receiving gratitude leads to employees’ well-being and performance. To date, there have been no neuroimaging studies that monitor brain activity when receiving gratitude. Thus, we designed an experiment using NIRS to monitor brain function while listening to a letter of gratitude read by a coworker. We hypothesized that listening to a letter of gratitude read aloud by a co-worker in a face-to-face setting would have different effects on PFC activity than listening to a conversation about a neutral topic. We recruited 10 pairs of healthy right-handed employees. They were asked to write a letter of gratitude to their partner 1 week before the experiment. In the experiment, each pair sat face-to-face and read their letters aloud to each other. We evaluated changes in mood state before and after the experiment. NIRS was measured in each participant while they listened to their peers in the experimental condition (gratitude letter) and control condition (talking about the weather and date). The results suggested that negative mood state decreased after the experiment. Moreover, there were interaction effects between conditions and periods. Although further studies are needed to confirm the interpretation, our findings suggested that experience of being thanked was accompanied by prefrontal cortex activation.

Objectives This study aimed to derive an in-depth understanding of the transfer experience of intensive care unit (ICU) patients in South Korea through a phenomenological analysis. Methods Participants were 15 adult patients who were admitted to a medical or surgical ICU at a university hospital for more than 48 hours before being transferred to a general ward. Data were collected three to five days after their transfer to the general ward from January to December 2017 through individual in-depth interviews and were analyzed using Colaizzi’s phenomenological data analysis method, phenomenological reduction, intersubjective reduction, and hermeneutic circle. Data analysis yielded eight themes and four theme clusters related to the unique experiences of domestic ICU patients in the process of transfer to the general ward. Results The four main themes of the patients’ transfer experiences were “hope amid despair,” “gratitude for being alive,” “recovery from suffering,” and “seeking a return to normality.” Conclusion Our findings expand the realistic and holistic understanding from the patient’s perspective. This study’s findings can contribute to the development of appropriate nursing interventions that can support preparation and adaptation to the transfer of ICU patients.

Several studies have shown protective effects between health outcomes and subjective reports of religious/spiritual (R/S) importance, as measured by a single self-report item. In a 3-generation study of individuals at high or low familial risk for depression, R/S importance was found to be protective against depression, as indicated by clinical and neurobiological outcomes. The psychological components underlying these protective effects, however, remain little understood. Hence, to clarify the meaning of answering the R/S importance item, we employed a comprehensive set of validated scales assessing religious beliefs and experiences and exploratory factor analysis to uncover latent R/S constructs that strongly and independently correlated with the single-item measure of R/S importance. A Varimax-rotated principal component analysis (PCA) resulted in a 23-factor solution (Eigenvalue > 1; 71.5% explained variance) with 8 factors that, respectively, accounted for at least 3% of the total variance. The first factor (15.8%) was directly related to the R/S importance item (r = .819), as well as personal relationship with the Divine, forgiveness by God, religious activities, and religious coping, while precluding gratitude, altruism, and social support, among other survey subscales. The corresponding factor scores were greater in older individuals and those at low familial risk. Moreover, Spearman rank-order correlations between the R/S importance item and other subscales revealed relative consistency across generations and risk groups. Taken together, the single R/S importance item constituted a robust measure of what may be generally conceived of as “religious importance,” ranking highest among a diverse latent factor structure of R/S. As this suggests adequate single-item construct validity, it may be adequate for use in health studies lacking the resources for more extensive measures. Nonetheless, given that this single item accounted for only a small fraction of the total survey variance, results based on the item should be interpreted and applied with caution.

Introduction The prevalence of common mental disorders among medical students is globally high. However, medical students tend to seek less professional help to treat their mental health issues. Hence, ways have been devised to reduce emotional stress in this population. Objective The current study uses positive psychology techniques to increase subjective well-being (SWB) in order to reduce symptons of common mental disorders (CMD) in medical students (MS). Methods The study comprised two groups: intervention group (n = 37) and control group (n = 32). Throughout seven weeks, the intervention group had meetings focused on emotions, mental health of medical students, gratitude, appreciation, optimism, resilience, qualities and virtues. The control group attended conventional medical psychology classes (psychosomatic aspects in clinical illness, for example). Results The intervention group presented average increase by 2.85 points in the positive emotions scale; average increase by 2.53 points in the satisfaction-with-life scale; and average decrease by 1.79 points in the SRQ-20 scale, when it was compared to the control group. The intervention effect size was moderate. Conclusion Use of techniques to increase SWB may reduce CMD in MS, even if these techniques do not diminish negative emotions.

For at least four decades, researchers have studied the effectiveness of interventions designed to increase well-being. These interventions have become known as positive psychology interventions (PPIs). Two highly cited meta-analyses examined the effectiveness of PPIs on well-being and depression: Sin and Lyubomirsky (2009) and Bolier et al. (2013). Sin and Lyubomirsky reported larger effects of PPIs on well-being (r = .29) and depression (r = .31) than Bolier et al. reported for subjective well-being (r = .17), psychological well-being (r = .10), and depression (r = .11). A detailed examination of the two meta-analyses reveals that the authors employed different approaches, used different inclusion and exclusion criteria, analyzed different sets of studies, described their methods with insufficient detail to compare them clearly, and did not report or properly account for significant small sample size bias. The first objective of the current study was to reanalyze the studies selected in each of the published meta-analyses, while taking into account small sample size bias. The second objective was to replicate each meta-analysis by extracting relevant effect sizes directly from the primary studies included in the meta-analyses. The present study revealed three key findings: (1) many of the primary studies used a small sample size; (2) small sample size bias was pronounced in many of the analyses; and (3) when small sample size bias was taken into account, the effect of PPIs on well-being were small but significant (approximately r = .10), whereas the effect of PPIs on depression were variable, dependent on outliers, and generally not statistically significant. Future PPI research needs to focus on increasing sample sizes. A future meta-analyses of this research needs to assess cumulative effects from a comprehensive collection of primary studies while being mindful of issues such as small sample size bias.

Research on awe has grown exponentially in recent decades; however, few studies have considered whether awe-inspiring experiences also inspire other emotions. In two studies, we explored whether interventions targeting awe also evoke other discrete emotions. Additionally, we considered two constructs that may be associated with increases in each emotion-self-relevant thoughts and connectedness. In Study 1, we manipulated awe in virtual reality and examined the potential effects of a prototypical awe experience-a spacewalk accompanied by an audio clip of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. In Study 2, we manipulated awe with a video depicting scenes of Earth from outer space paired with the same audio clip. Across both studies, a prototypical awe experience was associated not only with awe, but with compassion, gratitude, love, and optimism, along with connectedness and self-relevant thoughts. Furthermore, we found that increases in self-relevant thoughts and connectedness in response to the awe induction predicted increases in each emotion evoked and vice-versa. These findings suggest that experiences that are commonly considered awe-inspiring-such as viewing a picturesque landscape-may be more appropriately conceptualized more broadly as self-transcendent. More work is needed to determine whether the documented benefits of awe may be more appropriately interpreted as the benefits of self-transcendent emotions.

Acknowledgements in scientific articles can be described as miscellaneous, their content ranging from pre-formulated financial disclosure statements to personal testimonies of gratitude. To improve understanding of the context and various uses of expressions found in acknowledgements, this study analyses their content qualitatively. The most frequent noun phrases from a Web of Science acknowledgements corpus were analysed to generate 13 categories. When 3,754 acknowledgement sentences were manually coded into the categories, three distinct axes emerged: the contributions, the disclaimers, and the authorial voice. Acknowledgements constitute a space where authors can detail the division of labour within collaborators of a research project. Results also show the importance of disclaimers as part of the current scholarly communication apparatus, an aspect which was not highlighted by previous analyses and typologies of acknowledgements. Alongside formal disclaimers and acknowledgements of various contributions, there seems to remain a need for a more personal space where the authors can speak for themselves, in their own name, on matters they judge worth mentioning.

A unique emotion, elevation, is thought to underlie prosocial contagion, a process whereby witnessing a prosocial act leads to acting prosocially. Individuals differ in their propensity to experience elevation, and thus their proneness to prosocial contagion, but little is known about the causes of such variation. We introduce an adaptationist model wherein elevation marks immediate circumstances in which generalized prosociality is advantageous, with this evaluation of circumstances hinging in part on prior expectations of others’ prosociality. In 15 studies, we add to evidence that elevation can reliably be elicited and mediates prosocial contagion. Importantly, we confirm a novel prediction–generated by our adaptationist account–that an idealistic attitude, which indexes others’ expected degree of prosociality, moderates the relationship between exposure to prosocial cues and experiencing elevation. We discuss how our findings inform both basic theorizing in the affective sciences and translational efforts to engineer a more harmonious world, and we offer future research directions to further test and extend our model.

Schadenfreude is a social emotion that describes one’s happiness at the misfortune of others. Because people experience schadenfreude to different extents, it can also be considered a trait. The present research aimed to develop a trait measure of schadenfreude and investigate the relationship between schadenfreude and political downfalls. We developed an item pool and used exploratory (Study 1) and confirmatory (Study 2) factor analyses to establish a 12-item, two-factor schadenfreude measure: benign and malicious. We also assessed its test–retest reliability (Study 3) and convergent validity with related measures (Study 4). Findings supported a two-factor schadenfreude measure that produced valid and reliable scores (Studies 1–4). In an experiment, we found a positive correlation between episodic—but not trait—schadenfreude on spreading news of a politician’s downfall (Study 5). Using a 3 (Political affiliation: Democrat, Republican, or other) × 3 (Manipulated condition: Democrat, Republican, or CEO) design, we examined the extent to which participants’ schadenfreude predicted their intentions and choices to share an embarrassing news story about a politician or CEO via social media. Schadenfreude can be assessed as a reliable trait—one that may help us predict why some people intend to spread news of embarrassing political failures.

Background After a subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH), continuing impairment is common and may impact the person’s life. There is a lack of knowledge regarding long-term consequences experienced. Purpose To explore experiences of the care and rehabilitation as well as the consequences and strategies used to cope with everyday life six years post SAH. Methods An explorative interview study with a qualitative design. Individual interviews, with open ended questions, using an interview guide were performed with sixteen participants (mean age 63, 8 men, 8 women) six years post SAH. Data was analyzed according to a descriptive thematic analysis, and themes were discovered inductively. Results Two major themes from the analysis, both including four sub-themes, were identified; these themes were consequences of the SAH and coping strategies. Participants were grateful to have survived the SAH and most were satisfied with their acute medical care. If discharged directly from the neurosurgical unit participants can feel abandoned. In contrast, participants who were referred to a rehabilitation clinic felt supported and informed. Cognitive problems, such as impaired memory and mental fatigue, were reported as still present six years post SAH. Coping strategies were; receiving support from family, society, employers, or technical equipment. At work, talking to colleagues and to taking breaks were common. Participants described hiding their symptoms from employers and friends, as well as trying to continue doing tasks in the same manner as prior to the SAH. If this was not possible, some refrained from doing these tasks. They went through a mourning process, fear, and worries. Conclusions Participants reported several long-term consequences which impacted on their daily lives post SAH, and different coping strategies were used to cope with these problems. Participants reported lack of awareness regarding the consequences of SAH and stressed the importance of structured multidisciplinary follow-ups, which mostly is missing.

The experience of aesthetic chills, often defined as a subjective response accompanied by goosebumps, shivers and tingling sensations, is a phenomenon often utilized to indicate moments of peak pleasure and emotional arousal in psychological research. However, little is currently understood about how to conceptualize the experience, particularly in terms of whether chills are general markers of intense pleasure and emotion, or instead a collection of distinct phenomenological experiences. To address this, a web-study was designed using images, videos, music videos, texts and music excerpts (from both an online forum dedicated to chills-eliciting stimuli and previous musical chills study), to explore variations across chills experience in terms of bodily and emotional responses reported. Results suggest that across participants (N = 179), three distinct chills categories could be identified: warm chills (chills co-occurring with smiling, warmth, feeling relaxed, stimulated and happy), cold chills (chills co-occurring with frowning, cold, sadness and anger), and moving chills (chills co-occurring with tears, feeling a lump in the throat, emotional intensity, and feelings of affection, tenderness and being moved). Warm chills were linked to stimuli expressing social communion and love; cold chills were elicited by stimuli portraying entities in distress, and support from one to another; moving chills were elicited by most stimuli, but their incidence were also predicted by ratings of trait empathy. Findings are discussed in terms of being moved, the importance of differing induction mechanisms such as shared experience and empathic concern, and the implications of distinct chills categories for both individual differences and inconsistencies in the existing aesthetic chills literature.

The Best Possible Self (BPS) exercise promotes a positive view of oneself in the best possible future, after working hard towards it. Since the first work that attempted to examine the benefits of this intervention in 2001, studies on the BPS have grown exponentially and, currently, this is one of the most widely used Positive Psychology Interventions. However, little is yet known about its overall effectiveness in increasing wellbeing outcomes. Thus, the aim of this meta-analysis is to shed light on this question. A systematic literature search was conducted, and 29 studies (in 26 articles) met the inclusion criteria of empirically testing the intervention and comparing it to a control condition. In addition, BPS was compared to gratitude interventions in some of the included studies. A total of 2,909 participants were involved in the analyses. The outcome measures were wellbeing, optimism, depressive symptoms, and positive and negative affect. Results showed that the BPS is an effective intervention to improve wellbeing (d+ = .325), optimism (d+ = .334) and positive affect (d+ = .511) comparing to controls. Small effect sizes were obtained for negative affect and depressive symptoms. Moderator analyses did not show statistically significant results for wellbeing, except for a trend towards significance in the age of the participants (years) and the magnitude of the intervention (total minutes of practice). In addition, the BPS was found to be more beneficial for positive and negative affect than gratitude interventions (d+ = .326 and d+ = .485, respectively). These results indicate that the BPS can be considered a valuable Positive Psychology Intervention to improve clients’ wellbeing, and it seems that it might be more effective for older participants and with shorter practices (measured as total minutes of practice). This work was supported by the Conselleria d’Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Esport (Spain) under the grant “INTERSABIAS” (PROMETEO/2018/110) to RMB.

Mindfulness practices are increasingly being utilized as a method for cultivating well-being. The term mindfulness is often used as an umbrella for a variety of different practices and many mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) contain multiple styles of practice. Despite the diversity of practices within MBIs, few studies have investigated whether constituent practices produce specific effects. We randomized 156 undergraduates to one of four brief practices: breath awareness, loving-kindness, gratitude, or to an attention control condition. We assessed practice effects on affect following brief training, and effects on affect and behavior after provocation with a stressor (i.e., Cold pressor test). Results indicate that gratitude training significantly improved positive affect compared to breath awareness (d = 0.58) and loving-kindness led to significantly greater reductions in implicit negative affect compared to the control condition (d = 0.59) immediately after brief practice. In spite of gains in positive affect, the gratitude group demonstrated increased reactivity to the stressor, reporting the CPT as significantly more aversive than the control condition (d = 0.46) and showing significantly greater increases in negative affect compared to the breath awareness, loving-kindness, and control groups (ds = 0.55, 0.60, 0.65, respectively). Greater gains in implicit positive affect following gratitude training predicted decreased post-stressor likability ratings of novel neutral faces compared to breath awareness, loving-kindness, and control groups (ds = - 0.39, -0.40, -0.33, respectively) as well. Moreover, the gratitude group was significantly less likely to donate time than the loving-kindness group in an ecologically valid opportunity to provide unrewarded support. These data suggest that different styles of contemplative practice may produce different effects in the context of brief, introductory practice and these differences may be heightened by stress. Implications for the study of contemplative practices are discussed.

With the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ) being the standard measure to assess psychological capital (PsyCap) in the context of organizations, this paper aims to broaden this domain-specific approach by introducing a measure with universal claim. Two studies were conducted to create and validate a German self-report scale (CPC-12) measuring PsyCap. We performed confirmatory factor analyses and correlations with other positive psychological constructs on the data of two German samples (N1 = 321; N2 = 202). The twelve-item CPC-12 exhibits the anticipated factorial structure with a very good model fit and associations to other constructs concur with previous findings with other measures of PsyCap.

Objectives The present study investigated whether hope and hopelessness are better conceptualized as a single construct of bipolar spectrum or two distinct constructs and whether hope can moderate the relationship between hopelessness and suicidal ideation. Methods Hope, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation were measured in a community sample of 2106 participants through a population-based household survey. Results Confirmatory factor analyses showed that a measurement model with separate, correlated second-order factors of hope and hopelessness provided a good fit to the data and was significantly better than that of the model collapsing hope and hopelessness into a single second-order factor. Negative binomial regression showed that hope and hopelessness interacted such that the effect of hopelessness on suicidal ideation was lower in individuals with higher hope than individuals with lower hope. Conclusions Hope and hopelessness are two distinct but correlated constructs. Hope can act as a resilience factor that buffers the impact of hopelessness on suicidal ideation. Inducing hope in people may be a promising avenue for suicide prevention.

It has recently been suggested that gratitude can benefit self-regulation by reducing impulsivity during economic decision making. We tested if comparable benefits of gratitude are observed for neural performance monitoring and conflict-driven self-control. In a pre-post design, 61 participants were randomly assigned to either a gratitude or happiness condition, and then performed a pre-induction flanker task. Subsequently, participants recalled an autobiographical event where they had felt grateful or happy, followed by a post-induction flanker task. Despite closely following existing protocols, participants in the gratitude condition did not report elevated gratefulness compared to the happy group. In regard to self-control, we found no association between gratitude--operationalized by experimental condition or as a continuous predictor--and any control metric, including flanker interference, post-error adjustments, or neural monitoring (the error-related negativity, ERN). Thus, while gratitude might increase economic patience, such benefits may not generalize to conflict-driven control processes.

In this research, the social behavior of the participants in a Prisoner's Dilemma laboratory game is explained on the basis of the quantal response equilibrium concept and the representation of the game in Markov strategies. In previous research, we demonstrated that social interaction during the experiment has a positive influence on cooperation, trust, and gratefulness. This research shows that the quantal response equilibrium concept agrees only with the results of experiments on cooperation in Prisoner's Dilemma prior to social interaction. However, quantal response equilibrium does not explain of participants' behavior after social interaction. As an alternative theoretical approach, an examination was conducted of iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game in Markov strategies. We built a totally mixed Nash equilibrium in this game; the equilibrium agrees with the results of the experiments both before and after social interaction.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174951.].

How is positive emotion associated with our ability to empathize with others? Extant research provides support for two competing predictions about this question. An empathy amplification hypothesis suggests positive emotion would be associated with greater empathy, as it often enhances other prosocial processes. A contrasting empathy attenuation hypothesis suggests positive emotion would be associated with lower empathy, because positive emotion promotes self-focused or antisocial behaviors. The present investigation tested these competing perspectives by examining associations between dispositional positive emotion and both subjective (i.e., self-report) and objective (i.e., task performance) measures of empathy. Findings revealed that although trait positive emotion was associated with increased subjective beliefs about empathic tendencies, it was associated with both increases and decreases in task-based empathic performance depending on the target’s emotional state. More specifically, trait positive emotion was linked to lower overall empathic accuracy toward a high-intensity negative target, but also a higher sensitivity to emotion upshifts (i.e., shifts in emotion from negative to positive) toward positive targets. This suggests that trait positive affect may be associated with decreased objective empathy in the context of mood incongruent (i.e., negative) emotional stimuli, but may increase some aspects of empathic performance in the context of mood congruent (i.e., positive) stimuli. Taken together, these findings suggest that trait positive emotion engenders a compelling subjective-objective gap regarding its association with empathy, in being related to a heightened perception of empathic tendencies, despite being linked to mixed abilities in regards to empathic performance. (Word count: 242).

Over the past fifteen years, positive psychology research has validated a set of happiness enhancing techniques. These techniques are relatively simple exercises that allow happiness seekers to mimic thoughts and behavior of naturally happy people, in order to increase their level of well-being. Because research has shown that the joint use of these exercises increases their effects, practitioners who want to help happiness seekers need validated interventions that combine several of these techniques. To meet this need, we have developed and tested an integrative intervention (Positive Emotion Regulation program - PER program) incorporating a number of validated techniques structured around a theoretical model: the Process Model of Positive Emotion Regulation. To test the effectiveness of this program and to identify its added value relative to existing interventions, 113 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to a 6-week positive emotion regulation pilot program, a loving-kindness meditation training program, or a wait-list control group. Results indicate that fewer participants dropped out from the PER program than from the Loving-Kindness Meditation training. Furthermore, subjects in the PER group showed a significant increase in subjective well-being and life satisfaction and a significant decrease in depression and physical symptoms when compared to controls. Our results suggest that the Process Model of Positive Emotion Regulation can be an effective option to organize and deliver positive integrative interventions. © 2014 Weytens et al.

The breadth of human generosity is unparalleled in the natural world, and much research has explored the mechanisms underlying and motivating human prosocial behavior. Recent work has focused on the spread of prosocial behavior within groups through paying-it-forward, a case of human prosociality in which a recipient of generosity pays a good deed forward to a third individual, rather than back to the original source of generosity. While research shows that human adults do indeed pay forward generosity, little is known about the origins of this behavior. Here, we show that both capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes in an identical testing paradigm. These results suggest that a cognitively simple mechanism present early in phylogeny and ontogeny leads to paying forward positive, as well as negative, outcomes.

The majority of prevention and intervention research in problem gambling (PG) has focused on identifying negative risk factors. However, not all at-risk individuals go on to develop anticipated disorders and many thrive in spite of them. In healthcare settings, PG and other disorders are typically conceptualized from the biomedical perspective that frame disorders as something negative residing within the individual and reduction in negativity is seen as success. Indeed, this problem-focused conceptualization may be adequate in many cases as reducing PG behaviour is undoubtedly an important outcome, but the focus on negativity alone is too narrow to capture the complexity of human behaviour. Hence, this study attempts to bridge the gap in literature by providing an evaluation of the predictive ability of the positive dispositions on problem gambling severity, gambling-related cognitions, and gambling urges. The positive psychological dispositions examined were curiosity, gratitude, hope, personal growth initiative, and mindfulness. Participants consisted of 801 Taiwanese Chinese students and community individuals (Mean age = 25.36 years). Higher levels of gratitude and hope have been found to predict lower PG, gambling-related cognitions, or gambling urges. Meanwhile, higher mindfulness predicted lower PG, but only among Chinese males. However, lower personal growth initiative predicted lower PG, gambling-related cognitions, and gambling urges. These analyses have small to medium effect sizes with significant predictions. Findings of this study have essential implications in understanding and treating Chinese problem gamblers. These positive dispositions should be addressed by mental health professionals in preventative and treatment programs among Chinese individuals. Further implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.