Gratidão e religiosidade em adolescentes universitários: um estudo correlacionado pautado na psicologia positiva

Abstract

Positive Psychology is a theoretical-methodological-interventive perspective which is in full development in current times. It is about a scientific approach which presents a new look at the traditional studies about human behavior. In contributing to the field of psychological health and well-being, this area investigates the role of a variety of positive psychological constructs favorable to development, among them gratitude and religiosity. Gratitude is developed during infancy and adolescence and it is in a context in which religiosity is recurrently present that this virtue is embedded with greater emphasis. In this direction, the goal of this present study is to verify the relation between gratitude and religiosity in a sampling of adolescents. To do this we counted on the participation of 204 university adolescents, the majority being women (65.8%) single (93.1%), Catholic (61.4%), from the middle class (60.4%), fairly religious (51.0%) with the average age of 19. These answered the Gratitude Questionnaire on the Duke Scale of Religiosity (DUREL) and sociodemographic questions. The Student t test analyses were carried out to compare independent groups and Pearson co-relation tests to evaluate the relationship between the variables. As results, a statistically significant pattern of co-relations was observed among the general factor of gratitude and the dimensions of religiosity. Gratitude was positively co-related with organizational religiosity (r = 0,19; p < 0,01), non-organizational religiosity (r = 0,22; p < 0,01) and intrinsic religiosity (r = 0,20; p < 0,01). On the other hand, the t test did not point out a significant difference between the sexes in relation to gratitude. As to the differences of averages between men and women on the variable religiosity, it was observed that the women presented higher points in comparison with men in intrinsic religiosity. Similar to this result, a marginally significant difference was observed between the averages of men and women in the dimension of non-organizational religiosity, t (204) = -1,68, p = 0,06. Differences between the sexes as to organizational religiosity were not verified in this sampling. In the same way, the differences between gratitude and religiosity considering the variables of social class, marital status and religion practiced by the participant were not significant. Faced with this framework, it is believed that the goals were reached. It is hoped, in this way, that this paper be presented as a complement to previously carried out studies, especially those that deal with religiosity in adolescence.