College provides various unique and influential opportunities for personal growth and development. Undergraduate students often face important decisions during college relating to their future career, current friendships, intimate relationships, religious affiliation, health choices and connection to family. Often, college is a time of “soul searching” where students actively develop a sense of who they are, who they want to be and what roles they will play in life. Many undergraduate students overcome the stress and challenges of daily college life by meeting new people, developing a plan for the future, and joining new clubs or activities. However, many students lack the drive to actively initiate personal growth. For instance, a number of students do not know how to make specific changes in their lives, lack a sense of future, do not know how to initiate change and fail to balance their lives. As a result, many students experience unnecessary stress and anxiety about the future and leave college without a clear sense of how to take charge of their lives. Therefore, it is important to examine the factors that influence whether a student initiates personal growth during college.

Throughout a typical day, an individual will experience thousands of brief interactions with other people (Rath and Clifton 2004). Particularly, undergraduate students interact with a wide variety of people including peers, faculty members, family members, mentors, co-workers and supervisors. The brief interactions experienced by students can either be positive, negative or neutral. It is believed that even brief positive interactions can drastically shape an individual’s life by encouraging healthy relationships, increasing productivity, and enhancing health and happiness (Rath and Clifton 2004). An emerging field, known as Positive Psychology, acknowledges the power of positive interactions and studies the positive aspects of daily life.

According to Sheldon and King (2001), Positive Psychology is the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the success and optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions. The goal of Positive Psychology is to examine how people feel joy, show altruism, increase personal growth and create a life worth living (Sheldon and King 2001).

Characteristically, the field of Psychology has focused on studying topics such as weakness, pathology and damage (Gable and Haidt 2005). Often, critics claim that Positive Psychology neglect to acknowledge the existence of negative or distressing aspects of life (Gable and Haidt 2005). Conversely, Positive Psychology does not ignore the existence of suffering, pain, weakness, damage and selfishness, but instead hopes to nurture what is best in life rather than always focusing on fixing what is broken (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). As a result, Positive Psychology hopes to move beyond the study of weakness by encouraging psychologists to study what is good in life (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) have called for psychologists to focus on studying work, education, insight, love, growth and play. It is believed that by examining the development of individual strengths one can build positive experiences and increase the frequency of positive emotions in an individual’s life.

Receiving recognition and praise represent a type of positive interaction between two or more individuals. An effortless “thank you” or “good job” may seem like a brief and simple gesture, but could play a vital role in creating positive emotions in a students’ life. Therefore, the smallest interactions may provide some of the most powerful effects on life satisfaction and the desire to improve one’s life (Rath and Clifton 2004). According to a comprehensive study by the Gallup Organization, employees throughout America have reported receiving little recognition and praise. Approximately 65% of Americans reported receiving no recognition or praise within the workplace (Rath and Clifton 2004). These statistics provided shocking evidence of the rarity of receiving recognition within a work environment. One of the basic purposes of this study was to examine the frequency that undergraduate students receive recognition and praise. It is hoped that the low frequency of recognition within the workplace does not also imply a low frequency of recognition within a collegiate setting.

Life satisfaction comprises another fundamental topic within the field of Positive Psychology. According to Seligman (2002), life satisfaction depends on using signature strengths to obtain contentment, pride and gratification within many areas of life. Zullig et al. (2005) defined five core dimensions of life satisfaction that play a particularly important role in collegiate life. Zullig et al. (2004) believed that measuring the perceived life satisfaction of college students in relation to family, friends, school, self and living environment would depict a comprehensive look at global life satisfaction during college. In previous research, Zullig et al. (2005) reported that college students have high levels of global and domain-specific life satisfaction.

In addition to recognition and life satisfaction, Positive Psychology also examines a concept referred to as personal growth initiative. Personal growth initiative describes the involvement of an individual on improving, growing and developing as a person (Robitscheck 1998). Personal growth initiative plays an important role during the transition from college into the working world. Throughout college, individuals must continuously push themselves to develop in preparation for the next step in their adult life. What causes some students to display higher levels of personal growth initiative than others? Many students appear to know how to change aspects of their lives to help them flourish, while other students lack these basic skills. Students displaying a high level of personal growth initiative should have a strong sense of direction in their life, know their role in life, and have an action plan for accomplishing specific goals in the future (Robitscheck 1998). College often forces students to make major life decisions relating to career choice, intimate relationships, friends and living environments. For many individuals college serves as one of the most important ways of develop personal growth initiative and independence to begin creating a meaningful life.

The power of positive recognition, praise, and life satisfaction not only appear to influence the optimal functioning of people in the present, but also encourage positive development in the future. Barabra L. Fredrickson wrote, “I argue that positive emotions also produce optimal functioning, not just within the present, pleasant moment, but over the long term as well” (2002, p. 85). Fredrickson developed the concept known as the “build and broaden” theory to explain how positive emotions successfully influence optimal functioning in the future (Fredrickson and Joiner 2002). The “broaden and build” theory refers to the way that positive emotions broaden an individual’s thought-action repertoire and encourage them to discover new ways to think or take action (Fredrickson and Joiner 2002). The “broaden and build” theory states that experiences of positive emotions encourage individuals to engage in their environment and try new activities. It also theorizes that people build positive psychological resilience over time to enhance their overall functioning in life (Fredrickson and Joiner 2002). The “broaden and build” theory served as a source of inspiration for this research. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between life satisfaction, recognition and personal growth initiative (as a measure of trying new activities) in a collegiate setting to examine the influence of positive experiences in and individual’s life.

A mediational model was hypothesized to describe the relationship between recognition, life satisfaction and personal growth initiative. The full mediational model hypothesized that the relationship between the frequency of recognition and personal growth initiative was mediated by life satisfaction. In other words, receiving positive recognition builds life satisfaction (or positive emotions using Fredrickson’s language), which broadens an individual’s personal growth initiative above and beyond a model that does not include life satisfaction as a mediator. In addition to analyzing the full mediational model, the current study also examined the individual components that make up the model. The study hypothesized that a positive relationship exists between each of the separate components of the model. First, the study hypothesized that a positive relationship exists between frequency of recognition and life satisfaction. Second, the study hypothesized that a positive relationship exists between life satisfaction and personal growth initiative. Finally, the study predicted that a positive relationship exists between frequency of recognition and personal growth initiative.

1 Methods

1.1 Participants

The current research project recruited 204 undergraduate students from a public mid-sized university located in the Midwest. Approximately, 53% (n = 109) of the participants were female, while 42% (n = 87) were male. The average age of the participants was 19 years old (M = 18.99, SD = .98). Ninety-four percent (n = 194) of the participants were Caucasian and 52% (n = 107) of the students reported first year status. The remainder of the population consisted of 32% (n = 66) sophomores, 9.7% (n = 20) juniors and 5% (n = 10) seniors. Recruitment of participants took place from students enrolled in Introductory Psychology courses. Despite recruiting all of the participants from a Psychology course, the sample contained a wide variety of academic majors. The average GPA of participants was 3.05. Only 30 students (14.7%) reported psychology as their major. The remainder of the population included a diverse selection of majors such as business, zoology, exercise science and literature. The collection of data occurred during the fall semester of 2005. Each participant received research credit for completing the study. The research credit helped students fulfill a major requirement of all Introductory Psychology courses. Race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and gender were not a factor in determining participation in the study. The institutional review board of the principal investigator approved the study protocol prior to initiation of the study. A complete data summary of the sample demographics can be found in Table 1.

Table 1 Sample demographics
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1.2 Apparatus

1.2.1 Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS)

The BMSLSS assessed five domains of students’ life satisfaction. The five domains included measurements of satisfaction with family, friends, self, school and living environment (Zullig et al. 2005). Each of the five domains used in the scale were selected from a 40-item Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (Huebner 1994). Each question required participants to rate their life satisfaction using a six-point Likert scale known as the Delighted-Terrible Scale (Andrews and Withey 1976). The Delighted-Terrible Scale categorizes responses into terrible, unhappy, mostly dissatisfied, mixed (equally satisfied and dissatisfied), mostly satisfied and delighted (Andrews and Withey 1976). For example, students used the Delighted-Terrible Scale to respond to the question, “I would describe my satisfaction with my friends as...” The remaining four domains of life satisfaction followed a similar model as this example question. Zullig et al. (2005) reported adequate reliability and validity for the BMSLSS among college-aged students. The internal consistency of the BMSLSS was also estimated by a Cronbach’s alpha. For the present study, the alpha coefficient of the scale was .79 (similar to the .78 reported in Zullig et al. 2005), which suggests a high level of internal consistency.

1.2.2 Recognition and Praise Measurement

A measurement of recognition and praise was assessed by a two item scale developed principally for the current study. Items were chosen to reflect the young age of the participants (primarily first year students) and to be consistent with the extended adolescence literature. First, students responded to the question, “How often do you receive recognition and praise from family members?” Then, overall frequency of recognition and praise was measured by asking, “Overall, how often do you receive recognition and praise?” The measure used a five-point Likert scale allowing responses such as never, rarely, sometimes, often and always. A Cronbach’s alpha estimated the internal consistency of the scale as .74. Therefore, this alpha correlation implies a moderate level of internal consistency. Responses to these questions were compared to qualitative questions about praise and recognition and were found to be consistent (see the authors for more information).

1.2.3 Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS)

The PGIS consisted of nine items used to report a student’s deliberate contribution towards changing and developing as a person (Robitscheck 1998). Response items followed a six-point Likert scale including answers such as definitely disagree, mostly disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, mostly agree and definitely agree (Robitscheck 1998). The nine item measurements included the statements: “I know how to change specific things that I want to change in my life,” “I have a good sense of where I am headed in my life,” “If I want to change something in my life, I initiate the transition process,” “I can choose the role that I want to have in a group,” “I know what I need to do to get started toward reaching my goals,” “I have a specific action plan to help me reach my goals,” “I take charge of my life,” “I know what my unique contribution to the world might be,” and “I have a plan for making my life more balanced.” Evidence has shown that the PGIS displays a positive relationship with psychological well-being, but a negative relationship with psychological distress (Robitscheck 1998). Previous research has concluded that the PGIS has strong reliability and validity (Robitscheck 1998). An estimate of internal consistency of .89 was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha.

1.3 Procedure

During the fall of 2005, undergraduate students voluntarily completed a brief questionnaire measuring life satisfaction, personal growth and overall frequency of recognition during college. Upon arrival, participants were educated on the purpose and guidelines of the research and asked to provide informed consent before beginning the questionnaire. Then, the questionnaires were dispersed and additional instructions were given to ensure that each participant understood the directions for completing the study. The survey took no more than thirty minutes to complete. Demographic information such as year in school, age, gender, race, and major were also collected from participants completing the questionnaire. All of responses collected from the participants remained entirely confidential and stored in secure filing cabinet. Throughout the duration of the study, participants were given the opportunity to leave if they experienced any form of discomfort. After completing the questionnaire, participants were thanked for volunteering and thoroughly debriefed.

2 Results

A mediational model was proposed to determine whether perceived life satisfaction mediates the relationship between the amount of recognition undergraduate students receive and a students’ active involvement in changing and developing as a person. Structural Equation Modeling was used to assess the mediational model and analyze the data. Baron and Kenny (1986) defined a mediator as a variable that explains the relation between a predictor and an outcome. Therefore, life satisfaction was hypothesized as the mediating variable used to explain the relationship between receiving recognition and developing personal growth initiative. According to Baron and Kenny (1986) and Frazier et al. (2004), four preconditions must be met in order to accept that the mediational model is appropriate for the data. First, a significant relationship must exist between frequency of recognition (Independent Variable) and personal growth initiative (Dependent Variable). Second, a significant relationship must exist between amount of recognition (Independent Variable) and perceived life satisfaction (Mediational Variable). Third, a significant relationship must exist between perceived life satisfaction (Mediational Variable) and personal growth initiative (Dependent Variable). Fourth, when the measurement of perceived life satisfaction is controlled, the relationship between frequency of recognition and personal growth initiative significantly decreases (Baron and Kenny 1986; Frazier et al. 2004).

Descriptive statistics for personal growth initiative, perceived life satisfaction and frequency of recognition appear in Table 2. Results for the frequency of recognition and praise reported by college students from family and overall within college are reported in Tables 3 and 4, respectively. The average life satisfaction for family, friends, school, self and living environment were positively skewed. These findings matched previous results obtained by the BMSLSS (Zullig et al. 2005).

Table 2 Descriptive statistics for study variables
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Table 3 Frequency of recognition and praise from family members
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Table 4 Overall frequency of recognition and praise
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All four of the preconditions outlined by Baron and Kenny (1986) and Frazier et al. (2004) were supported. The Pearson correlation coefficients for each of the variables appear in Table 5. All of the variables (perceived life satisfaction, personal growth initiative and frequency of recognition) displayed a significant positive correlation with each other (p < .01) and ranged from r = .69 to r = .22. All of the recognition and personal growth initiative variables displayed a significant positive association with the mediating variable (perceived life satisfaction) (r = .53 to r = .17, p < .05), with the exceptions of ‘I know what my unique contribution to the world might be’ (r = .12, p = .082) and ‘I have a plan for making my life more balanced’ (r = .10, p = .15). The correlation between the independent variable (frequency of recognition) and the dependent variable (personal growth initiative) also reported significantly positive correlations (r = .14 to r = .37, p < .05), with the exception of the correlation between ‘How often do you receive recognition and praise from family members?’ with ‘I have a plan for making my life more balanced’ (r = .10, p = .14). Furthermore, the path from each latent construct (recognition to perceived life satisfaction to personal growth initiative) showed significant relationships. The final relationship to consider held perceived life satisfaction constant and looked at the relationship between recognition and personal growth initiative. When life satisfaction, the mediator, entered the model, it significantly decreased the relationship between recognition and personal growth initiative.

Table 5 Intercorrelations among study variables
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Next, the mediational model was tested using Mplus version 2.0 (Muthen and Muthen 1998). Four models were assessed using four specific criteria. The criteria used to assess the models included examining the theoretical implications of the model, the parsimony of the model, a chi-square goodness of fit, and interpreting descriptive fit indices (Comparative Fit Index: CFI and Tuker–Lewis Index: TLI). A non-significant chi-square suggests that the data does not significantly differ from the hypotheses. Therefore, a non-significant chi-square is desired to show that the model fits the data. High values for the descriptive fit indices, CFI and TLI, will also indicate a well fitting model (Hu and Bentler 1999).

The first structural model examined the relationship between the independent variable (frequency of recognition) and the dependent variable (personal growth initiative). The first structural model was found to fit the data well, χ2 (n = 204, 43) = 102.75, CFI = .93, TLI = .91. The second structural model assessed the relationship between the independent variable (frequency of recognition) and the mediator (life satisfaction). The second structural model fit the data moderately well, χ2 (n = 204, 13) = 78.27, CFI = .85, TLI = .75. The third structural model addressed the relationship between the mediator (life satisfaction) and the dependent variable (personal growth initiative). In addition, the third structural model had appropriate fit indices, χ2 (n = 204, 76) = 176.15, CFI = .91, TLI = .89. The fourth model is presented in Fig. 1 and addresses the full mediational model. The full mediational model fit the data reasonably well, χ2 (n = 204, 101) = 259.20, CFI = .88, TLI = .86. When adding the latent mediator, the direct path from the independent variable to the dependent variable became non-significant thereby fulfilling the requirements for a mediational model.

Fig. 1
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Hypothesized mediational model

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When examining the nested models using a chi-square difference test, the full meditational model does not significantly improve upon the simpler models. While statistically it does not improve on the previous models, it is retained due to the micro fit indices and its congruence with theory.

3 Conclusions

In conclusion, the frequency of recognition and praise received by college students and their level of personal growth initiative is mediated by perceived life satisfaction. The results of this research can be used to make important implications about ways to improve personal growth initiative during college. Life satisfaction appears to play an essential role between receiving recognition and increasing the contribution that students display in changing and developing a meaningful life. This implies that a simple gesture such as recognizing hard work can increase life satisfaction and in turn encourage personal growth. This observation corresponds to Barbara L. Fredrickson quote that states “Through experiences of positive emotions, then, people transform themselves becoming more creative, knowledgeable, resilient, socially integrated and healthy individuals” (2002, p. 90). Therefore, the positive emotions that result from recognition and praise appear to “build” life satisfaction and “broaden” an individual’s personal growth initiative. In other words, perceived life satisfaction drives the relationship between recognition and personal growth initiative.

Another important result derived from the research examines the frequency of recognition and praise received by college students. Only one student reported never receiving recognition from family members and only three students stated that overall they do not receive recognition during college. The highest percent of students reported that they often receive recognition and praise from family members and sometimes receive recognition from their overall college experience. In comparison to the 65% of Americans who reported receiving no praise or recognition within the workplace, will college students experience a substantial drop in the amount of positive feedback they receive once they transition out of college? Consequently, will the reduced exposure to praise and recognition impact how each individual continues to develop in the future? How can students prepare for a drop in the amount of recognition and praise while sustaining high life satisfaction and high personal growth initiative? Future research should examine ways to either increase recognition in the workplace or prepare students to adjust to lower levels of positive feedback as an adult. Ultimately, a goal of Positive Psychology should be to nurture ways that increase the frequency of recognition both in a collegiate setting and in the workplace so that both working environments express high levels of positive feedback.

Several limitations may have influenced the results of the study. For example, the sample was primarily composed of Caucasian students from a public mid-sized university located in the Midwest. Therefore, future research should examine undergraduate students from a variety of locations with different cultural and racial backgrounds. It is hoped that high life satisfaction, recognition and personal growth initiative will be found for variety of different individuals from different backgrounds. In addition, the majority of the sample was composed of underclassmen. It would be interesting to compare the life satisfaction, personal growth initiative and frequency of recognition for underclassmen versus upperclassmen. Upperclassmen may have different views on college life compared to underclassmen. Therefore, these students may report different levels of recognition, life satisfaction and personal growth initiative.

Overall, the results of this study provide meaningful information that can add to the emerging field of Positive Psychology. The relationships between recognition, life satisfaction and personal growth initiative help support the idea that psychologists do not always have to focus on the negative aspects of life, but can also find important implications by studying what makes life worth living. Identifying ways to increase recognition and praise during college may help increase life satisfaction and in turn broaden a student’s drive for personal growth. Colleges and universities should attempt to identify the areas that provide undergraduate students the most recognition and positive feedback. Then, the institutions could take detailed notes about the successful methods of encouraging students and apply similar techniques to areas within the university or college that do not provide enough recognition and praise to students. It is also important for universities and colleges to give financial support to activities and clubs that promote high amounts of recognition and praise for the accomplishments of their members. Supporting the activities and clubs that foster positive feedback will ultimately help the overall functioning of the institutional by increasing the life satisfaction of the students.

Higher education serves as an important time to develop a sense of meaning in life and support personal growth. Therefore, even small increases in the amount of recognition and praise may improve the atmosphere of the institution by developing students who create successful plans for future success. Rath and Clifton (2004) once stated, “Positive emotions are not trivial luxuries, but instead may be critical necessities for optimal functioning”. The results of this study support the beliefs of Rath and Clifton by showing how positive emotions increase by receiving recognition which positively influence life satisfaction and encourage students to have a strong sense of where their life is headed, know their role in life, and have an action plan for accomplishing specific goals in the future. Do not overlook the power of positive recognition it may just be the key to optimal functioning and success.