Gratitude • Second, implicit in the experience of gratitude is the recipient's theory of
• Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu thought gratitude is a highly mind from which he or she infers another's well-meaning intention, resulting
prized human disposition. The Buddha suggested that thankfulness is a in one's feeling loved and esteemed (see Shelton, 1990).
core aspect of the noble person.
• Cicero (Pro Plancio) held that "gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, Gratitude in Emotion Theory
but the parent of all the others." • Appraisal theorists, on the other hand, are more inclined to include
• Christian devotional writers such as Thomas a Kempis, Thomas Aquinas, gratitude within their framework of emotion.
and Bernard of Clair vaux expounded on the virtues of gratitude and the • Weiner's (1985) attribution model emphasizes causal appraisals about
sinfulness of ingratitude. events as the main determinants of emotional responses.
• United Nations General Assembly declared 2000 as the International Year • There are two sets of emotions:
of Thanksgiving. 1. outcome-dependent - General affective reactions of happiness
and unhappiness
Concept of gratitude from Social scientists (1930s) 2. attribution-dependent -secondary emotional reactions of, pride,
1. Some considered gratitude to be fundamental, vital for the maintenance of anger, or gratitude follow specific patterns of causal attribution.
reciprocity obligations between people
2. Some considered it evolutionarily adaptive because it forces people to Goal-based model of appraisal
maintain a pro social orientation in response to altruistic behavior. Ortony, Clore, and Collins (1988)
3. Psychological research has generally been dominated by a focus on vice • The consequences of events are appraised for their relevance to one's
rather than virtue gratitude, along with other phenomena related to the good ongoing goal pursuits.
life, has been neglected. • Representational systems consisting of goals, standards and mediate
4. Recent research verified that common assumptions about gratitude, that between objective events and the attendant emotional reactions.
expressing and experiencing it can bring peace of mind, more satisfying • In their framework, gratitude is a compound of admiration and joy: It
personal relationships, and happiness in general-may contain some ). consists of approving of someone else's praiseworthy actions and feeling
joy for the desirability of the outcome.
Adam Smith on gratitude as an in-depth psychological treatments • The variables that affect the intensity of gratitude are
• as a basic and necessary emotion that promotes social stability by guiding - the degree of judged praiseworthiness,
people to respond to others' goodwill toward them. - the deviation of the agent's action from role-based expectations.
• offered a remarkably sophisticated social-cognitive analysis of the - the desirability of the event.
situational factors that encourage the experience of gratitude. • The main contribution of this model is that it specifies conditions under
• Beneficiaries are more likely to feel and express gratitude to benefactors which gratitude is and is not likely to occur and calls attention to nuances
who intend to benefit them (whether they are successful), succeed in that might remain undetected in other emotion based frameworks.
benefiting them, and are able to sympathize with the beneficiary's feelings
of gratitude. Gratitude in the class of empathic emotions
Lazarus and Lazarus (1994)
Gratitude • Gratitude along with compassion, it depends on the capacity to empathize
• As an emotional response to life: is derived from the Latin gratia, meaning with others.
grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. • The dramatic plot for gratitude is: the appreciation of an altruistic gift.
• All derivatives from this Latin root "have to do with kindness, generousness, - Both giving and receiving of the gift involve empathy because:
gifts, the beauty of giving and receiving, or getting something for nothing" - one must sense the donor's positive intention, the donor must
(Pruyser, 1976, p. 69). sense the need of the recipient.
• As a psychological state: gratitude is a felt sense of wonder,
thankfulness, and appreciation for life. It can be expressed toward others, Empirical evidence that gratitude can indeed be regarded as a moral
as well as toward impersonal (nature) or nonhuman sources (God, emotion:
animals). 1. The experience of gratitude results from acknowledging the gratuitous role
• Roots in world's religious traditions: great monotheistic religions of the that sources of social support may play in propagating beneficial outcomes
world, the concept of gratitude permeates texts, prayers, and teachings. in our lives.
• GRATITUDE: is at the core of spiritual and religious experience. 2. The experience of gratitude may also help us reciprocate kindness toward
• Gratitude can also represent a broader attitude toward life the tendency to those who have been kind to us.
see all of life as a GIFT. 3. Expressing gratitude to people who have been kind to us can validate their
• Gratitude thus has various meanings and can be conceptualized at several efforts and help reinforce such behavior in the future.
levels of analysis ranging from momentary affect to long-term dispositions. Therefore, the experience and expression of gratitude is chiefly suited to
maximizing positive outcomes in relationships and establishing as well as
Fritz Heider, Social psychologist preserving supportive networks of relationships
• people feel grateful when receiving a benefit that intentionally resulted from
another's action. Gratitude as Virtue:
• As a consequence, the Heiderian perspective sharpened the focus on the Insights From Moral Philosophy
perceived intentionality of the sender as a critical element in shaping the • Classical Hebrew, Christian, or Graeco-Roman writings, gratitude is
recipient's sense of gratitude. viewed as a highly prized human disposition, or virtue.
• The first is an interpersonal context, for gratitude is an interpersonal • Virtues, in essence, are good habits that connote excellence in
emotion, which precludes it from being directed toward oneself. personal character.
, • Virtues have been defined as "character traits that a human being • Research demonstrates that gratitude can also signal that a person
needs to flourish or to live well" has been treated in a surprisingly prosocial way by a relationship
partner. People appear to experience the most gratitude in response
Gratitude as Virtue: Thomas Aquinas to benefactors who provide unexpected benefits to the beneficiary.
• Gratitude was understood as a secondary virtue associated with the o benefits received in the context of close communal
primary virtue of justice. relationships
• The Thomistic notion of justice entails rendering to others their right o beneficiaries may perceive benefits from people higher in
or due, and in accord with some measure of basic equality. relative social status or power (e.g., teachers) as more
• Gratitude is a motivator of altruistic action, according to Aquinas, deliberate than those providedby someone of similar
because it entails thanking one's benefactors and generating a fitting status or power thereby leading a recipient to express
and appropriate response. more gratitude.
Beyond the Self: Interpersonal Consequences of Gratitude- gratitude can be Gratitude as a Moral Motive
conceived of as a vital civic virtue. • ›Research by Peterson and Stewart (1996) showed that older adult women
Gratitude who were most cognizant of having been influenced by mentors during their
• a moral affect with empathy at its foundation. college years (17 years earlier) were more motivated (r = 0.39) to be
• The benefactor's giving is interpreted by the recipient as freely generative (i.e., nurturing toward other
offered, and with that comes the acknowledgment that such offering people and society) in midlife.
might prove costly to or incur hardship for the benefactor • >Graham (1988) found more direct evidence of a positive correlation
between children's expected gratitude for being voluntarily chosen to a
Gratitude as a moral affect McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson team by a captain and the likelihood that they would reciprocate by giving
(2001) the captain a gift (rs became stronger with age, ranging from 0.34for the 5-
• because it largely results from and stimulates behavior that is to 6-year-olds, to 0.72 for the 10- to 11-year-olds).
motivated by a concern for another person's well-being— referring to
moral in a local sense rather than an absolute sense because a Gratitude as a Moral Reinforcer
recipient may perceive a gift to augment • Research has shown that expressions of gratitude can;
• his or her well-being even though it might not be moral or beneficial • reinforce kidney donation (Bernstein & Simmons, 1974) volunteering
for other parties. behavior toward people with HIV/AIDS (Bennett, Ross, &Sunderland,
• gratitude is distinctly operant when the individual is the recipient of 1996), field experiments have shown that mere thank-you notes can: ring
prosocial behavior. increased tips from customers (Rind & Bordia, 1995) higher response rates
• Moral barometer Like a moral barometer, the emotion of gratitude on mail surveys (Maheux, Legault, & Lambert, 1989), Laboratory
indicates a change in the individual's social relationships; recipients experiments likewise corroborated these findings, showing that:
come to regard benefactors as moral agents for having augmented benefactors who were thanked for their efforts were willing to give more
their personal well-being. and work harder for others, compared to those who were not thanked for
their efforts
• Moral motive (prompting grateful people to behave prosocially
themselves); and, when people express their grateful emotions in
Ingratitude as Vice
words or actions, because its experience motivates recipients to treat
kindness with kindness or inhibit destructive behaviors toward a • •Ingratitude is the failure to acknowledge the beneficence of others.
benefactor either immediately or in the future. Throughout recorded history, the ungrateful person has been the
recipient of harsh criticism.
• Moral reinforcerthat increases the likelihood of future benevolent
actions- the expression of gratitude serves to increase the chances • Tiruvalluvar: "There is salvation to those guilty of any wicked deed;
that a benefactor will respond with benevolence again in the future, but there is no life for those who are ungrateful."
just as the expression of ingratitude can instill anger in benefactors • Cicero: "Men detest one forgetful of a benefit."
and discourage future pro social behavior (but McCulloughet al., • Kant: "Ingratitude... is the essence of vileness."
2002, caution that such expressions of gratitude may not always be • Seneca: "Ingratitude ... is an abomination."
pure, in that they can also be driven by self-presentation needs).
Gabriel (1998)
Gratitude as a Moral Barometer • a type of insult, equivalent to stereotyping, scapegoating, rudeness,
• Grateful emotions and behaviors typically result from the perception and other interpersonally destructive defects.
that another person has intended to promote your well being, • Clinical viewpoint: ingratitude can be viewed as a characterological
indicating gratitude's function as a moral barometer (McCullough et defect.
al., 2001). • Utilizing a psychodynamic perspective, Bergler (1945) described the
• McCullough et al., 2001, also point out that people could experience psychopathology of ingratitude and speculated on the conscious and
gratitude for benefits they perceive as being conferred by nonhuman unconscious reasons for its occurrence (e.g., impugning the
causal agents [e.g., God, fate, or some other intentional force as well generous motives of their benefactor).
as for benefits based in counterfactual thinking [i.e., when things
could easily have been worse]. ENVY = UNGRATEFUL
• In general, people are more grateful for benefits deemed costly to the • The core problem with envy is a non awareness of the blessings that
benefactor, but less grateful when the benefactor was responsible for one is consistently surrounded by (Bonder, 997).
the circumstances that created he need for the benefit in the first
place (Okamoto & Robinson, 1997).
• Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu thought gratitude is a highly mind from which he or she infers another's well-meaning intention, resulting
prized human disposition. The Buddha suggested that thankfulness is a in one's feeling loved and esteemed (see Shelton, 1990).
core aspect of the noble person.
• Cicero (Pro Plancio) held that "gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, Gratitude in Emotion Theory
but the parent of all the others." • Appraisal theorists, on the other hand, are more inclined to include
• Christian devotional writers such as Thomas a Kempis, Thomas Aquinas, gratitude within their framework of emotion.
and Bernard of Clair vaux expounded on the virtues of gratitude and the • Weiner's (1985) attribution model emphasizes causal appraisals about
sinfulness of ingratitude. events as the main determinants of emotional responses.
• United Nations General Assembly declared 2000 as the International Year • There are two sets of emotions:
of Thanksgiving. 1. outcome-dependent - General affective reactions of happiness
and unhappiness
Concept of gratitude from Social scientists (1930s) 2. attribution-dependent -secondary emotional reactions of, pride,
1. Some considered gratitude to be fundamental, vital for the maintenance of anger, or gratitude follow specific patterns of causal attribution.
reciprocity obligations between people
2. Some considered it evolutionarily adaptive because it forces people to Goal-based model of appraisal
maintain a pro social orientation in response to altruistic behavior. Ortony, Clore, and Collins (1988)
3. Psychological research has generally been dominated by a focus on vice • The consequences of events are appraised for their relevance to one's
rather than virtue gratitude, along with other phenomena related to the good ongoing goal pursuits.
life, has been neglected. • Representational systems consisting of goals, standards and mediate
4. Recent research verified that common assumptions about gratitude, that between objective events and the attendant emotional reactions.
expressing and experiencing it can bring peace of mind, more satisfying • In their framework, gratitude is a compound of admiration and joy: It
personal relationships, and happiness in general-may contain some ). consists of approving of someone else's praiseworthy actions and feeling
joy for the desirability of the outcome.
Adam Smith on gratitude as an in-depth psychological treatments • The variables that affect the intensity of gratitude are
• as a basic and necessary emotion that promotes social stability by guiding - the degree of judged praiseworthiness,
people to respond to others' goodwill toward them. - the deviation of the agent's action from role-based expectations.
• offered a remarkably sophisticated social-cognitive analysis of the - the desirability of the event.
situational factors that encourage the experience of gratitude. • The main contribution of this model is that it specifies conditions under
• Beneficiaries are more likely to feel and express gratitude to benefactors which gratitude is and is not likely to occur and calls attention to nuances
who intend to benefit them (whether they are successful), succeed in that might remain undetected in other emotion based frameworks.
benefiting them, and are able to sympathize with the beneficiary's feelings
of gratitude. Gratitude in the class of empathic emotions
Lazarus and Lazarus (1994)
Gratitude • Gratitude along with compassion, it depends on the capacity to empathize
• As an emotional response to life: is derived from the Latin gratia, meaning with others.
grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. • The dramatic plot for gratitude is: the appreciation of an altruistic gift.
• All derivatives from this Latin root "have to do with kindness, generousness, - Both giving and receiving of the gift involve empathy because:
gifts, the beauty of giving and receiving, or getting something for nothing" - one must sense the donor's positive intention, the donor must
(Pruyser, 1976, p. 69). sense the need of the recipient.
• As a psychological state: gratitude is a felt sense of wonder,
thankfulness, and appreciation for life. It can be expressed toward others, Empirical evidence that gratitude can indeed be regarded as a moral
as well as toward impersonal (nature) or nonhuman sources (God, emotion:
animals). 1. The experience of gratitude results from acknowledging the gratuitous role
• Roots in world's religious traditions: great monotheistic religions of the that sources of social support may play in propagating beneficial outcomes
world, the concept of gratitude permeates texts, prayers, and teachings. in our lives.
• GRATITUDE: is at the core of spiritual and religious experience. 2. The experience of gratitude may also help us reciprocate kindness toward
• Gratitude can also represent a broader attitude toward life the tendency to those who have been kind to us.
see all of life as a GIFT. 3. Expressing gratitude to people who have been kind to us can validate their
• Gratitude thus has various meanings and can be conceptualized at several efforts and help reinforce such behavior in the future.
levels of analysis ranging from momentary affect to long-term dispositions. Therefore, the experience and expression of gratitude is chiefly suited to
maximizing positive outcomes in relationships and establishing as well as
Fritz Heider, Social psychologist preserving supportive networks of relationships
• people feel grateful when receiving a benefit that intentionally resulted from
another's action. Gratitude as Virtue:
• As a consequence, the Heiderian perspective sharpened the focus on the Insights From Moral Philosophy
perceived intentionality of the sender as a critical element in shaping the • Classical Hebrew, Christian, or Graeco-Roman writings, gratitude is
recipient's sense of gratitude. viewed as a highly prized human disposition, or virtue.
• The first is an interpersonal context, for gratitude is an interpersonal • Virtues, in essence, are good habits that connote excellence in
emotion, which precludes it from being directed toward oneself. personal character.
, • Virtues have been defined as "character traits that a human being • Research demonstrates that gratitude can also signal that a person
needs to flourish or to live well" has been treated in a surprisingly prosocial way by a relationship
partner. People appear to experience the most gratitude in response
Gratitude as Virtue: Thomas Aquinas to benefactors who provide unexpected benefits to the beneficiary.
• Gratitude was understood as a secondary virtue associated with the o benefits received in the context of close communal
primary virtue of justice. relationships
• The Thomistic notion of justice entails rendering to others their right o beneficiaries may perceive benefits from people higher in
or due, and in accord with some measure of basic equality. relative social status or power (e.g., teachers) as more
• Gratitude is a motivator of altruistic action, according to Aquinas, deliberate than those providedby someone of similar
because it entails thanking one's benefactors and generating a fitting status or power thereby leading a recipient to express
and appropriate response. more gratitude.
Beyond the Self: Interpersonal Consequences of Gratitude- gratitude can be Gratitude as a Moral Motive
conceived of as a vital civic virtue. • ›Research by Peterson and Stewart (1996) showed that older adult women
Gratitude who were most cognizant of having been influenced by mentors during their
• a moral affect with empathy at its foundation. college years (17 years earlier) were more motivated (r = 0.39) to be
• The benefactor's giving is interpreted by the recipient as freely generative (i.e., nurturing toward other
offered, and with that comes the acknowledgment that such offering people and society) in midlife.
might prove costly to or incur hardship for the benefactor • >Graham (1988) found more direct evidence of a positive correlation
between children's expected gratitude for being voluntarily chosen to a
Gratitude as a moral affect McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson team by a captain and the likelihood that they would reciprocate by giving
(2001) the captain a gift (rs became stronger with age, ranging from 0.34for the 5-
• because it largely results from and stimulates behavior that is to 6-year-olds, to 0.72 for the 10- to 11-year-olds).
motivated by a concern for another person's well-being— referring to
moral in a local sense rather than an absolute sense because a Gratitude as a Moral Reinforcer
recipient may perceive a gift to augment • Research has shown that expressions of gratitude can;
• his or her well-being even though it might not be moral or beneficial • reinforce kidney donation (Bernstein & Simmons, 1974) volunteering
for other parties. behavior toward people with HIV/AIDS (Bennett, Ross, &Sunderland,
• gratitude is distinctly operant when the individual is the recipient of 1996), field experiments have shown that mere thank-you notes can: ring
prosocial behavior. increased tips from customers (Rind & Bordia, 1995) higher response rates
• Moral barometer Like a moral barometer, the emotion of gratitude on mail surveys (Maheux, Legault, & Lambert, 1989), Laboratory
indicates a change in the individual's social relationships; recipients experiments likewise corroborated these findings, showing that:
come to regard benefactors as moral agents for having augmented benefactors who were thanked for their efforts were willing to give more
their personal well-being. and work harder for others, compared to those who were not thanked for
their efforts
• Moral motive (prompting grateful people to behave prosocially
themselves); and, when people express their grateful emotions in
Ingratitude as Vice
words or actions, because its experience motivates recipients to treat
kindness with kindness or inhibit destructive behaviors toward a • •Ingratitude is the failure to acknowledge the beneficence of others.
benefactor either immediately or in the future. Throughout recorded history, the ungrateful person has been the
recipient of harsh criticism.
• Moral reinforcerthat increases the likelihood of future benevolent
actions- the expression of gratitude serves to increase the chances • Tiruvalluvar: "There is salvation to those guilty of any wicked deed;
that a benefactor will respond with benevolence again in the future, but there is no life for those who are ungrateful."
just as the expression of ingratitude can instill anger in benefactors • Cicero: "Men detest one forgetful of a benefit."
and discourage future pro social behavior (but McCulloughet al., • Kant: "Ingratitude... is the essence of vileness."
2002, caution that such expressions of gratitude may not always be • Seneca: "Ingratitude ... is an abomination."
pure, in that they can also be driven by self-presentation needs).
Gabriel (1998)
Gratitude as a Moral Barometer • a type of insult, equivalent to stereotyping, scapegoating, rudeness,
• Grateful emotions and behaviors typically result from the perception and other interpersonally destructive defects.
that another person has intended to promote your well being, • Clinical viewpoint: ingratitude can be viewed as a characterological
indicating gratitude's function as a moral barometer (McCullough et defect.
al., 2001). • Utilizing a psychodynamic perspective, Bergler (1945) described the
• McCullough et al., 2001, also point out that people could experience psychopathology of ingratitude and speculated on the conscious and
gratitude for benefits they perceive as being conferred by nonhuman unconscious reasons for its occurrence (e.g., impugning the
causal agents [e.g., God, fate, or some other intentional force as well generous motives of their benefactor).
as for benefits based in counterfactual thinking [i.e., when things
could easily have been worse]. ENVY = UNGRATEFUL
• In general, people are more grateful for benefits deemed costly to the • The core problem with envy is a non awareness of the blessings that
benefactor, but less grateful when the benefactor was responsible for one is consistently surrounded by (Bonder, 997).
the circumstances that created he need for the benefit in the first
place (Okamoto & Robinson, 1997).
