Auteur: Dr. Lilian Jans-Beken

Following my blog post about what gratitude is, a follower asked what the importance of gratitude is for the giver. That is an interesting question that I want to answer in the blog post below.

Evolution

Gratitude fulfills an evolutionary need of the giver. Darwin (1889) wrote in The Descent of Man: “… for we are led by the hope of receiving good in return to perform acts of sympathetic kindness to others.” If our hope for something good from the recipient is not fulfilled, then we think of the other of being ungrateful.

Reciprocal altruism

Why people are willing to give something to another person is attributed to reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971). Reciprocal altruism means that someone is willing to give, even if there are costs associated with this giving. They would do this because they hope that these costs might pay off, now or in the future, if the giver is in a situation where they need help. This allows the beneficiary to give something back to the person who previously offered the help.

Moral emotion

Gratitude is a moral emotion. Moral emotions are feelings that have to do with behavior and situations that we as people think are right and wrong. Is the behavior of the other person right or wrong? Does someone trespass a moral norm? Do we see that another person is hurting? In these cases, we feel emotions such as gratitude, compassion, guilt and regret. We will try to do something to turn the bad into something good.

There are three moral functions of gratitude. The first two are moral functions for the beneficiary. First, gratitude functions as a moral barometer. The beneficiary realizes that he has received something from another person. The second moral function of gratitude is a motivating function. If someone has received something, there is a need to give something back to the giver (McCullough et al., 2001). This can also be someone else then the giver; gratitude activates (Jans-Beken 2019).

The third moral function is important for the giver. If gratitude is expressed, then this gratitude ensures that the giver feels acknowledged. So, expressing gratitude is important. As a result, the giver is more inclined to do something for another person in return (McCullough et al., 2001). The giver does not necessarily have to give something back to the same person but can also give something to a completely different person. This is called pay-it-forward or upstream reciprocity. In this way, gratitude spreads prosocial behavior within a group of individuals (Nowak & Roch, 2007).

Expressing gratitude

The giver certainly has his need or reason to do something for someone else, and it is therefore important to express our gratitude. As William Arthur Ward said: “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it, is like wrapping a gift and not giving it”. Expressing gratitude ensures that the ripples called gratitude continue to spread.

Literature

• Darwin, C. (1889). The Descent of Man. Boston: D. Appleton and Company 
• Jans-Beken, L. G. P. J. (2019). Een zoektocht naar dankbaarheid. Oudorp: Jans-Beken Publishing.
• McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Larson, D. B. (2001). Is Gratitude a Moral Affect? Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 249-266. 
• Nowak, M. A., & Roch, S. (2007). Upstream reciprocity and the evolution of gratitude. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 274(1610), 605–610.
• Trivers, R. L. (1971). The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57.a

We say ’thank you’ in passing when someone keeps a door open for us. We feel intense gratitude when someone saves our lives. But what is gratitude? What has science to say about that?

Emotion

Gratitude is a social emotion with a positive valence, and it is occurring together with other positive emotions such as cheerfulness and satisfaction (Jans-Beken et al., 2018). The feeling originates if four requirements are met: awareness of the intention of the giving person, perceived cost for the giving person, value to the receiving person, and perceived responsiveness to the receiving person. Let’s explain this.

Ingredients

When someone receives a benefit from another person, it is important that the giving person is willing to present the benefit. The receiving person has to acknowledge that there is some cost involved for the giving person. The benefit also should have a certain value to the receiving person (Tesser, Gatewood, & Driver, 1968). Important in this exchange between people is that the benefit that is given, meets a need of the receiving person (Algoe, 2012). When all four requirements are met, gratitude will be felt by the receiver.

Example

Let me illustrate this with an example. Imagine a single mother with three children on welfare. This month the washing machine broke down and she had to buy another one. Now, she is out of money to feed her children. A neighbor, who is a gardener, sees what is happening and he gives her $200 to help her out. This is a lot of money for the mother and the money fulfills a great need of her and her family. The mother feels immensely grateful to the neighbor. 

What if?

But what if the neighbor was forced by his partner to give the $200? What if the neighbor was a millionaire? What if the mother was not on welfare but worked as a lawyer with a six-figure income? The mother would sense that the neighbor did not really intent to give the money.  Moreover, $200 is not a lot of money for a millionaire. And when the mother earns enough money to support her family, even when the washing machine would brake down, there was no need to fulfill. Gratitude would not the emotion felt; she even might feel offended!

Gratitude

We can conclude that in human interaction, gratitude is a positive feeling that arises when a delicate mix of ingredients is met. So, let’s keep doing things for each other, enjoy this wonderful feeling, and thrive!

Literature

• Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(6), 455–469. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2012.00439.x
• Jans-Beken, L., Jacobs, N., Janssens, M., Peeters, S., Reijnders, J., Lechner, L., & Lataster, J. (2019). Reciprocal relationships between State gratitude and high-and low-arousal positive affects in daily life: A time-lagged ecological assessment study. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 14(4), 512–527. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2018.1497684 
• Tesser, A., Gatewood, R., & Driver, M. (1968). Some determinants of gratitude. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(3), 233–236. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025905

Loneliness is a costly societal problem. The elderly are particularly at risk of loneliness because they are confronted with the loss of, for example, work and loved ones. People of 40 years and older who are regularly grateful appear to feel less lonely. How is that possible? Esther Frinking answers this question in a study published in Aging & Mental Health. She did this together with her team, which is a collaboration between the Open University Netherlands and IGDORE. She asked 163 people between the ages of 41 and 92 about their gratitude and psychological flexibility, and whether they felt lonely. From her results, psychological flexibility appeared to be an important mechanism between gratitude and loneliness.

Gratitude

That gratitude is associated with more positive and less negative emotions, has been regularly found in various studies (Jans-Beken, 2018). Why this is, is still unclear. Wood and colleagues (2010) suggested two underlying mechanisms. First, the ingredients of gratitude – intention, costs, benefits and responsiveness – may lead to more positive feelings. Their other suggestion was that grateful people are handling difficulties more actively and are less inclined to avoid problems.

Psychological flexibility

The latter suggestion is particularly interesting. This idea is closely related to psychological flexibility, a term used in the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). This term refers to the ability to deal with setbacks flexibly by increasing engagement in a meaningful and valuable life. Psychological flexibility has six core processes – acceptance, defusion, being present, itself as context, values and committed action. These processes overlap and are interconnected. 

Less loneliness

This research by Frinking and colleagues shows that gratitude can support psychological flexibility in the elderly. People with more life experience know that life can be good, but also accept that life has setbacks (P. T. P. Wong, 2012). Gratitude helps to pause a moment and to pay attention to both inner feelings and the environment (Emmons and Mishra, 2011). As a result, thankful people are more likely to actively look for other people for social support. Contact with other people provides meaning to life, because important values such as kindness, gratitude and care are given a place in daily life, so that less loneliness is experienced.

Source: Frinking, E., Jans-Beken, L. G. P. J., Janssens, M., Peeters, S., Lataster, J., Jacobs, N., & Reijnders, J. (2019). Gratitude and Loneliness in Adults over 40 Years: Examining the Role of Psychological Flexibility and Engaged Living. Aging & Mental Health.  

Literature 

• Emmons, R. A., & Mishra, A. (2011). Why gratitude enhances well-being: What we know, what we need to know. In Kennon M. Sheldon, Todd B. Kashdan, & M. F. Steger (Eds.), Designing positive psychology: Taking stock and moving forward (pp. 248–262). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ]
• Jans-Beken, L. G. P. J. (2018). Appreciating Gratitude: New Perspectives on the Gratitude Mental Health Connection (Open University Netherlands). 
• Wong, P. T. P. (2012). Toward a dual-systems model of what makes life worth living. In P. T. P. Wong (Ed.), The human quest for meaning (pp. 49–68). Routledge. 
• Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905.