The effect of a grateful outlook on psychological and physical well-being was examined. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions (hassles, gratitude listing, and either neutral life events or social comparison); they then kept weekly (Study 1) or daily (Study 2) records of their moods, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals. In a 3rd study, persons with neuromuscular disease were randomly assigned to either the gratitude condition or to a control condition. The gratitude-outlook groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures across the 3 studies, relative to the comparison groups. The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.

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Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life.

Moral emotions represent a key element of our human moral apparatus, influencing the link between moral standards and moral behavior This chapter reviews current theory and research on moral emotions We first focus on a triad of negatively valenced “self-conscious” emotions—shame, guilt, and embarrassment As in previous decades, much research remains focused on shame and guilt We review current thinking on the distinction between shame and guilt, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of these two moral emotions Several new areas of research are highlighted: research on the domain-specific phenomenon of body shame, styles of coping with shame, psychobiological aspects of shame, the link between childhood abuse and later proneness to shame, and the phenomena of vicarious or “collective” experiences of shame and guilt In recent years, the concept of moral emotions has been expanded to include several positive emotions—elevation, gratitude, and the sometimes morally relevant experience o

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Moral emotions and moral behavior

Personality has consequences. Measures of personality have contemporaneous and predictive relations to a variety of important outcomes. Using the Big Five factors as heuristics for organizing the research literature, numerous consequential relations are identified. Personality dispositions are associated with happiness, physical and psychological health, spirituality, and identity at an individual level; associated with the quality of relationships with peers, family, and romantic others at an interpersonal level; and associated with occupational choice, satisfaction, and performance, as well as community involvement, criminal activity, and political ideology at a social institutional level.

Personality and the Prediction of Consequential Outcomes

In this paper, we question the simplicity of the common prescription that more thinking leads to better 26 moral choices In three studies, we discover that the relationship between how complexly one reasons 27 before making a decision with moral consequences is related to the outcome of that decision in a curvi

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Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

What is compassion? And how did it evolve? In this review, we integrate 3 evolutionary arguments that converge on the hypothesis that compassion evolved as a distinct affective experience whose primary function is to facilitate cooperation and protection of the weak and those who suffer. Our empirical review reveals compassion to have distinct appraisal processes attuned to undeserved suffering; distinct signaling behavior related to caregiving patterns of touch, posture, and vocalization; and a phenomenological experience and physiological response that orients the individual to social approach. This response profile of compassion differs from those of distress, sadness, and love, suggesting that compassion is indeed a distinct emotion. We conclude by considering how compassion shapes moral judgment and action, how it varies across different cultures, and how it may engage specific patterns of neural activation, as well as emerging directions of research.

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Compassion: An Evolutionary Analysis and Empirical Review

In four studies, the authors examined the correlates of the disposition toward gratitude. Study 1 revealed that self-ratings and observer ratings of the grateful disposition are associated with positive affect and well-being, prosocial behaviors and traits, and religiousness/spirituality. Study 2 replicated these findings in a large nonstudent sample. Study 3 yielded similar results to Studies 1 and 2 and provided evidence that gratitude is negatively associated with envy and materialistic attitudes. Study 4 yielded evidence that these associations persist after controlling for Extraversion/positive affectivity, Neuroticism/negative affectivity, and Agreeableness. The development of the Gratitude Questionnaire, a unidimensional measure with good psychometric properties, is also described.

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The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography

The investigators proposed that transgression-related interpersonal motivations result from 3 psychological parameters: forbearance (abstinence from avoidance and revenge motivations, and maintenance of benevolence), trend forgiveness (reductions in avoidance and revenge, and increases in benevolence), and temporary forgiveness (transient reductions in avoidance and revenge, and transient increases in benevolence). In 2 studies, the investigators examined this 3-parameter model. Initial ratings of transgression severity and empathy were directly related to forbearance but not trend forgiveness. Initial responsibility attributions were inversely related to forbearance but directly related to trend forgiveness. When people experienced high empathy and low responsibility attributions, they also tended to experience temporary forgiveness. The distinctiveness of each of these 3 parameters underscores the importance of studying forgiveness temporally.

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Forgiveness, forbearance, and time: the temporal unfolding of transgression-related interpersonal motivations.

Two studies were conducted to explore gratitude in daily mood and the relationships among various affective manifestations of gratitude. In Study 1, spiritual transcendence and a variety of positive affective traits were related to higher mean levels of gratitude across 21 days. Study 2 replicated these findings and revealed that on days when people had more grateful moods than was typical for them, they also reported more frequent daily episodes of grateful emotions, more intense gratitude per episode, and more people to whom they were grateful than was typical for them. In addition, gratitude as an affective trait appeared to render participants’ grateful moods somewhat resistant to the effects of discrete emotional episodes of gratitude.

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Gratitude in Intermediate Affective Terrain: Links of Grateful Moods to Individual Differences and Daily Emotional Experience.

A conceptual analysis is offered that differentiates four types of motivation for community involvement: egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism. Differentiation is based on identification of a unique ultimate goal for each motive. For egoism, the ultimate goal is to increase one's own welfare; for altruism, it is to increase the welfare of another individual or individuals; for collectivism, to increase the welfare of a group; and for principlism, to uphold one or more moral principles. As sources of community involvement, each of these four forms of motivation has its strengths; each also has its weaknesses. More effective efforts to stimulate community involvement may come from strategies that orchestrate motives so that the strengths of one motive can overcome weaknesses of another. Among the various possibilities, strategies that combine appeals to either altruism or collectivism with appeals to principle may be especially promising.

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Four Motives for Community Involvement

McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson (2001) posited that gratitude prompts individuals to behave prosocially. However, research supporting the prosocial effect of gratitude has relied on scenario and self-report methodology. To address limitations of previous research, this experiment utilised a laboratory induction of gratitude, a method that is potentially more covert than scenarios and that elicits actual grateful emotion. Prosocial responses to gratitude—operationalised as the distribution of resources to another—were paired with a self-report measure of gratitude to test the prosocial effect of gratitude. To investigate positive mood as an alternative explanation, this experiment compared responses of individuals receiving a favour to responses of individuals receiving a positive outcome by chance. A total of 40 participants were randomly assigned to either a Favour or Chance condition. Participants receiving a favour helped more and reported more gratitude compared to participants in the Chanc...

Jo-Ann Tsang

Papers

The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography

Forgiveness, forbearance, and time: the temporal unfolding of transgression-related interpersonal motivations.

Gratitude in Intermediate Affective Terrain: Links of Grateful Moods to Individual Differences and Daily Emotional Experience.

Four Motives for Community Involvement

Brief report gratitude and prosocial behaviour: An experimental test of gratitude