Though interest in the emotion of gratitude has historically focused on its role in social exchange, new evidence suggests a different and more important role for gratitude in social life. The find-remind-and-bind theory of gratitude posits that the positive emotion of gratitude serves the evolutionary function of strengthening a relationship with a responsive interaction partner (Algoe, Haidt, & Gable, 2008). The current article identifies prior, economic models of gratitude, elaborates on unique features of the find-remind-and-bind theory, reviews the accumulating evidence for gratitude in social life in light of this novel perspective, and discusses how the find-remind-and-bind theory is relevant to methodology and hypothesis testing. In sum, within the context of reciprocally-altruistic relationships, gratitude signals communal relationship norms and may be an evolved mechanism to fuel upward spirals of mutually responsive behaviors between recipient and benefactor. In this way, gratitude is important for forming and maintaining the most important relationships of our lives, those with the people we interact with every day.

Find, Remind, and Bind: The Functions of Gratitude in Everyday Relationships

Objective: The goal of this article is to provide insight into how recent findings from affective science may be translated into the health arena. Methods: We first review definitional issues related to the key concepts of emotion and stress. We then review relevant research that informs our understanding of the affect–health relationship. Subsequently, we highlight findings that are the most informative and also ripe for translation into the domains of health and health-related behaviors. Results: We identify several domains of affect-relevant processes (e.g., emotion-regulation, stress response) that would benefit from increased elaboration. Three themes may guide how best to broaden our understanding across multiple domains: the need to use a differentiated emotion-based approach, the need to consider potential synergistic and oppositional effects of emotion that can occur in parallel, and the need to examine the impact of emotions with respect to regulation and coping at both the intra- and interindividual levels. Building on insights derived from these themes, we suggest a broad integrative framework for use with future investigations. This framework categorizes potential emotion-related effects on health according to whether they influence health directly (e.g., shaping physiological responses) or indirectly (e.g., guiding decision making and behavior). Using this approach will allow researchers to examine systematically the often simultaneous and sometimes opposing influences of emotion on distinct health-relevant cognitive and physiological mechanisms, and to integrate across potentially disparate findings. Conclusions: We conclude by suggesting opportunities for future work that we see as most fruitful based on the presented framework.

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Affective science and health: the importance of emotion and emotion regulation.

Theoretical models suggest that gratitude is linked to increased prosociality. To date, however, there is a lack of a comprehensive quantitative synthesis of results to support this claim. In this review we aimed to (a) examine the overall strength of the association between gratitude and prosociality, and (b) identify the theoretical and methodological variables that moderate this link. We identified 252 effect sizes from 91 studies across 65 papers-(Total N = 18,342 participants). The present meta-analysis revealed a statistically significant, and moderate positive correlation between gratitude and prosociality (r = .374). This association was significantly larger among studies that assessed reciprocal outcomes relative to nonreciprocal outcomes, and in particular among studies that examined direct-compared with indirect-reciprocity. Studies that examined gratitude as an affective state reported significantly larger effect size studies assessing gratitude as a trait. Studies that examined benefit-triggered gratitude (in response to other's kindness) had a stronger effect that generalized gratitude that focuses on the appreciation of what is valued and cherished in life. Finally, studies that manipulated gratitude in vivo (e.g., economic games) had larger effect sizes compared with those based on recalled incidents when the person felt grateful. We describe the theoretical and practical significance of the results. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Does gratitude enhance prosociality?: A meta-analytic review.

Recent theory posits that the emotion of gratitude uniquely functions to build a high-quality relationship between a grateful person and the target of his or her gratitude, that is, the person who performed a kind action (Algoe et al., 2008). Therefore, gratitude is a prime candidate for testing the dyadic question of whether one person's grateful emotion has consequences for the other half of the relational unit, the person who is the target of that gratitude. The current study tests the critical hypothesis that being the target of gratitude forecasts one's relational growth with the person who expresses gratitude. The study employed a novel behavioral task in which members of romantic relationships expressed gratitude to one another in a laboratory paradigm. As predicted, the target's greater perceptions of the expresser's responsiveness after the interaction significantly predicted improvements in relationship quality over 6 months. These effects were independent from perceptions of responsiveness following two other types of relationally important and emotionally evocative social interactions in the lab, suggesting the unique weight that gratitude carries in cultivating social bonds.

The social functions of the emotion of gratitude via expression.

Positive emotions are highly valued and frequently sought. Beyond just being pleasant, however, positive emotions may also lead to long-term benefits in important domains, including work, physical health, and interpersonal relationships. Research thus far has focused on the broader functions of positive emotions. According to the broaden-and-build theory, positive emotions expand people’s thought–action repertoires and allow them to build psychological, intellectual, and social resources. New evidence suggests that positive emotions—particularly gratitude—may also play a role in motivating individuals to engage in positive behaviors leading to self-improvement. We propose and offer supportive evidence that expressing gratitude leads people to muster effort to improve themselves via increases in connectedness, elevation, humility, and specific negative states including indebtedness.

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Functions of Positive Emotions: Gratitude as a Motivator of Self-Improvement and Positive Change:

The emotion gratitude is argued to play a pivotal role in building and maintaining social relationships. Evidence is accumulating that links gratitude to increases in relationship satisfaction. Yet, there is currently little evidence for how gratitude does this. The present paper provides experimental evidence of gratitude facilitating relationship-building behaviours. Study 1 provides evidence that gratitude promotes social affiliation, leading one to choose to spend time with a benefactor. Study 2 offers further evidence of gratitude's ability to strengthen relationships by showing that gratitude facilitates socially inclusive behaviours, preferentially towards one's benefactor, even when those actions come at a cost to oneself.

Jourdan Cruz

Papers

Gratitude: Prompting behaviours that build relationships