When someone does something thoughtful for you, two different feelings are available. One is gratitude. The other is , the sense of owing, and the two have opposite emotional colors despite coming from the same event. Algoe, Gable and Maisel followed both members of cohabiting couples day by day to see which one does anything for the relationship.
Gratitude, and for both people. Receiving a thoughtful benefit predicted gratitude and indebtedness alike, but gratitude from an interaction predicted increases in relationship connection and satisfaction the following day, for the recipient and for the person who did the thing. Indebtedness may keep up external signals of engagement; gratitude was the one with unique predictive power.
Gratitude and indebtedness are both emotional responses to benefits provided, and they are differently valenced: one feels good and one feels owed. Because they travel together, any claim about gratitude improving a relationship has to separate them, which is the problem this study sets up using a social functional model of emotions.
The design is daily and dyadic. Both members of cohabiting couples reported through a procedure, so the researchers could look at what one partner felt on one day against what both partners reported the next.
As hypothesized, the receipt of predicted gratitude and indebtedness alike. Men had more mixed emotional responses to receiving benefits than women did, and the paper reports that difference without explaining it.
The outcome separates the two emotions cleanly. For men and women both, gratitude from interactions predicted increases in relationship connection and satisfaction the following day, and it did so for the recipient and the . Indebtedness may maintain the external signals of relationship engagement, but gratitude had uniquely predictive power in promoting the relationship, which is why the authors call it a booster shot.
wat. Feeling grateful for something small showed up the next day as a better relationship, and not only for the one who was grateful.
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The benefit lands on the giver too, the next day. That makes gratitude a relationship mechanism rather than a private feeling about a favor.
How do we know?
A daily-experience sampling study of both members of cohabiting couples, drawing on a social functional model of emotions to separate the roles of gratitude and indebtedness in response to benefits received.
What is still unknown
Daily self-reports from cohabiting couples, so the links are predictive associations rather than established causes. Men showed more mixed emotional responses to receiving benefits than women, which the design can describe but not explain.
Learn something?
Where to next
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