Thanks. Now, What Should I Do?

Positive emotions are called “positive” because they benefit both the individual and the society.  Among the positives are serenity, joy, and cheerfulness.  Gratitude also is one and it is the focus of today’s blog post.  Barbara L. Frederickson (2004) specifically notes that, as all positive emotions, gratitude facilitates in the grateful person a broaden and build orientation.  By that she means that when experiencing gratitude the individual opens up to the surrounding environment, feels well, and is better able to entertain new ideas.

Accepting the prosocial value of gratitude - gratitude that prompts us to do for others, rather than for ourselves - as a foregone conclusion, Jomel Ng and his colleagues (2016) wondered whether there is more to the gratitude virtue.  Specifically, they explored whether gratefulness not only increases discrete prosocial actions, but also incites us to follow social norms in general.  The group proceeded to explore general social norms via two experiments. In the first, subjects were induced to feel grateful by having them write in vivid detail about an authentic personal gratefulness experience.  Shortly thereafter they began what they were told was a color discrimination task, requiring them to decide whether an ambiguous sample was mostly red, green, or blue. In the midst of performing the discrimination, the subjects were further informed that other participants reported that the sample was blue when it truly was green. Subsequently, subjects who had been induced into gratefulness proved significantly more likely to conclude that the sample was indeed blue than were those not induced into gratefulness. That is, the grateful subjects were more inclined to follow the social norm as they understood it.

The second experiment continued to assess the subjects' tendencies to follow general social norms.  In that case, the experimenters wanted to determine whether inducing joy within subjects would cause the same proclivity for following social norms as inducing gratefulness did. Thus, they sought to ensure that those induced into gratefulness were acceding to social norms because of the gratefulness experience per se, rather than because they simply were in a positive emotional state.  

The joy induction procedure was identical to the gratefulness induction procedure except that the subjects were told to write about an authentic personal joyfulness experience. For the second experiment then, there was both a gratefulness induction group and a joy induction group. Following each induction, subjects of each group were shown two handheld computer tablets of different brands and the marketing performance of each brand, since providing the marketing performance would indicate each brands' popularity.  After analyzing the data, Ng determined that those within the gratefulness condition were more likely to prefer the socially popular tablet than were those within the joy condition.

Accepted at face value, the aforementioned study suggests that gratefulness is a discrete experience with discrete consequences.  It is not merely that grateful people are in a generally good mood, but that gratefulness itself facilitates specific subsequent thoughts and behaviors.  Namely, those who feel grateful are predisposed both to helping others and to following social conventions.  

So, what does all this have to do with a healthful lifestyle?  Much. As Frederickson and many others have suggested, positive emotions, as gratefulness,contributes to lowering our stress and to raising our spirits,  In addition, when gratefulness prompts us to assist others - the prosocial function - it promotes an environment conducive to group physical and mental health, making healthy behavior "the thing to do."

Although I do not believe that there is anything inherently healthful about gratitude's encouraging us to follow the crowd - the social norms function - if one selects her/his crowds with an eye toward health-positive social affiliations, then judiciously following such crowds can be a very good idea.                  

References

Frederickson, B. L. (2004).  Gratitude, Like Other Emotions, Broadens and Builds.  In: The psychology of gratitude (Series in Affective Science).  Robert A. Emmons, New York: Oxford University Press.

Ng, J,, et al. (2016).  Gratitude Facilitates Private Conformity: A Test of the Social Alignment Hypothesis.  Emotion, Oct 31 , 2016, No Pagination Specified,  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000249.