The underrated, overlooked gift that keeps on giving
In 2018, the Association for Psychological Science published the findings of Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago. Kumar and Epley had conducted a series of controlled experiments examining the consequences of showing appreciation.
In one experiment, participants - ‘expressers’ - were asked to write letter expressing gratitude to someone who had touched their life in a meaningful way. Participants were encouraged to write to another student in their MBA program but not to another student in the same course - or to someone else from their life if they preferred. The instructions asked that they explain why they were grateful to this person and to describe what this person did for them and how it affected their life.
Immediately after writing and sending their gratitude letters, expressers completed a questionnaire reporting their own experience and predicting how surprised the recipient would report feeling about the specific reasons for feeling grateful and how much more negative or positive the letter would make the recipient feel.
Expressers significantly underestimated how surprised recipients would be to receive the letter, underestimated how surprised they would be by the content of the letter, underestimated how positive recipients would feel, and overestimated how awkward recipients would feel.
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Kumar and Epley ran a second experiment in which the expressers could write to anyone they chose. While the expressers in this experiment didn’t underestimate recipient surprise with receiving the letter, they again systematically underestimated the positive impact that their gratitude letter would have on recipients.
But why should this matter? The research conducted by Adam Grant at University of Pennsylvania and Francesca Gino at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill illustrates why.
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Grant and Dino wanted to understand not just beneficiaries’ experiences of gratitude, but how beneficiaries’ expressions of gratitude actually affected helpers. Their findings were published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2010.
In the first study participants were asked to provide feedback to a fictitious student called ‘Eric’ on his cover letter for a job application. After sending their feedback through by email, they got a reply from Eric asking for more help with another cover letter.
Half of them got a thankful reply from Eric that read:
“Dear [name], I just wanted to let you know that I received your feedback on my cover letter. Thank you so much! I am really grateful. I was wondering if you could help with a second cover letter I prepared and give me feedback on it. The cover letter is attached. Can you send me some comments in the next 3 days?
The other half a neutral reply that read:
“Dear [name], I just wanted to let you know that I received your feedback on my cover letter. I was wondering if you could help with a second cover letter I prepared and give me feedback on it. The cover letter is attached. Can you send me some comments in the next 3 days?”
While only 32% of participants who received the neutral email helped with the second letter, while 66% of those participants who received the grateful email helped.
The researchers concluded from their analysis that these results provided evidence that gratitude expressions “increase prosocial behaviour through the communal mechanism of enabling helpers to feel more socially valued”, rather than simply making them feel more personally competent and able (or 'self-efficacious’ and ‘agentic’, as psychologists like to call it).
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Grant and Gino went on to examine whether the sense of social value born of a beneficiary’s gratitude encourages pro-social behaviour toward another beneficiary. In other words, would Eric’s gratitude make participants more likely to help a different person?
So in their second experiment, Eric’s thanks (or lack of thanks in the control condition) was followed, twenty-four hours later, by an email from ‘Steven’ asking for similar help. The email read:
“Hi [name], I understand that you participated in a Career Center study to help students improve their job application cover letters. I was wondering if you could give me feedback on a cover letter I prepared. The cover letter is attached. Would you be willing to help me by sending me some comments in the next two days?”
While only 25% of participants who had received the neutral email from Eric chose to help Steven, 55% of those participants who had received the grateful email from Eric helped Steven.
Noting the fact that the opportunity for prosocial behaviour occurred twenty-four hours after the measure of social worth, the researchers concluded that “these findings suggest that when helpers are thanked for their efforts, the resulting sense of being socially valued… are critical in encouraging them to provide more help in the future.”
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In another experiment, Grant and Dino tested whether gratitude encouraged beneficiaries to persist longer in their current helping activities without being asked.
In this experiment participants arrived individually at the laboratory, and were informed they were working with the university’s career center to understand peer feedback processes. They were asked to help “Eric Sorenson” a student, by editing his job application cover letters. After they had edited an initial cover letter for Eric, a person acting as “Eric” arrived, pretending to be delivering forms to the administrator of the experiment. He introduced himself as Eric Sorenson to each participant and started an innocuous conversation about the weather. In the gratitude condition, Eric said “Thank you for your feedback,” and in the control condition, he did not. The experimenter then let Eric go and gave each participant a second cover letter to edit, telling them that they could stop whenever they were finished.
Participants in the gratitude condition spent an average of 15% more time helping the student on the second cover letter than did participants in the control condition.
And while there were no significant differences between conditions in how people felt about their competency and efficacy, participants in the gratitude condition felt significantly more socially valued than did participants in the control condition.
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Grant and Gino summarised the results of their experiments thus:
“When helpers are thanked for their efforts, the resulting sense of being socially valued, more than the feelings of competence they experience, are critical in encouraging them to provide more help in the future.”
The lessons are simple. Gratitude provides concrete evidence to those help and contribute not just that that their actions matter in the lives of beneficiaries - but that they themselves matter and are valued. Our need to feel valued is almost as fundamental as our need for food. It runs that deep. It is that potent.
For those receiving support and assistance, the implications of these and many other associated studies should be abundantly clear. Put aside any question of manners or courtesy or decency or respect towards one’s fellow human beings. The data (surely that should persuade) shows that those who express gratitude get more from people than those who do not.
Neither the misguided desire to keep things impersonal and ‘professional’, the self-inflicted delusion that the day is too busy, nor sheer thoughtlessness are an excuse for neglecting the opportunity. For just a little gratitude (hardly an onerous undertaking) goes a long way.
So if you have been, thank you for reading.
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Sources
Adam Grant and Francesca Gino, ‘A Little Thanks Goes a Long Way: Explaining Why Gratitude Expressions Motivate Prosocial Behaviour’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 2010
Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley, ‘Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation’, Psychological Science 2018, Vol. 29(9)