The security of being grateful: Gratitude promotes risk aversion in decision-making

ABSTRACT

Few existing research has tested the effects of gratitude in risk decisions. The current study conducted four experiments with MTurk samples to test the primary hypothesis that gratitude promotes risk aversion in decision making. Results from Study 1 (N = 228) with a measure of dispositional gratitude and Study 2 (N = 125) by priming grateful experience showed that gratitude led to risk aversion, in particular, under gain framing. Study 3 (N = 126) offered an explanation by showing a partial mediation of present focus for the effect of gratitude on risk preference. Study 4 (N = 126) extended the finding to situations where people estimated others’ decisions and showed that gratitude led one to believe that others are risk averse in decision making. These results documented the cognitive benefit of gratitude in decision making and suggested a need to study how discrete emotions, such as gratitude, influence risk decisions.

KEYWORDS:

• Gratitude
• decision making
• mindfulness
• risk decisions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of China Ministry of Education (18YJAZH065), the RD program of Shenzhen (JCYJ20170307153032483, JCYJ20170817161546744), Shenzhen Key Research Base of Huamnities and Social Sciences and the Interdisciplinary Research Project of Graduate School of Shenzhen of Tsinghua University (JC2017005).