Gratitude across the life span: Age differences and links to subjective well-being

Abstract

Gratitude has been described as an adaptive evolutionary mechanism that is relevant to healthy psychological and interpersonal outcomes. Questions remain as to whether the presence and benefits of gratitude are consistent from young adulthood to old age; prior research has yielded mixed evidence. We examined the magnitude and direction of age differences in gratitude in three samples (combined N = 31,206). We also examined whether gratitude was associated with greater/lesser well-being at different periods in the life course. We found that the experience of gratitude was greatest in older adults and least in middle aged and younger adults. Further, we found that the associations between gratitude and subjective well-being remained relatively constant across the lifespan. Findings are discussed from a developmental perspective.

Keywords:

• Gratitude
• adult development
• personality
• MIDUS

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Paul Jose for his comments on a previous version of this manuscript. The MIDUS study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (P01-AG020166). We thank Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman for providing access to the Authentic Happiness data. The first author gratefully acknowledges support from a Science and Imagination of Living Generously grant provided by the John Templeton Foundation and Indiana University. The second and third authors were supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Notes

1. There is a large literature distinguishing between trait gratitude – an enduring disposition on which an individual can vary – and state gratitude – a momentary affective response that occurs after one person helps another (Watkins, Van Gelder, & Frias, 2009; Wood, Maltby, Stewart, Linley, & Joseph, 2008). Trait gratitude is most often measured with self-report instruments and is assumed to be relatively stable over short intervals (Wood, Maltby, Stewart, & Joseph, 2008). State gratitude is most often an emotional experience that is meant to foster reciprocity between people and can be induced experimentally (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Tsang, 2006, 2007). There have also been studies in which the correspondence between trait and state gratitude are examined (Wood, Maltby, Stewart, Linley, et al. 2008). In the current investigation, we limit our discussion to age differences in trait gratitude but encourage future research to examine age differences in state expressions of gratitude.

2. Because each sample used a different gratitude measure, it was important to examine the extent to which each measure tapped into the construct of gratitude. We operationalized this construct validity by examining the correlational overlap of the scales. To this end, we conducted a separate study on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011; Paolacci, Chandler, & Ipeirotis, 2010). A sample of 498 adults ranging in age from 18 to 75 (M _age = 32.69, SD = 10.58; 40% female; 78% white) completed the abbreviated, two-item gratitude measure from MIDUS (α = 0.87, M = 5.51, SD = 1.28), the 10-item VIA-IS gratitude measure (α = 0.89, M = 3.71, SD = 0.68), and the full 6-item measure from the IWBS (α = 0.90, M = 5.51, SD = 1.28) using the same response choices reported below. The order of the measures was randomized across participants. The abbreviated MIDUS measure correlated strongly with the full measure from the IWBS (r = 0.91, p < 0.001). The VIA-IS gratitude measure correlated strongly with both the abbreviated MIDUS measure (r = 0.78, p < 0.001) and the full IWBS measure (r = 0.77, p < 0.001). The high interrelations between gratitude measures suggest that they are measuring a similar construct.

3. In the current research program, we focused on cross-sectional age differences in gratitude. Some longitudinal data were available for Study 3 – multiple assessments of gratitude over a one-year period. However, there were not enough longitudinal data to provide a strong test of age moderation of gratitude changes over a one-year period (Sheldon et al., 2015).