(Un)special Favors: Gratitude for Group-Based Benefits

ABSTRACT

Because humans are social creatures, we often experience benefits on a group-level. Yet gratitude research has focused on single recipients largely to the exclusion of groups. Do people still experience gratitude, even if the recipient is broader than themselves? 2 experiments contrast the effects of group-based versus individual-based favors on gratitude. Undergraduate participants read scenarios where single benefactors provided recipients with either a group-based or individual benefits. When only group level was manipulated (Study 1, N = 122), participants showed more gratitude, indebtedness, and intention to reciprocate for individual compared to group-level benefits. When both group based benefits and benefactor motivations were manipulated (Study 2, N = 124), only motivations showed effects. Results suggest that people do experience gratitude for group-level favors, and group favors may influence gratitude-relevant attributions of motivation.

KEYWORDS:

• Gratitude
• prosocial behavior
• motivation
• attributions
• positive emotions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at DOI:10.17605/OSF.IO/TPA6U.

Supplementary material

Supplementary data can be accessed here.