Gratitude in Relationships 1 RUNNING HEAD: EVERYDAY GRATITUDE IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS It’s the Little Things: Everyday Gratitude as a Booster Shot for Romantic Relationships

Gratitude and indebtedness are differently-valenced emotional responses to benefits provided that have implications for interpersonal processes. Drawing on a social functional model of emotions, we tested the roles of gratitude and indebtedness in romantic relationships with a daily-experience sampling of both members of cohabiting couples. As hypothesized, the receipt of thoughtful benefits predicted both gratitude and indebtedness. Men had more mixed emotional responses to benefit receipt than women. However, for both men and women, gratitude from interactions predicted increases in relationship connection and satisfaction the following day, for both recipient and benefactor. Whereas indebtedness may maintain external signals of relationship engagement, gratitude had uniquely predictive power in relationship promotion, perhaps acting as a booster shot for the relationship. Gratitude in Relationships 3 It’s the Little Things: Everyday Gratitude as a Booster Shot for Romantic Relationships A defining feature of close adult relationships is that each member performs actions that benefit the other. Events such as one partner planning a celebratory meal when the other partner gets a promotion, taking the children to the zoo so the other partner can have some quiet time, or stopping to pick up the other partner’s favorite coffee drink from Starbucks, are each benefits to the recipient. Within ongoing romantic relationships, some of these benefits may become routine and others may seem trivial; any may go unnoticed. In the current research, we propose that an emotional response of gratitude for “everyday” interpersonal gestures can be a powerful mechanism for relationship growth. Although gratitude is the normatively appropriate and often expected feeling from another’s kind actions, in reality, interpersonal benefits may bring a range of reactions. Assuming a benefit is noticed, a recipient might feel gratitude (that was so nice of her!), resentment (oh, he only did this because he wants something from me), misunderstood (why did she think I would like that?), or indebted (I owe him one!), among other affective and cognitive responses. Of course, these are not mutually-exclusive responses to a received benefit. Responses are dictated by how the “benefit” is perceived. Here, we focus on the affective responses of gratitude and indebtedness because both have been empirically characterized as emotional responses to costly, intentionally-provided benefits from another individual (e.g., Algoe, Haidt, & Gable, 2008; Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006; Tsang, 2006a; Watkins, Scheer, Ovnicek, & Kolts, 2006). Also, both gratitude and indebtedness are theoretically and empirically linked with repayment behavior (or motivation), which is the normatively-expected response to a benefit received (see Gouldner, 1960; Greenberg & Shapiro, 1971). However, whereas we propose that gratitude functions to promote or improve relationships, indebtedness may simply work in the service of maintaining (or, not losing) relationships. Indebtedness appears to be tightly linked to perceived reciprocity norms (i.e., expectations about repayment), whereas gratitude is linked to perceived care from a benefactor. By putting the spotlight on the emotional response to benefit receipt, we hope to illustrate the central role of emotions in complex interpersonal dynamics. The same objective event may produce different emotional responses, and the emotional response influences the interpersonal consequences. Emotions are momentary responses to real or imagined events, and can serve as coordinating systems for our biology, cognitions, and ultimately our behaviors (e.g., Keltner & Gratitude in Relationships 4 Gross, 1999), in part by updating motivations and goals (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007; Schwarz & Clore, 2008). Social functional analyses of emotions (e.g., Keltner & Haidt, 1999) suggest that, on average, emotions are particularly useful in guiding individuals through the social interactions and relationships encountered everyday (e.g., Keltner & Buswell, 1997). In line with this perspective, what follows is a review of the literature on gratitude and indebtedness, which have been studied largely outside of ongoing interpersonal relationships; we then place them in the context of close relationships, where questions about “repayment” become more complicated. Emotional Responses to Benefits: Gratitude and Indebtedness Ample evidence suggests that gratitude comes from intentionally-provided costly benefits – that is, people feel more gratitude when there is a real or perceived cost to the benefactor for his or her intentional actions toward the recipient, and they feel more gratitude when they like or value the action more (that is, it is a “benefit”; e.g., Algoe et al., 2008; Tesser et al., 1968; Tsang, 2007). In addition, new findings using reports about actual benefits provided suggest that gratitude arises when beneficial interpersonal gestures that have specific implications for the relationship with the benefactor are received (Algoe et al., 2008). In this study, new members of a sorority, who received a variety of benefits from a specific (anonymous) benefactor over the course of four days, reported their appraisals and emotional response to receiving each benefit. Beyond liking for and cost of the benefit, gratitude was robustly predicted by the perception that the benefactor was responsive to the needs and wishes of the recipient in the provision of the benefit. In short, ratings of the thoughtfulness of the benefactor predicted gratitude. We know that perceived responsiveness to one’s wishes and needs is central to feelings of intimacy and closeness (Reis, Clark, & Holmes, 2004). Given that emotion-relevant appraisals help to shape motives, goals, and behavior (e.g., Lerner & Tiedens, 2006; Schwarz & Clore, 2008), Algoe and colleagues (2008) recently proposed that gratitude functions to build high-quality interpersonal connections. In line with traditional accounts of gratitude as facilitating reciprocal altruism (e.g., Trivers, 1971), it has now been well-documented that grateful people are more willing to repay a benefactor when given an opportunity, for example, spending more time helping a confederate benefactor with a tedious task (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006; see also, Tsang 2006b). However, other evidence demonstrates that gratitude is also associated with the recipient focusing on the Gratitude in Relationships 5 benefactor, a broad range of pro-relationship behaviors that go beyond repayment, and higher relationship quality for both the recipient and the benefactor. Specifically, anticipated gratitude from hypothetical vignettes was correlated with broader prosocial motivations toward the benefactor, such as adoring, approaching, and yielding to the benefactor (Watkins, et al., 2006). Gratitude (compared to happiness) for recalled actual benefits produced more spontaneous generation of the positive qualities of a benefactor, spontaneous reports of feeling closer to or wanting to promote the relationship with the benefactor, desire to spend more time with the person in the future, and desire to acknowledge or repay the kind actions (including thanking or hugging; Algoe & Haidt, 2009). Finally, gratitude for actual benefits during a period of anonymous gift-giving within sororities was associated with a recipient’s momentary feelings of closeness to the still-anonymous benefactor, recipients’ and benefactors’ reports of high-quality interactions at the time the identity of the benefactor was revealed, as well as recipient and benefactor reports of high quality relationships one month later (Algoe et al., 2008). The positive emotion of gratitude may orient the recipient to the benefactor in such a way as to generate intrinsically-motivated kind actions toward the benefactor, and such gestures can have downstream effects on the relationship. However, to date, the strongest evidence for such effects has come from female friendships, and no research has examined these relationship processes in everyday interactions. Although there is little empirical work regarding how indebtedness influences interpersonal relationships, Fredrickson (2004) drew on her broaden and build theory of positive emotions to propose different behavioral consequences for indebtedness and gratitude: As a positive emotion, gratitude may inspire creative ways of acknowledging a benefactor, beyond titfor-tat repayment; the negative emotion of indebtedness, on the other hand, should focus a recipient on repayment. These behaviors may have different implications for relationships. Indeed, recent empirical research differentiating feelings of gratitude from feelings of indebtedness help to fill in the picture of how different emotional responses to the same benefitto-the-self may lead to different interpersonal outcomes. The difference begins with appraisals of the intentions of the benefactor. Tsang (2006a) found that (perceived) intentions of the benefactor differentiated the emotional responses of gratitude and indebtedness: when the benefactor’s intentions were benevolent, participants believed they would feel more gratitude for a hypothetical benefit. However, anticipated feelings Gratitude in Relationships 6 of indebtedness did not change with intentions of the benefactor, whether the benefactor’s intentions were presented as benevolent, selfish, or ambiguous. If indebtedness is felt regardless of benefactor intention, then the recipient’s focus may be more on the benefit itself. Focus on the benefit (consistent with Fredrickson, 2004), may lend itself to reciprocity; in reciprocity, the recipient of a benefit is expected to return the favor at a future date. In fact, in vignette studies, Watkins and colleagues (2006) found that increases in expectations of repayment by a benefactor produced increased anticipated feelings of indebtedness, and decreased anticipated feelings of gratitude. Moreover, consistent with Fredrickson’s theorizing (2004), whereas gratitude was associated with positive emotions and with a broader array of prosocial motivations toward the benefactor, indebtedness was associated with other negative emotions (e.g., guilt). Indebtedness was also unassociated with the number of prosocial motivations but positively associated with the number of antisocial motivations toward the benefactor that were endorsed. The authors concluded that, whereas indebtedness might involve an obligation to repay, gratitude is not a debt. Instead, they suggest that repayment from gratitude versus indebtedness may be internallyrather than externally-motivated (Watkins et al., 2006). Internal motivation is consistent with the notion of gratitude as a positive emotion that functions to promote high quality interpersonal relationships (Algoe et al., 2008): gratitude orients the individual to the positive qualities of the benefactor and his or her needs and wishes, which may translate to a variety of responsive behaviors beyond a straightforward tit-for-tat repayment. Indebtedness maintains expected ties through dutiful exchange of good deed for good deed. Gratitude and Indebtedness in the Context of Close Relationships What do these findings mean in the context of close relationships? The literature reviewed suggests that a grateful or indebted emotional response to a benefit contains information about a recipient’s understanding of the relationship with the benefactor; a grateful response is complementary to close relationships. Among other things, close relationships are characterized by communal norms (Mills, Clark, Ford, & Johnson, 2004) in which benefits are provided non-contingently, based on the recipient’s need for the benefit. Communal relationships are often contrasted with “exchange” relationship orientations, in which benefits are provided in exchange for other benefits, and are not contingent on a recipient’s need (e.g., Clark & Mills, 1979). Although these relationship orientations are independent constructs (i.e., not mutually Gratitude in Relationships 7 exclusive within a relationship in everyday life), Clark and colleagues have demonstrated experimentally that expectations about whether one is operating from an exchange versus communal relationship orientation produces different perceptions of an interaction partner after the same behavior (e.g., Clark & Mills, 1979; Clark & Waddell, 1985). For example, if one fails to adhere to the norm of reciprocity within an exchange relationship (i.e., by not offering to repay a benefit), that person is perceived as more exploitative and less attractive, whereas this same behavior does not change the perception of a person with whom one is presumed to be in a communal relationship (Clark & Waddell, 1985). Alternatively, when a communal relationship is expected but repayment behavior is conveyed, a benefit recipient finds the benefactor to be less attractive as an interaction partner (Clark & Mills, 1979). Although we do not directly assess communal or exchange distinctions in this research, these findings are important to consider when making predictions about how gratitude and indebtedness will work in romantic relationships, which are normatively communal in nature. The prevailing theory on gratitude suggests that, in fact, gratitude may not be necessary or useful in romantic relationships, precisely because this type of relationship is already characterized by high levels of trust and benefit-provision (e.g., McCullough, Kimeldorf, & Cohen, 2008). But the evidence reviewed above regarding appraisals of perceived responsiveness suggests that gratitude is a powerful signal of communal relationship orientation, and so should serve to facilitate romantic relationships. In contrast, the previous literature shows that indebtedness is an aversive state that motivates people to resolve the debt in order to feel better (e.g., Greenberg & Shapiro, 1971). Mauss (1950/1990), in his groundbreaking study of gift exchange throughout history, summarized the implications of exchange relationships in today’s culture quite simply: “The unreciprocated gift still makes the person who has accepted it inferior” (p. 65). And, because it shows that the benefactor is not being exploited, repayment is a behavior that has implications for the maintenance of any relationship. But the evidence regarding appraisals suggests that feelings of indebtedness may signal perceived exchange norms; exchange norms in the context of communal relationships may produce lower feelings of liking for the interaction partner (Clark & Mills, 1979). Of course, communal or exchange relationship orientations may be signaled without the experience of emotion. What can emotion add? When emotion is present, it helps to coordinate one’s interaction with the world in ways that are in line with current motives and goals, Gratitude in Relationships 8 ultimately serving an adaptive function for the individual, dyad, and even a group (e.g., Keltner & Haidt, 1999). Here, gratitude and indebtedness are proposed as parts of a complex interpersonal process that is situated within the particular relationship context. Romantic relationships are a particularly interesting dyad in which to examine each emotion, because these relationships often are already characterized by strong communal norms, high levels of trust and intimacy, and “helpful” behaviors. We suggest that, even within this context, moments of gratitude can act like “booster shots” for the ongoing relationship: gratitude helps to remind an individual of his or her feelings toward the partner and inspire mutual responsiveness, which serves to increase the bond between the couple. Alternatively, in the context of close relationships, indebtedness should not increase a recipient’s previously positive feelings about the relationships (even if it incidentally helps to ensure that the partner does not feel exploited). To date, there is no evidence to document links between these emotions and change in feelings about the relationship, for recipient or benefactor, no matter what the relationship type. Daily reports from each member of a dyad will help to capture the process as it unfolds.