People feel grateful when they have benefited from someone’s costly, intentional, voluntary effort on their behalf. Experiencing gratitude motivates beneficiaries to repay their benefactors and to extend generosity to third parties. Expressions of gratitude also reinforce benefactors for their generosity. These social features distinguish gratitude from related emotions such as happiness and fe...

The present research tested the hypothesis that concepts of gratitude are prototypically organized and explored whether lay concepts of gratitude are broader than researchers' concepts of gratitude. In five studies, evidence was found that concepts of gratitude are indeed prototypically organized. In Study 1, participants listed features of gratitude. In Study 2, participants reliably rated the...

Gratitude is an important aspect of human sociality, and is valued by religions and moral philosophies. It has been established that gratitude leads to benefits for both mental health and interpersonal relationships. It is thus important to elucidate the neurobiological correlates of gratitude, which are only now beginning to be investigated. To this end, we conducted an experiment during which...

Abstract In this chapter I analyze how the ideals of Finnish welfare state are experienced in 2020s by people who live weak social and economic situations. Charitable food aid public services often seen to epitomize unreconciled charitable ethos versus universalism. This voices grassroots experiences use from both service institutions. By exploring people’s everyday encounters with these servic...

This study examined the role that employee perceptions of dispositional gratitude, state gratitude and institutionalized gratitude had upon job satisfaction. Employees (n = 171) completed measures of dispositional, state and institutionalized gratitude together with job satisfaction. Multiple Hierarchical Regression showed that state gratitude and institutional gratitude uniquely predict job sa...