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The Psychology of Gratitude PDF

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The Psychology of Gratitude ROBERT A. EMMONS MICHAEL E. MCCULLOUGH, Editors OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS The Psychology of Gratitude SERIES IN AFFECTIVE SCIENCE Series Editors Richard J. Davidson Paul Ekman Klaus Scherer The Nature of Emotion Anxiety, Depression, and Emotion Fundamental Questions Edited by Richard J. Davidson Edited by Paul Ekman and Persons, Situations, and Emotions Richard J. Davidson An Ecological Approach Boo! Edited by Hermann Brandstätter and Culture, Experience, and the Andrzej Eliasz Startle Reflex Emotion, Social Relationships, by Ronald Simons and Health Emotions in Psychopathology Edited by Carol D. Ryff and Theory and Research Burton Singer Edited by William F. Flack Jr. and Appraisal Processes in Emotion James D. Laird Theory, Methods, Research What the Face Reveals Edited by Klaus R. Scherer, Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Angela Schorr, and Tom Johnstone Expression Using the Facial Action Music and Emotion Coding System (FACS) Theory and Research Edited by Paul Ekman and Edited by Patrik N. Juslin and Erika Rosenberg John A. Sloboda Shame Nonverbal Behavior in Clinical Settings Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology, Edited by Pierre Philippot, Robert S. and Culture Feldman, and Erik J. Coats Edited by Paul Gilbert and Bernice Andrews Memory and Emotion Edited by Daniel Reisberg and Affective Neuroscience Paula Hertel The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions Psychology of Gratitude by Jaak Panksepp Edited by Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough Extreme Fear, Shyness, and Social Phobia Origins, Biological Mechanisms, Thinking about Feeling and Clinical Outcomes Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions Edited by Louis A. Schmidt and Edited by Robert C. Solomon Jay Schulkin Bodily Sensibility Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion Intelligent Action Edited by Richard D. Lane and By Jay Schulkin Lynn Nadel The Neuropsychology of Emotion Edited by Joan C. Borod The Psychology of Gratitude Edited by R O B E R T A . E M M O N S & M I C H A E L E . M C C U L L O U G H 1 2 0 0 4 3 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The psychology of gratitude / edited by Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-515010-4 1. Gratitude. I. Emmons, Robert A. II. McCullough, Michael E. BF575.G68 P79 2003 155.2'32—dc21 2003005497 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Foreword Robert C. Solomon So after every case, you have to go up to somebody and say “thank you”? What a . . . nightmare. —My Cousin Vinny (Launer, Schiff, & Lynn, 1992) Gratitude is one of the most neglected emotions and one of the most underestimated of the virtues. In most accounts of the emotions, it re- ceives nary a mention. Even in broader surveys of the attitudes, it is often ig- nored.And in the most prominent lists of the virtues, notably Aristotle’s, it is not included. Gratitude is often included, of course, in Christian treatises on the virtues, but then it is usually directed only toward a single if exceptional object, namely God the Almighty.And yet gratitude is one of those responses that seems essential to and among civilized human beings, and perhaps it is even significant among some social animals, as de Waal and others have per- suasively shown. The neglect of gratitude is, in itself, interesting.Why does it not come to mind immediately when the social emotions and virtues are in question? Why should we be loathe to admit that we feel and should feel indebted to someone who is our benefactor and has helped us in some way? This way of describing the emotion is already a clue.We (especially in this society) do not like to think of ourselves as indebted.We would rather see our good fortunes as our own doing (whereas the losses and sufferings are not our fault), thus the neglect of gratitude. Like the emotion of trust (to which it is closely akin), it involves an admission of our vulnerability and our dependence on vi f o r e w o r d other people. Thus gratitude lies at the very heart of ethics. It is more basic, perhaps, than even duty and obligation. The neglect of gratitude as an emotion might be partially explained by the fact that it is obviously what Hume called a “calm passion,” with none of the vehemence and drama of the “violent” passions. There is gushing grati- tude, to be sure, but such behavior is hardly the norm, even in cases where the boon is enormous and one’s gratitude is appropriately expansive. Usually, even when one is grateful to someone for saving one’s life, gratitude is better expressed through a quiet thanks and an appreciative silence, followed (usu- ally after a decent interval) by an appropriate gift or return favor. Gratitude is thus a poor candidate for a basic emotion or affect program of the sort that have been prominently defended by many recent psycholo- gists (e.g., Paul Ekman) and philosophers (e.g., Paul Griffiths). As far as we know, it displays no regular or recognizable facial expression; leads to no sin- gle sort of hardwired behavioral response; and cannot plausibly be traced, much less reduced, to any particular neurological processes. Also, gratitude endures. It is not, as Carroll Izard defined emotion, a “brief . . . response” (Izard, 2002, p. 248) If it is just a fleeting feeling, it hardly counts as gratitude. And gratitude, unlike hardwired behavioral responses, can be appropriate or inappropriate. Gratitude should be sincere. Perhaps, on occasion, gratitude may feel good, and we do speak of heart- felt gratitude, but I think the more usual feeling is one of slight discomfort (for reasons suggested previously) or, often, nothing at all. We may say that we feel grateful in describing or expressing our gratitude, but this is not usu- ally a phenomenological report of a unique kind of experience. (Most emo- tions, I argue, lack any specific feeling in this sense. Our phenomenological reports more likely consist of various perspectival and value-laden descrip- tions of the situation and objects of our emotion.) Some theorists (e.g., Paul Griffiths) might include gratitude among our higher cognitive emotions, if, that is, it were to count as an emotion at all. But emotions comprise a varied and expansive category in which all sorts of feelings are included, and it seems to me that excluding gratitude too readily suggests that gratitude isn’t “felt” at all. But to say this is to suggest that gratitude is just a social perform- ance, like unthinkingly saying “thank you” when the waiter brings some extra pads of butter to the table. As for the virtues, gratitude is not as active as most (courage and gen- erosity, for instance), nor is it an ongoing disposition to behave in a socially responsible or congenial manner (temperance and truthfulness, for exam- ple). We do not usually think of it as being cultivated as a habit (although some of its superficial trappings, such as saying “thank you,” obviously may be), and (like many virtues) its status as a virtue as opposed to an emotion is in much dispute. (Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, opposed the virtues, f o r e w o r d vii which he insisted were “states of character,” to the passions, which he consid- ered merely episodic. Many philosophers have followed him in this; for ex- ample, Bernard Williams in his 1985 Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.) But it is not always easy to distinguish between a dispositional state of character and a recurring passion, and (as Aristotle clearly argued) it is as nec- essary to cultivate the right passions as it is to cultivate the right habits and states of character. Both are essential to virtue. Indeed, they are often identi- cal. Cultivating courage, for example, is cultivating the right amount of and the right attitude to fear, and cultivating generosity is cultivating the right amount of and the right attitude to sympathy or compassion. It may be that when we speak of a grateful person (or a grateful nation) we are more often referring to a particular episode rather than a consistent state of character. But it does not follow that gratitude cannot be cultivated, or that it has noth- ing to do with character. Indeed, a single feeling of gratitude—for example, to one’s parents, to an influential teacher or guru, or to someone who has seri- ous changed or even saved one’s life—may come to define a good deal of one’s character and one’s sense of one’s own life. By contrast, being ungrateful is clearly the mark of a vice, whether in a single instance or as a long-term defect of character. Where gratitude is ap- propriate, even mandatory, being ungrateful is a sign or symptom of lack of socialization, whether evident in the inability to appreciate what others have done for one or, worse, the grudging resentment of one’s own vulnerability and the refusal to admit one’s debt to others. Gratitude directed to God may not be demeaning. After all, it is God we are acknowledging as our benefac- tor. But gratitude toward other people may be more of a problem. A decade or so ago, the late social psychologist Shula Sommers studied attitudes to- ward gratitude (and other emotions) in U.S. and Israeli society. She found that Americans in general ranked gratitude comparatively low on a scale of comfortable and uncomfortable emotions and that U.S. men, in general, found gratitude to be a humiliating emotion (Sommers, 1984). But uncom- fortable though it may be, we recognize that none of us is wholly self-suffi- cient and without the need of help from others.To deny that obvious truth is not just to be philosophically mistaken: It is to be a person of poor character, whatever one’s other virtues. Which is not to say that gratitude is good in itself, as philosophers say, and as many of the authors in this book are well aware.As Aristotle said of all of the passions, it is appropriateness that counts—the right passion, in the right circumstance, with the right target, to the right degree. Thus Aristotle talked about perception as the key to ethics, the practiced ability to see in a situation the appropriateness (or the inappropriateness) not only of grati- tude but of its specific expression. There are occasions in which gratitude is inappropriate despite the benefit. (I have heard people say that gratitude is viii f o r e w o r d inappropriate if someone is just doing his or her job, although I suspect that this is just an excuse not to thank them.) There are occasions on which grati- tude is appropriate even though the benefit in question is slight indeed. (I would argue that the waiter bringing the butter is one modest example.) Sometimes the best expression of gratitude is a slight nod of the head. Some- times nothing less than pledging one’s life will do. Both Seneca and Adam Smith spent considerable time discussing the question of appropriateness, but the point to be made is that the matter of appropriateness is one that es- capes the confines of psychology and moves to manners and ethics. I argue, as do many of the authors in this book, that being capable of and expressing gratitude is not only a virtue but part and parcel of the good life. It is not just an acknowledgment of debt and an expression of humility but is also a way to improve one’s life. One can take one’s life and its advantages for granted, but how much better it is to acknowledge not only these advantages but one’s gratitude for them. Thus Barbara Fredrickson rightly argues that gratitude broadens and builds. It is not just a positive view of life. It is a way of putting one’s life in perspective. Ultimately, as Nietzsche (1967) exclaimed in one of his most heartfelt aphorisms, one should be grateful for one’s life as such (“How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life?”—Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Clever,” section 10, p. 221). A person who feels such cosmic grati- tude, even if just on occasion, is a better person and a happier one. But one of the questions that has always intrigued me about such cosmic gratitude, and it certainly bothered Nietzsche as well, is to whom should one feel this gratitude? As an emotion (as opposed to a mood or a mere state of character), grat- itude is defined, at least in part, by its object. But the object (in this case one’s whole life) seems to be incomplete. If a good friend gives me a book, I am not just grateful for the book; I am grateful to him for giving me the book. This acknowledgment of the other’s agency seems essential to the emotion. But if one does not believe in God, then how can one be grateful for one’s life and all of its blessings? Nietzsche talks rather obscurely about affirming one’s life, but this seems to rather beg the question. To whom should one be grateful for one’s life? Robert C. Roberts has no problem with this question, nor do most Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims. But I do, as do some Buddhists, who may well share the problem with atheists. Being grateful “to the universe” is a limp way out of this quandary. But personifying the universe solves the God problem only by displacing it.Thus Camus (1946), another atheist, populates his hero Sisyphus’s world with gods and goddesses who are maliciously enjoying his fate (and at whom he can rail in scorn and defiance). But this literary ploy is part and parcel of Camus’s own recognition that the universe cannot be, as he so often claims, merely indifferent. (Indeed, he gives the game away when he has his antihero f o r e w o r d ix Meursault “open his heart to the benign indifference of the universe” at the end of The Stranger) (emphasis added). But does it make sense to be grateful to the universe? I can imagine Dr. Roberts saying, “Isn’t this really being grate- ful to God without admitting it?” Perhaps one can avoid God by claiming to be thankful to chance, or per- haps to luck, as one might be thankful in roulette or the state lottery (one is surely not thankful to the casino or to the state). But, again, the effort seems limp. The “to whom?” question gets begged again. Manufacturing an evasive impersonal agent to whom to be grateful does not seem convincing. But, then, are atheists stuck with being ungrateful about the single gift that mat- ters most? Rather, I think the “to whom?” question is misplaced here. The easy move from gratitude as an interpersonal social emotion to cosmic gratitude for one’s whole life is unwarranted. It may make good sense for a theist, for whom there is something akin to an interpersonal relationship with God (but even the most powerful author on this topic, the Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard, expressed deep anxiety about the peculiar one-sidedness of this particular interpersonal relationship).And one can, of course, person- ify the universe as Camus did, but it is instructive that Camus felt compelled to belittle science (and the scientific worldview) at the same time. But I think that there is another solution, more radical in that it severs gratitude for one’s life from the interpersonal emotions. It is, I think, still gratitude, but it shines a light on what even interpersonal gratitude is all about, which is not merely being thankful to X for boon or gift Y. Gratitude should not be conceived just in terms of a particular relation- ship. Gratitude is a philosophical emotion. It is, in a phrase, seeing the bigger picture. In relationships, it is seeing a particular act or transaction as part of a larger and ongoing relationship. The limiting case, in which one is briefly grateful to a stranger whom one will (probably) never see again, underscores the nature of the more usual case in which one probably will see the other person again.The bigger picture in such a case is not the one-off nature of the episode but the frequency of such episodes and one’s need to be grateful to any number of strangers, of which this is just one instance. Thus Blanche Dubois’s classic statement that she had always depended on “the kindness of strangers” (Tennessee Williams, 1947) expressed an astute philosophy, not just a personal observation. So viewed, opening one’s heart to the universe is not so much personifying the universe as opening one’s heart, that is, ex- panding one’s perspective. And so viewed, being grateful for one’s whole life is not a “grateful to whom?” question so much as it is a matter of being aware of one’s whole life, being reflective in a way that most of us are not, most of the time.And when one is reflective and aware of one’s whole life, one recognizes how much of

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