Gratitude and Forgiveness Psychology Quiz

Lecture 8: Chapter 11: Perspective-Taking - Gratitude and Forgiveness

• Perspective-Taking and Gratitude: Gratitude is acknowledging others' contributions and the positive impact on one's life. Appreciation and indebtedness are often involved. Forgiveness involves letting go of negative emotions (anger, resentment, hurt) when someone has wronged you. Feeling a sense of relief is common, however, vulnerability to being hurt again is also possible.

• Perspective-Taking and Behaviors:

  • Gratitude is expressed when someone has improved one's life positively.
  • Forgiveness is expressed when someone has made life harder.
  • Both gratitude and forgiveness need perspective-taking, which requires understanding, perceiving, and empathizing with someone else’s experience beyond your own

• Reasons for Perspective-Taking:

  • Understanding situations through others' experiences.
  • Expand one's understanding of the world through others (e.g., reading books, watching movies).

• Benefits of Perspective-Taking:

  • Build, nurture, and maintain relationships: Understanding others' perspectives even if they disagree, fosters closeness. Expressing gratitude and forgiveness to others makes one feel more seen, appreciated, and respected.
  • Associated with eudaimonic well-being: Gratitude and forgiveness helps provide a sense of purpose and meaning to difficult situations through reflecting on the roles/experiences of others.

• Perspective-Taking Mechanisms:

  • Perspective-taking combines different pieces of information simultaneously to construct a narrative (e.g., forgiving a friend).
  • This combines emotional experiences and thoughts with the event, one's personal values, and the other person's history

• Gratitude as a Virtue:

  • Cicero believed gratitude was the greatest virtue, the foundation of other virtues (kindness, humility, patience).
  • Humility: "I am not the cause of all the goodness in my life."
  • Kindness: "People have been kind to me, and I will be kind to others."

• Defining Gratitude: Two interpretations:

  • Stable long-lasting trait: Easily experiencing appreciation, recognizing life's abundance, and acknowledging goodness frequently.

  • Transient emotional experience: Experiencing gratitude or thankfulness in the present moment, separate from feelings of indebtedness.

• Gratitude and Well-being: Gratitude is linked with both subjective/hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Associated with better health outcomes, including less loneliness, perceived stress, depressive symptoms. It is also related to increased subjective health, self-esteem, and positive affect. Cognitive model and Psychosocial model both proposed by Alkozei et al. (2018) to explain the associations of gratitude and well-being.

  • Cognitive Model: Gratitude is conscious awareness of good experiences and possessions. Leads to positive biases in attention, interpretation, and memory of life's events. Results in neural and physiological changes, ultimately improving well-being and physical health.
  • Psychosocial Model: Gratitude rests on the understanding that others play instrumental parts in our good experiences. This creates increased social support, relationship quality, and prosocial behaviors. In turn, leads to better psychological well-being, physical health and an increase in experiences of gratitude.

• Examples of Gratitude Research Research has used vignettes, memory recall, and other measures to investigate how trait/state gratitude impacts perceptions of helpful behaviors.

• Impact of Gratitude on Memory: Grateful people tend to remember past events more positively. Trait gratitude is linked to positive memories and less regret.

• Gratitude and Positive Evaluations: People with high levels of gratitude readily acknowledge the extent of good in their past. These individuals are less likely to dwell on what could have been different. It leads to an increased level of happiness and life satisfaction.

• Gratitude and Sleep Outcomes: Gratitude is associated with better sleep outcomes, even when controlling factors like neuroticism, and conscientiousness. This correlation is attributed to more positive pre-sleep cognitions.

• Gratitude and Relationships: Gratitude strengthens relationships; expressing gratitude to others leads to more affectionate and supportive behaviors, which are perceived as responsive, contributing to relational satisfaction.

• The Witnessing Effect: Those who witness expressions of gratitude are more helpful and more interested in the people who both express and receive gratitude.

• Factors that Affect Gratitude: Genetics influence how oxytocin (involved in social bonding) is processed. This impact on trait gratitude levels. Variations in the CD38 gene also influence oxytocin levels and have been associated with greater expressions of gratitude toward relationship partners. Also associated with having a perceived high and meaningful life experience.

• Gratitude Interventions and Methods: Research in this area uses two methods.

  • 3 Good Things Intervention/Counting Blessings: Writing down three things that went well each day. The interventions increase gratitude, lead to higher well-being and happiness, which may be maintained for months after the intervention.

• Gratitude Letter/Visit: Writing a letter to those you are grateful for and then reading them letters, or sending the letters and visiting the individuals whom you feel grateful for has been shown to increase well-being.

• Challenges in Expressing Gratitude: People tend to underestimate the positive impact of expressing gratitude and overestimate the awkwardness.

• Forgiveness: Forgiveness is reducing negative emotions, thoughts, and behaviors towards someone who has hurt you. Examples of targets include a transgressor, the self, or an inanimate entity. Forgiveness is not condoning, excusing, or forgetting transgressions. Forgiveness is related to decreasing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. It’s also correlated with better physical and psychological health. Increased strength of marital bond is often correlated with more emotional forgiveness.

• Forgiveness and Justice: A perceived injustice gap between what the transgressor did and what the recipient believes is just may reduce emotional forgiveness.

• Forgiveness Interventions Enright's Model for Interpersonal Forgiveness consists of 4 phases (1. Recognize/Express Anger, 2. Discover and Name Psychological Defenses, 3. Evaluate psychological harm, 4. Meaning Making). The REACH Model also aims to promote forgiveness by asking the person to recall the offense, identify related feelings, and find empathy with the offender, commit to forgiving the offender and to sustain the commitment even when it is difficult

• Cultural Differences: Cultures vary in how gratitude is demonstrated. Verbal expressions of gratitude are consistently reported across ages; however, concrete and connective expressions of gratitude were shown to be most prominent in younger children. Different outcomes for expressing gratitude in different cultures are found: this can be linked to cultural differences in how gratitude is experienced and expressed; and differences in how gratitude affects physiological well-being.

Test your knowledge on key aspects of the cognitive model of gratitude and the dynamics of forgiveness. This quiz covers findings from Wood et al.'s studies and explores physiological effects, misconceptions, and interventions related to both concepts. Enhance your understanding of how gratitude and forgiveness influence psychological well-being.