UC Berkeley

Research has compellingly shown that gratitude is important for both personal and relational well-being (e.g., Gordon, Impett, Kogan, Oveis, & Keltner, 2012; Wood, Joseph, & Maltby, 2008); however, little work has documented the factors that moderate the experience of gratitude. One important factor influencing the experience and expression of emotion is social power (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). Low-power individuals are less likely to think, feel, and act in ways that are consistent with their own personality, attending instead to external cues such as social norms. Across four studies, I examined whether low-power individuals would be less likely to rely on their dispositional tendency to be grateful when responding to gratitude-inducing situations, which are governed by strong social norms. As hypothesized, dispositional gratitude and expected feelings of gratitude after receiving help from others were correlated for high- and neutral- but not low-power participants (Studies 1 & 2). That is, after receiving help, high-and neutral-power participants expected to feel grateful in line with their dispositional tendencies, but low-power participants did not. Study 3 replicated the findings of the first two studies using an actual gratitude-inducing situation in the laboratory. In Study 4, power also influenced the interpersonal transmission of gratitude such that low-power individuals were less accurate in transmitting feelings of gratitude to their romantic partners relative to high-power individuals. Across studies I measured and manipulated social power using a variety of methods (e.g., role playing, subtle priming) and examined lay beliefs as well as actual reports of gratitude in response to receiving benefits from others. Taken together, the results of these four studies provide evidence that power is an important factor that influences the experience of gratitude, with low power attenuating the link between disposition and emotion.