THANK YOU, WILL DO AS YOU SAY: GRATITUDE AND OBEDIENCE TO CHEAT

Abstract

Past literature has conceptualized gratitude as an emotion that produces prosocial outcomes. However, recent studies have shown that this conceptualization has not accounted for the social alignment hypothesis of gratitude whereby gratitude increases one’s tendency to follow others even when outcomes are non-prosocial (Ng et al., 2017). Therefore, I further examined the social alignment hypothesis by proposing that (1) gratitude would increase self-benefitting and immoral obedience to a benefactor, and that (2) this effect would be mediated by trust in the benefactor. An experimental study (N = 248, Mage = 19.94 years; SDage = 1.11) was conducted in which participants were randomly assigned to gratitude, neutral, or gratitude (with low trust) conditions. Participants were commanded to cheat for self-benefit by entering a fake, high score to increase one’s chances of winning the lucky draw. Results indicated that participants feeling grateful obeyed more than participants in a neutral state as well as a grateful state mixed with low trust. Hence, the findings provided support for the social alignment hypothesis of gratitude and showed that gratitude could result in behaviours that were non-prosocial and dishonest. This implies the need for a more nuanced conceptualization of gratitude that acknowledges its potential harmful implications.