EFFECTS OF GRATITUDE ON PROSOCIAL INTENTIONS AND ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

Abstract

There is a wealth of research investigating positive emotions and their associated effects on our daily functioning. However, positive emotions have largely been investigated as a global construct, with no focus on targeted emotions and their specific effects. Even when positive emotions are differentiated, few studies attempted to evaluate the differential effects of the different positive emotions in one single experiment. This prevents findings from conclusively asserting that an outcome is uniquely linked to a particular emotion as positive emotions co-occur. This study investigated the effects of gratitude on prosocial intentions and ethical decision making relative to interest, pride, and the neutral state by testing hypotheses with survey data from Prolific, an online participant recruitment platform. This study has two hypotheses: (1) gratitude should increase prosocial intentions, relative to the three other conditions, and (2) gratitude should also increase ethical decision making, relative to the three other conditions. The results provided no evidence suggesting that gratitude is a significant predictor of prosocial intentions or ethical decision making, although the trend points towards gratitude positively influencing ethical decision making. In addition, out of the three discrete emotions, only interest significantly predicted prosocial intentions. Theoretical implications of the study are discussed, alongside recommendations for future research.