Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 1 Running head: Gratitude in Intermediate Affective Terrain Date submitted: November 27, 2001 Gratitude in Intermediate Affective Terrain: Links of Grateful Moods to Individual Differences and Daily Emotional Experience Michael E. McCullough Jo-Ann Tsang Southern Methodist University Robert A. Emmons University of California, Davis Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), Savannah, GA, January-February, 2002
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 2 Abstract People's daily experiences of grateful moods were investigated in two studies. In Study 1, spiritual transcendence and a variety of positive affective traits were related to higher levels of gratitude in daily mood. Study 2 replicated these findings and revealed that people with high levels of gratitude in their daily moods also reported more frequent daily episodes of grateful emotions, more intense gratitude per episode, and more people to whom they were grateful each day. In addition, the grateful disposition appeared to render participants' grateful moods somewhat resistant to the effects of discrete emotional episodes of gratitude. These studies help to clarify the relationships among manifestations of gratitude as an affective trait, as a mood, and as a discrete emotion. Keywords: Gratitude, emotion, theory, measures, daily diary
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 3 Throughout the history of ideas, gratitude has been defined in many ways. Over 200 years ago, Smith (1790/1976) defined gratitude as "The sentiment which most immediately and directly prompts us to reward" (p. 68). Similarly, Weiner and Graham (1989) defined gratitude as "a stimulus to return a favor to the other and thus reintroduce balance" (p. 403). In recognition of gratitude's appreciative quality, Lazarus and Lazarus (1994) conceptualized gratitude as one of the empathic emotions that reflects recognition or appreciation of an altruistic gift. In the same vein, Emmons and Crumpler (2000) wrote, "Minimally, gratitude is an emotional response to a gift. It is the appreciation felt after one has been the beneficiary of an altruistic act" (pp. 56-57). These definitions reflect theoretical consensus on several points regarding gratitude. The first is that gratitude should be listed among the positively valenced affects (Fredrickson, in press; Mayer et al., 1991). A second is that gratitude occurs most prototypically (though not exclusively; cf. Teigen, 1997) in response to the perception that one has received a valuable benefit that was rendered intentionally by another person (McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001). A third is that gratitude has motivational properties, namely, that it motivates people toward benevolent action in response to the benevolence that they themselves have received from others (McCullough, Kilpatrick et al., 2001, in press). Gratitude at Three Levels of Affective Experience Gratitude, like all affects, can manifest itself in several distinct forms that may have distinct psychological properties. Rosenberg (1998) proposed that the common forms of affective experience could be structured into three hierarchical levels of analysis: affective traits, moods, and emotions. Gratitude as Affective Trait Rosenberg (1998) placed affective traits at the top of this hierarchy. She defined affective traits as stable predispositions toward certain types of emotional responding that set the threshold for the occurrence of particular emotional states (p. 249). For example, hostility
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 4 lowers the threshold for experiencing anger. In the same way, there appears to be a "grateful disposition" that may reduce people s threshold for experiencing grateful emotions (McCullough et al., in press). People who rate themselves (and who are rated by others) as possessing a strong disposition toward gratitude also appear to experience high degree of life satisfaction and positive affects such as happiness, vitality, and hope. Conversely, they also appear to experience low levels of negative affects such as resentment, depression, and envy (see also Watkins, in press). Finally, McCullough et al. found that people rated as possessing a grateful disposition also scored higher on measures of prosocial behavior, empathy, forgiveness, religiousness, and spirituality. Among the Big Five, the grateful disposition seems related most strongly to Agreeableness (positively) and Neuroticism (negatively). Gratitude as an Emotion Gratitude also has the characteristics of "emotions," which Rosenberg defined as "acute, intense, and typically brief psychophysiological changes that result from a response to a meaningful situation in one's environment" (p. 250). McCullough, Kilpatrick et al. (2001) reviewed data from several studies to conclude that people experience the emotion of gratitude most consistently and strongly when they perceive themselves to be recipients of an intentionally rendered benefit that is both valuable to the beneficiary and costly to the benefactor. In addition, McCullough, Kilpatrick et al. (2001) posited that the emotion of gratitude has a specific action tendency, which is "to contribute to the welfare of the benefactor (or a third party) in the future (p. 252). Indeed, grateful emotions appear to motivate people to reciprocate the benefits they have received by rendering further benefits. Importantly, this action tendency is adequately distinct from the action tendencies associated with indebtedness (Greenberg, 1980; see Graham, 1988; Gray & Emmons, 2001).
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 5 Gratitude as a Mood: Intermediate Affective Terrain Rosenberg considered "moods, which "wax and wane, fluctuating throughout or across days" (p. 250) as subordinate to affective traits, but existing at a higher level than do discrete emotional episodes. Although psychologists have recently begun to explore gratitude as an affective trait and as an acute and fleeting emotion, a systematic exploration of gratitude in this intermediate terrain between affective traits and emotions" (Rosenberg, 1998, p. 250) is conspicuously absent from the existing literature on gratitude. Indeed, all that is really known about gratitude in the experience of daily moods is that it is moderately positive and moderately arousing (Mayer, Salovey, Gomberg-Kaufman, & Blainey, 1991). In the present paper we explore the determinants of gratitude in daily mood. Individual Differences and Daily Experience as Determinants of Gratitude in Daily Mood Because daily mood occupies "intermediate terrain" between affective traits and emotional reactions to discrete daily life events, it is likely that individual differences and daily events work in concert to determine the extent to which people experience gratitude in daily life. But to which individual differences might grateful moods be related? To which daily events? Moreover, how might individual differences and daily events work in concert to promote gratitude in daily mood experience? Which Traits Are Associated With Gratitude in Daily Mood? Of course, we anticipate that people's experiences of gratitude in daily mood are reliably associated with measures of gratitude as a disposition or affective trait (e.g., McCullough et al., in press). The disposition toward gratitude is exactly that: a personality-based proneness to experience grateful affect (including moodlike manifestations of affect). Although this proposition may seem trivial, demonstrating a link between the affective traits that supposedly predispose people to experience grateful moods and those grateful moods themselves is an important test of Rosenberg's (1998) hierarchical model of affective experience (at least vis à vis
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 6 gratitude). Moreover, the inability of such measures to predict gratitude from daily mood reports would cast doubt on the construct validity of the measures currently in use for measuring this disposition and/or on gratitude theory more generally. Other personality and affective correlates of gratitude in daily mood are probably a subset of the personality and affective traits that McCullough et al. (in press) found to be correlated with self-reports and peer-reports of gratitude as an affective trait. McCullough and colleagues demonstrated that people high in life satisfaction and several measures of positive affect score higher on measures of gratitude as an affective trait. This may be in part because such traits have a common dispositional core (e.g., high Extraversion/low Neuroticism) that inclines (or, in the case of negative affects, disinclines) people to experience positive affects of all sorts, including gratitude. McCullough et al. also found that gratitude as an affective trait was correlated with self-report measures of prosocial traits such as empathy, perspective-taking, and envy, perhaps partially because of their common dispositional substrate (e.g., Big Five Agreeableness). McCullough et al. (in press) demonstrated further that measures of both traditional religious involvement and non-sectarian spirituality were correlated with gratitude as an affective trait. These latter correlations may reflect the fact that people who are highly religious and/or spiritual tend to perceive positive circumstances in their lives that are not caused by human action (e.g., eyesight, a sunny day) as resulting from the intentional behavior of a benevolent moral agent (i.e., God or a higher power) nevertheless. In contrast, less religious or spiritual individuals might attribute these same events as due to chance, and therefore, be less inclined to feel grateful in response. Insofar as the correlations between gratitude and spirituality reflect real differences in the affective experiences of more versus less spiritual people, these correlations should manifest themselves when gratitude is measured at the level of daily mood. What Discrete Daily Experiences Are Associated with Gratitude in Daily Mood?
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 7 To clarify the links among manifestations of gratitude at all three levels of affect, it would be useful also to know how gratitude in daily mood is associated with daily experiences of gratitude as a relatively acute and fleeting emotional state. To the extent that gratitude in people s daily moods is built "from the ground up" on the basis of people's daily gratituderelevant experiences and their relatively fleeting emotional reactions to them, people who experience gratitude in their daily moods should report (a) more daily events for which they are grateful, and (b) more intense gratitude in response to these discrete daily events than would people who have less gratitude in their daily moods. Moreover, in keeping with McCullough et al.'s (in press) theorizing regarding the "facets" of gratitude, people with high levels of gratitude in daily moods would also be expected, ceteris paribus, to report (c) having felt grateful to more people each day. How Does the Grateful Disposition Interact With Daily Emotional Experience? Our assertion that affective traits and gratitude-relevant social interactions (and emotional reactions to them) in daily life determine the extent to which people experience gratitude in their daily mood reports is not to suggest that affective traits and daily experience operate independently of one another. Rather, individual differences and daily experiences might operate in an interactive fashion to determine grateful moods. The gratitude-relevant social interactions that people experience (and their fleeting emotional reactions to them) may have a different influence on daily moods for people who are strongly disposed to experience gratitude than they do for people who are weakly disposed to experience gratitude. Although existing theory does not support strong predictions in this regard, we propose two rival hypotheses regarding the interaction of the grateful disposition and daily experience in determining grateful moods. The conductance hypothesis. The conductance hypothesis states that the moods of people who are highly disposed toward gratitude (i.e., who score high on measures of gratitude as an affective trait) are particularly responsive to the emotional effects of gratitude-relevant daily life
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 8 events (e.g., experiencing many discrete events that cause gratitude; experiencing gratitude to a large number of people) and their own discrete emotional responses to these daily events (i.e., feeling intense episodes of grateful emotion in response). In this view, the disposition toward gratitude fosters causal dependence between emotions and moods. For dispositionally grateful people, their relatively fleeting emotional reactions to gratitude-relevant daily events are conducted upward toward higher levels of affect so that their more pervasive and long-lasting moods throughout the day are colored by their daily experience. Stated another way, when dispositionally grateful people experience gratitude for a discrete daily event (e.g., someone does something kind for them), they experience more gratitude in their daily mood as a result: grateful emotions put dispositionally grateful people into a grateful mood. Conversely, people who are lower in the disposition toward gratitude, gratituderelevant daily life events (and people s emotional reactions of gratitude) are not effectively conducted upward to influence mood. For them, discrete emotional experiences of gratitude do not lead to grateful moods as strongly and reliably. The resistance hypothesis. According to the resistance hypothesis, the disposition toward gratitude fosters causal independence between people s fleeting daily emotional experiences and their more enduring daily mood experiences. In this view, for people who are dispositionally prone to feel grateful (i.e., score high on measures of the disposition toward gratitude) the amount of gratitude in their daily moods is determined so thoroughly by personality processes that their moods are resistant to the effects of gratitude-relevant daily life events (e.g., experiencing many discrete gratitude-eliciting events; experiencing gratitude to a large number of people) and their discrete emotional responses to these daily events (i.e., feeling intense episodes of grateful emotion in response). Thus, for dispositionally grateful people, the amount of gratitude in their daily moods would not decrease on days when they experience few discrete
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 9 episodes of grateful emotion. Likewise, the amount of gratitude in their daily moods does not increase substantially on days when they experience many discrete episodes of grateful emotion. Conversely, according to the resistance hypothesis, people with a weaker disposition toward gratitude may experience gratitude in their daily moods only insofar as they experience high number of the social-psychological events that typically elicit gratitude and they experience strong amounts of grateful emotion in response to these discrete daily events. In this view, less dispositionally grateful people s daily grateful moods are more dependent upon discrete emotion episodes than they are for more dispositionally grateful people. Summary and Overview of the Studies Manifestations of gratitude in daily mood have been almost completely overlooked in theory and research on gratitude to date. However, existing work on gratitude at the level of affective traits and at the level of acute, fleeting emotional experiences provides some clues as to how grateful moods might manifest themselves in daily life. In the remainder of the present paper, we present results from two studies in which we explored the nature of gratitude in people s daily moods. In Study 1, we began by examining the relationships of gratitude in daily mood to personality and affective traits. In Study 2 we extended our analyses to examine the relationships between grateful mood and both gratituderelevant daily life events (e.g., experiencing many discrete events that cause gratitude; experiencing gratitude to a large number of people) and discrete emotional reactions (i.e., gratitude) in response to these daily events. In Study 2 we also evaluated the conductance and resistance hypotheses regarding the relationships among the three levels of grateful affect.
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 10 STUDY 1 Method Participants Participants were 95 adults (66 women and 29 men) with either congenital or adult-onset neuromuscular diseases (NMDs). Participants were obtained through a mailing list compiled by the University of California, Davis, Medical Center Neuromuscular Disease Clinic. They ranged in age from 22 to 77, with a mean age of 49. The majority had one of three NMDs: Post-polio, Charcot-Marie-Tooth, or Fascioscapulohumeral (see http://www.rehabinfo.net for more information about neuromuscular disease). Fifty-four percent of the participants were married, 42% had college or post-graduate degrees, and their mean income was between $15,000-25,000. Measures: Pre-Diary Questionnaires Approximately one year prior to completing the daily diaries, participants completed a variety of self-report measures. Gratitude Questionnaire: 12-Item Form (GQ-12). The 12-item gratitude questionnaire was an early version of the GQ-6 (McCullough et al., in press). It consists of 12 self-report items (e.g., "I feel a profound sense of appreciation) that participants endorse on a 7-point Likert-type scale (where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree). In this sample, the GQ-12 had an internal consistency reliability of alpha =.83, and was correlated with the GQ-6 (which participants completed one year later; see below) at r =.72, p <.001. Satisfaction with life. The 5-item Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) assesses the cognitive component of subjective well-being. Items (e.g., In most ways my life is close to ideal. ) are rated on a 7-point scale (where 1= strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree). The SWLS has a two-month test-retest correlation coefficient of r =.82, and coefficient alpha of.87 (Diener et. al., 1985). The SWLS is widely used and well-validated (Pavot & Diener, 1993).
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 11 Campbell Well-Being Scale. The Campbell Well-Being scale consists of nine semantic differential scales (e.g., boring-interesting, miserable-enjoyable, discouraged-hopeful) that provide an overall index of general well-being (Campbell, Converse, and Rodgers, 1976). The scale correlates with other measures of well-being and has acceptable internal consistency reliability (Beckie & Hayduk, 1997). Optimism. The widely used Life Orientation Test (LOT; Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994) is an 8-item scale for assessing dispositional optimism. Scheier et al. (1994) reported an internal consistency reliability of alpha =.82, and test-retest stabilities ranging from.56 to.79 across four time periods. Depressive symptoms. Participants also completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). Participants used a 4-point Likert-type scale [where 1 = Rarely or none of the time (less than 1 day) and 4 = most or all of the time (5-7 days)] to indicate how often during the last week they experienced each of 20 affective and somatic symptoms that characterize major depressive episodes. Total scores are the sums of scores from all 20 items. Radloff (1977) reported test-retest stabilities ranging from r =.67 (four weeks) to r =.32 (12 months). Internal consistency was estimated as alpha =.90 (Radloff, 1977). Positive and negative affectivity. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) measures general tendencies to experience positive (e.g., pride") and negative (e.g., guilty ) affect. Participants used a five-point Likert-type scale (where 1 = very slightly or not at all and 5 = extremely) to indicate how well each of 20 adjectives described how they generally feel. Coefficient alphas of the positive and negative scales range in the mid- to upper.80 s (Watson et al., 1988). The Big Five Inventory. The Big Five Inventory (John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991) consists of 44 brief descriptive phrases that are prototypical markers of the "Big Five" factors of personality: Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness. Alpha
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 12 reliabilities and test-retest reliabilities for the five subscales range from.80 to.90 (John & Srivastava, 1999). Spiritual transcendence. The Spiritual Transcendence Scale (Piedmont, 1999) is a 24- item scale consisting of subscales for assessing three dimensions of spirituality: Prayer fulfillment (e.g., The desires of my body do not keep me from my prayers or meditations ) universality ( I believe there is a larger meaning to life ) and connectedness ( I am concerned about those who will come after me in life ). Coefficient alphas for these subscales range from.65 to.85. Subscale scores are moderately correlated with conventional indices of religiousness and are relatively independent of the Big Five (Piedmont, 1999). In the present study, we used the total scale score as a measure of spirituality. Measures: Gratitude in Daily Mood Every day for 21 consecutive days, participants completed daily ratings of the intensity with which they felt each of a variety of emotions. Participants were instructed to "Indicate to what extent you felt this way during the day today" using a five-point Likert-type scale (where 1 = very slightly or not at all and 5 = extremely). We measured the amount of gratitude in participants' daily moods via their mean score on three gratitude-related emotion words (grateful, thankful, and appreciative) as in Emmons & McCullough (2001). Across the 21 days of the study, the mean internal consistency for this three-item composite was alpha =.92. Post-Diary Measure of the Disposition Toward Gratitude Approximately one month following the completion of the 21-day diaries, participants completed a second packet of questionnaires including the GQ-6 (McCullough et al., in press), which is a self-report measure of the frequency and intensity with which people experience gratitude. Sample items include I have so much in life to be thankful for, and I am grateful to a wide variety of people. Items are endorsed on a 7-point Likert-type scale (where 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). McCullough et al. (in press) reported internal consistency
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 13 reliabilities in the range of alpha =.80. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the measure has a robust one-factor structure and is psychometrically distinct from many measures of subjective well-being (McCullough et al., in press). Procedure Participants were sent in the mail 21 daily recording forms, instructions, and business reply envelopes for mailing their forms directly back to the researchers. They were told that their daily ratings were meant to summarize the day as a whole, therefore that they should try to complete them as late in the day as possible, but before being too sleepy to complete them accurately. It was stressed that for most of them, the optimal time would be in the early evening. The daily form took approximately 5 minutes to complete each evening. Participants were asked to mail in their forms once a week. Finally, they were told that should they forget to fill out a form, it was better to omit the form for that day rather than filling it out from memory. Participants were paid $20 if they completed all of the forms; $15 if they failed to complete all 21 forms. A year earlier, they received $40 compensation for completing a 28-page survey that included the pre-diary measures used in this study and several that are not relevant to this study. Analyses To analyze the daily diary data, we used a two-level modeling strategy with the HLM2L program of the HLM 5 statistical software package (Raudenbush, Bryk, Cheong, & Congdon, 2000). HLM enabled us simultaneously to fit both (a) within-person longitudinal models and (b) between person-models that accounted for individual differences in the parameters of the withinperson models. Within-person (Level-1) models. We decomposed people s 21 daily gratitude mood ratings (a mean of three items) into within-person (or Level-1) models that took the form Y ti 0i 1i(t) + e ti (1)
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 14 where Y ti 3HUVRQLVVFRUHRQWKHWKUHHLWHPFRPSRVLWHRQ'D\W 0i = Person i's initial status or VFRUHRQWKHWKUHHLWHPJUDWLWXGHFRPSRVLWHDWWKHEHJLQQLQJRIWKHVWXG\'D\ 1i(t) = the rate of change in people s scores on this three-item gratitude composite as a linear function of time, and e ti reflects residual variance in Y ti. Although we had no theoretical reason to expect change in the amount of gratitude in participants' daily moods over the 21 days, we have found in other work (McCullough, Emmons, Kilpatrick, & Mooney, 2001) that people s scores on some variables decay with repeated assessments, perhaps due changes in compliance or habituation. The two-level modeling strategy specified in Equation 1 allowed us to decompose people s daily scores into a component that could be attributed to their initial status (i.e., stable differences among participants beginning on the first day of data collection and persisting throughout the study) and a component representing reliable (if somewhat inexplicable) linear changes in how participants responded to the mood rating task over the 21-day period (the rate of linear change was also free to vary across participants). Between-person (Level-2) models. The between-person (or Level-2) models were DWWHPSWVWRDFFRXQWIRULQGLYLGXDOGLIIHUHQFHVLQWKH/HYHOFRHIILFLHQWVLHWKHUDQGRP coefficients that accounted for between-persons differences in initial status and linear change). These models took the form: 0i 00 01 X 01i + r 0i (2). (TXDWLRQVSHFLILHVHVWLPDWLRQIRU 0i, which captures individual differences in initial status on WKHWKUHHLWHPPHDVXUHRIJUDWLWXGHLQGDLO\PRRG 00 = the mean initial status on the three-item JUDWLWXGHFRPSRVLWHIRUWKHHQWLUHVDPSOH 01 = the strength of the relationship between the between-persons differences in initial status on the three-item measure and another measured between-subjects variable X 01 ; X 01i = individual i s score on X 01 ; and r 0i is a residual reflecting
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 15 between-persons differences in initial status on the three-item measure of gratitude in daily mood WKDWDUHQRWDFFRXQWHGIRUE\ 00 and the between-subjects predictor variables. Using this modeling approach, we conducted a series of univariate analyses in which several personality and affective traits were used individually as between-subjects predictors of individual differences in people s initial status on the three-item gratitude composite. We expressed these relationships with t statistics and accompanying p values, and also converted the t values to effect size rs to index the magnitude of the associations, calculated as r = t / (t 2 n 2) 1/2 (3) (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990; p. 272). Results and Discussion Means, standard deviations, and reliabilities for major study variables appear in Table 1. Longitudinal Trajectories of Gratitude in Daily Mood Ratings We modeled the longitudinal unfolding of gratitude in participants' daily moods with a linear change model in which we specified random effects for initial status and linear change. Per this linear change model, participants began the study feeling above the midpoint on gratitude, coeff. = 3.47, S.E. =.09. Because the scores on the three-item gratitude composite ranged from 1-5, a score of zero was not possible. As a result, null hypothesis tests for this coefficient are not informative so we do not report them here. Over the course of the study, participants reported feeling slightly less grateful each day, coeff. = -0.02, S.E. =.00, t = -4.55, p <.001. In other words, scores on the three-item measure of gratitude in daily mood decreased, on average,.02 units per day. Thus, it seemed reasonable to model participants daily grateful moods as a function of an initial status and a small linear reduction each day. These group trends notwithstanding, participants manifested considerable
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 16 variance in both initial status (variance = 0.73, p <.001) and linear change (variance = 0.001, p <.001). The two level-1 parameters (initial status and linear change) accounted for 64% of the variance in people's reports of gratitude in their daily moods. Because participants varied considerably on these two parameters, it was reasonable to search for variables that could account for individual differences in both initial status and linear change. Almost without exception, individual differences in linear change were not significantly related to the affective and personality traits, so we do not report those associations in the present manuscript. Relatedly, there was no gender difference in initial status or linear change estimates, ps >.50. Correlations of Dispositional Measures with Gratitude in Daily Mood First, we examined whether self-report measures of gratitude as an affective trait were associated with the amount of gratitude in participants' daily moods (i.e., as indexed by their level-1 initial status parameter estimates, as with all analyses reported below). We used both McCullough et al.'s (in press) GQ-6 (which was collected after the mood diaries) and the 12-item measure gratitude as an affective trait (collected nearly one year before the mood diaries) as between-subjects predictors of individual differences in the Level-1 initial status estimates (see Table 2). Both the 12-item measure of gratitude as an affective trait (coeff. = 0.72, S.E. =.19, t = 3.87, p <.001) and the GQ-6 (coeff. = 0.45, S.E. =.12, t = 3.85, p <.001) were positively and significantly related to individual differences in the amount of gratitude in people's daily moods (effect size rs =.37 for both measures of dispositional gratitude). Thus, people who perceived themselves as highly disposed to experience gratitude consistently experienced more gratitude in their daily moods throughout the 21-day study period. Correlations with Other Personality and Affective Traits Several other personality and affective traits predicted individual differences in the initial status of people s daily gratitude ratings, although none were reliably related to individual differences in linear change. Table 2 lists the coefficients, standard errors, t values and effect size
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 17 rs for these associations. People with high levels of traits such as life satisfaction, well-being, optimism, and positive affectivity reported more gratitude in their daily moods than did their counterparts who were lower in these traits. Conversely, people high in self-reported depressive symptoms (but not negative affectivity) reported less gratitude in their daily moods than did people who were lower in self-reported depressive symptoms. As expected, spiritual transcendence was positively correlated with the amount of gratitude in participants' daily moods (coeff. =.60, t = 3.32, p <.01, r =.33). People who had strong convictions regarding the interconnectedness of life and humanity, and who described a history of spiritual or mystical experiences reported more gratitude in their daily moods than did their less spiritual counterparts. We also correlated each of the Big Five measures with participants initial status values. Among the five factors (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism), only Extraversion (coeff. =.54, t = 4.01, p <.001, r =.38) was significantly correlated with people s initial status values. In a simultaneous multiple regression, we entered all of the Big Five as simultaneous predictors of individual differences in initial status on the three-item measure of gratitude in daily mood (see Table 3). In this equation, only Extraversion demonstrated a significant unique relationship with gratitude in daily mood. Summary In Study 1 we found that people who reported high levels of positive emotions and subjective well-being experienced more gratitude in daily mood than did people who were lower in positive emotions and subjective well-being. Among the Big Five, Extraversion appeared to be the strongest predictor of gratitude in people's daily moods. McCullough et al. (in press) also found relationships between Extraversion and gratitude, though we did not find the associations of Agreeableness and Neuroticism with gratitude that McCullough et al. reported. This disparity may be due to differences between gratitude as an affective trait and gratitude as a mood.
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 18 Alternatively, the failure to replicate effects of Agreeableness could be due to the unique nature of the sample used in this study (adults with neuromuscular diseases). Also, people with high levels of spiritual transcendence a recently proposed model for conceptualizing spirituality (Piedmont, 1999) also experienced more gratitude in their daily moods than did people lower in self-transcendence. These findings largely confirm the insights of McCullough, Emmons, and Tsang (in press) regarding the correlates of gratitude, here extended to the realm of daily mood. In addition, Study 1 showed that two measures of gratitude as an affective trait which should, theoretically, define people's thresholds for experiencing gratitude in daily life (Rosenberg, 1998) do indeed correlate with reports of gratitude in people's daily moods, with effect size correlations of r =.37. The findings of Study 1 led to four other questions. First, given that Study 1 involved community-dwelling adults with chronic physical health problems, we wondered whether the results from Study 1 would emerge also in a sample of basically healthy university students. Second, the correlations of the Big Five with gratitude daily mood in Study 1 differed somewhat from what we have found in earlier work in which we assessed gratitude as an affective trait. We wondered if this divergence from previous results was due to differences in the assessment of gratitude, or to the nature of the sample used in Study 1. Third, we wished to explore the association of gratitude in daily mood with a wider variety of spiritual and religious constructs. Fourth, we were interested in exploring how gratitude in daily mood might be shaped not only by personality and affective traits, but also by the gratitude-inducing events that occur to people each day and their episodic emotional reactions to them. Within this context, we also wished to give the conductance and resistance hypotheses empirical attention. These questions led us to conduct a second study. STUDY 2 Method
Participants Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 19 Participants were 112 students (84 females, 27 males, 1 unrecorded) enrolled in an undergraduate psychology course at Southern Methodist University (age range = 18-44, M = 20.54). Most participants reported themselves to be European-American (85). Smaller numbers of individuals classified themselves as Latino/a-American (13), African-American (7), and Asian-American (4), with 3 individuals declining to state their ethnicity. Participants received course credit for participating. Measures: Pre-Diary Questionnaires Prior to completing the daily mood diaries, participants also completed a packet of questionnaires containing several measures of personality and affective traits. Measures from Study 1. As in Study 1, participants completed the Gratitude Questionnaire-6, the Satisfaction With Life Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, and the Big Five Inventory. Disposition toward gratitude. In addition to the GQ-6, participants also indicated their general disposition toward gratitude by indicating the extent to which they generally felt each of three gratitude-related emotions (grateful, thankful, and appreciative), using an 5-point Likerttype scale (where 1 = very slightly or not at all and 5 = extremely). In previous work, this threeitem adjective measure was highly correlated (r =.75 after correcting for measurement error) with the GQ-6 (McCullough et al., 2001). Measures of religiousness and spirituality. Participants completed several measures of religiousness and spirituality. First, they completed a single-item measure of religious interest (1 = Not at all interested, 9 = Extremely interested). They also completed a general religiousness measure similar to that used in McCullough et al. (in press). Items assessed the importance of religion ("How important is religion in your life?); the frequency with which they attend religious activities ("On average, how often do you attend religious services?"); the number of
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 20 religious friends they have ("Are your friends involved in religious activities?" with "none," "a few," "most," and "all" as response options); the amount of time they spend reading scripture ("How often do you read sacred scriptures?") and other religious literature ("How often do you read other religious literature?"); the frequency with which they pray ("How often do you pray?"); the extent to which they feel they have a personal relationship with God ("To what extent do you have a personal, unique, close relationship with God?"); and the extent to which they experience spiritual union with God ("Do you have experiences where you feel a union with God and gain spiritual truth?"). This composite measure had an alpha of.88 for this sample. We measured religious orientation using Allport and Ross s (1967) Intrinsic and Extrinsic Religious Orientation Scales, and Batson s Quest Scale (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991). Intrinsic religious orientation measures the extent to which religion is an individual s master motive in one s life, while extrinsic religious orientation is related to using one s religion as a means for reaching other, non-religious ends such as comfort or status (Allport and Ross, 1967). The intrinsic religious orientation scale had an alpha =.89, whereas the extrinsic religious orientation scale had an alpha =.69 in this sample. Quest religious orientation measures the extent to which an individual conceptualizes religion in terms of an open-ended search (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993). The quest religious orientation scale had an alpha =.83 in this sample. In addition, participants completed a 15-item version of the self-transcendence subscale of the Character and Temperament Inventory (Cloninger, Svrakic, & Przybeck, 1993). This measure assesses three aspects of spirituality: Self-forgetful vs. self-conscious experience, transpersonal identification vs. self-isolation, and spiritual acceptance vs. rational materialism. Kirk, Eaves, and Martin (1999) developed a 15-item form (sample item is I have had personal experiences in which I felt in contact with a divine and wonderful spiritual power ) of the fulllength 33-item subscale. Cloninger et al. reported alpha in the low.70 s for the 33-item version.
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 21 In McCullough et al.'s (in press) study, internal consistency of the 15-item version was alpha =.86. Items were endorsed on a four-point Likert-type scale (where 1 = agree and 4 = disagree). Dispositional empathy. The tendency to experience empathy for other people was measured with the empathic concern and perspective-taking subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis & Oathout, 1987). These subscales have adequate internal consistency (alphas =.73 and.71, respectively, Davis & Oathout, 1987), and are frequently used to measure empathic disposition. Envy. We measured envy with Smith, Parrott, Diener, Hoyle, and Kim s (1999) 8-item Dispositional Envy Scale (DES). Items (e.g., Frankly, the success of my neighbors makes me resent them ) were rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale (where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree). Smith et al. (1999) reported internal consistency reliability estimates in the range of alpha =.83-.86 and two-week test-retest stability of r =.80. Measures from Daily Diaries Gratitude in daily mood. As in Study 1, participants used daily diaries to record the extent to which gratitude characterized their daily moods every day for 14 consecutive days. Each day, participants were instructed to read a variety of emotion words, including three gratitude-related emotion words (grateful, thankful, and appreciative). After reading each emotion word, participants were instructed to indicate "the extent to which you felt each of these emotions today" using a five-point Likert-type scale (where 1 = very slightly or not at all, 5 = extremely). The mean of participants scores for the three gratitude-related items was used as a measure of gratitude in their daily moods. Across the 14 days of the study, the mean internal consistency reliability of this 3-item composite was alpha =.97. Gratitude-relevant daily events and discrete emotional reactions to them. Participants also used the daily diaries to report information regarding discrete episodes each day in which they felt gratitude. Participants described up to 8 situations (in approximately 1 sentence) in
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 22 which they "felt grateful" each day. Next to each gratitude-eliciting situation, participants listed the specific people to whom they felt grateful in the corresponding situation. Then, they rated the intensity of the gratitude elicited by each situation on a three-point Likert-type scale (1 = Somewhat grateful, 3 = Extremely grateful). From these data we were able to derive three measurements of discrete gratitude-inducing events in participants' daily lives and their emotional reactions to these events: (a) gratitude frequency (the number of discrete daily situations that elicited gratitude); (b) gratitude density (the number of people to whom participants felt grateful each day) and (c) mean episodic gratitude intensity (the mean gratitude intensity rating for all of the discrete situations that elicited gratitude each day). Procedure Participants received a questionnaire packet and daily diaries at the beginning of class during an undergraduate course in the Spring of 2001. Participants were instructed to complete the questionnaire packet as soon as possible, and to complete one diary entry each night for 14 days. Questionnaires and diaries were collected each class session (four times total) during the 2- week period. Analyses We conducted multi-level models as in Study 1. In addition, we examined the withinsubjects correlations of three time-varying covariates (gratitude frequency, gratitude density, and mean episodic gratitude intensity) with the three-item measure of gratitude in daily mood. These within-subjects correlations allowed us to estimate the extent to which the amount of gratitude in people s moods on any given day was correlated with (a) the number of discrete events that caused them to feel grateful on that day (gratitude frequency); (b) the number of people to whom they felt grateful on that day (gratitude density); and (c) the mean level of gratitude they felt in response to the gratitude-eliciting episodes they experienced that day (mean episodic gratitude intensity). We examined each of these three time-dependent covariates in separate within-
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 23 subjects analyses, and then examined them jointly as simultaneous within-subjects predictors of the amount of gratitude in people's daily moods. In the models in which we examined these time dependent covariates, we also modeled effects for initial status and linear change to control for the longitudinal trajectories of gratitude in participants daily mood reports. Finally, we tested the conductance and resistance hypotheses by examining cross-level interactions between people's scores on the GQ-6 (a between-subjects covariate, centered on the group mean) and their daily scores on the three time-dependent covariates (which are withinsubjects covariates; see Nelzek, 2001). These analyses enabled us to determine whether the associations between the three time-dependent covariates and gratitude in daily mood varied as a function of participants' scores on the GQ-6. Results and Discussion Means, standard deviations, and reliabilities for major study variables appear in Table 4. Longitudinal Trajectories of Gratitude in Daily Mood Ratings First, as in Study 1, we decomposed people s 14 daily ratings of gratitude in daily mood into initial status and linear change components. The mean initial status was above the midpoint on the 1-5 scale (coeff. = 3.75, S.E. = 0.07). In addition, there was a small mean reduction in daily gratitude as the study progressed, coefficient = -0.04, S.E. = 0.01, t = -5.91, p <.001. These general trends notwithstanding, there were substantial individual differences among participants in both the initial status (variance = 0.48, p <.001) and linear change (variance = 0.002, p <.001) parameters. These two parameters accounted for 48% of the variance in the amount of gratitude in people's daily mood reports. We proceeded to look for personality variables that might explain individual differences in these initial status and linear change parameters. There was no gender difference for either the initial status or linear change parameters, ps >.30. Correlations of Dispositional Measures with Gratitude in Daily Moods
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 24 In a series of Level-2 models, we estimated the correlations of several personality and affective traits with individual differences in the amount of daily gratitude in participants' daily moods. Coefficients, standard errors, t-values, and effect size correlations for the associations of these personality variables with individual differences in initial status are reported in Table 5. Correlations with the measures of gratitude as an affective trait. Participants' scores on the GQ-6 were correlated with individual differences in initial status on the three-item measure of gratitude daily mood (coeff. =.57, S.E. =.10, t = 5.90, p <.001, r =.49), as was the three-item adjective measure of gratitude as an affective trait (coeff. = 0.57, S.E. =.10, t = 5.59, p <.001, r =.47). These results, taken together with parallel results from Study 1, speak well for the construct validity of self-report measures of the disposition toward gratitude. Life satisfaction and affectivity. Consistent with the results from Study 1, people with high levels of life satisfaction, happiness, and positive affectivity had higher initial status values on the gratitude ratings from their daily mood diaries. Also, as in Study 1, negative affectivity was not related to gratitude in daily mood (see Table 5). Religious and spiritual variables. Similar to Study 1, people who reported high levels of spirituality reported more gratitude in their daily moods, as did people higher in religious interest, general religiousness, and intrinsic religious orientation. Interestingly, however, extrinsic religious orientation and quest religious orientation were not significantly correlated with the amount of gratitude in daily mood (see Table 5). These findings suggest that people high in conventional forms of religiousness, especially people for whom religion is a fundamental organizing principle (i.e., people high in intrinsic religiousness) and people who report high levels of spiritual transcendence experience more gratitude in their daily moods than do their less counterparts who score lower on these religious/spiritual constructs. Prosocial traits. As in Study 1, the empathic concern subscale (but not the perspectivetaking subscale) from Davis's Interpersonal Reactivity Index was strongly associated with
Gratitude in "Intermediate Affective Terrain" 25 gratitude in people's daily moods. In contrast to McCullough et al. (in press), however, dispositional envy was not related to gratitude in daily mood (see Table 5). The Big Five. Among the Big Five, Agreeableness and Openness were significantly correlated with daily mood ratings of gratitude. These results differ substantially from those of Study 1, in which Extraversion was the major Big Five predictor of the amount of gratitude in people's daily mood reports. Table 6 presents the results of a simultaneous multiple regression of the Big Five on daily grateful mood. Agreeableness was the only factor that had a significant unique association with daily grateful mood, again mirroring the effects found by McCullough et al. (in press), but differing considerably from those of Study 1 presented previously. Correlations of Gratitude in Daily Mood with Gratitude-Relevant Daily Events and Discrete Emotional Reactions to Them We proceeded to examine the extent to which gratitude in participants' daily moods were correlated with three time-dependent covariates that reflected participants daily gratituderelevant interpersonal episodes and their emotional reactions to them: (a) gratitude frequency (the number of discrete daily situations that elicited gratitude each day); (b) gratitude density (the number of people to whom participants felt grateful each day) and (c) mean episodic gratitude intensity (the mean gratitude intensity rating across all of the discrete situations that elicited gratitude each day). We examined these associations by individually adding each of these three time-dependent covariates into the Level-1 model in which gratitude in people's daily moods was already decomposed into terms representing initial status, linear change, and residual variance. Thus, the resulting associations between gratitude in daily mood and the three time-dependent covariates represent their partial associations with the effects for initial status and linear change controlled simultaneously. As can be seen from Table 7, all three time-dependent covariates were strongly correlated with gratitude in participants' daily mood reports, effect size rs ranging from.61-.70, ps <.001.