ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R

Advances in Psychological Science ›› 2015, Vol. 23 ›› Issue (3): 479-488.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2015.00479

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Interpersonal Gratitude: An Important Positive Emotion in Social Life

LIANG Hongyu1; CHEN Shi1; XIONG Hongxing2; SUN Peizhen3; LI Fang1; ZHENG Xue1   

  1. (1 School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China) (2 School of Psychology, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China) (3 School of Education Science, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou 221116, China)
  • Received:2014-07-29 Online:2015-03-15 Published:2015-03-15
  • Contact: ZHENG Xue, E-mail: zhengxue77@126.com

Abstract:

Interpersonal gratitude is a cognitive emotion, it refers to the thankful and joyful attitude that a certain individual expresses towards other’s benefaction with kindness. Situational appraisal is the key mechanism for the formation of interpersonal gratitude. Besides, the emotion is also affected by other factors including characteristics of the beneficiary, and the dyadic relationship features, etc. Thus, the researchers have designed various paradigms to induce interpersonal gratitude, such as scripts of plot, and interactions tasks, etc. In addition, the function of interpersonal gratitude has three levels including individual, dyadic and group. In the future, the research focus of interpersonal gratitude can be studying the underlying neurophysiological mechanism, investigating the cultivation of trait gratitude from interpersonal gratitude, extending the study of the function of interpersonal gratitude, as well as exploring the Chinese cultural impact on interpersonal gratitude.

Key words: interpersonal gratitude, trait gratitude, situational appraisal, inducing task