The Cultivation of Gratitude in School in the United States

• In Event: 1-036 - Gratitude in youth and adults in the United States, Brazil, and Poland

Integrative Statement

Many scholars have treated the experience and expression of gratitude as simply being a positive emotional response. Instead, we consider gratitude as a virtue, a character trait that connects people. This definition involves: (a) a benefactor freely and intentionally benefiting a beneficiary; (b) the beneficiary recognizing the benefactor’s intentionality; and (c) freely choosing to reciprocate, if possible and appropriate, with something the benefactor needs or wants (Tudge et al., 2015). When a beneficiary feels gratitude, it should create a moral sense of obligation (but not of an onerous duty or contract) to reciprocate the benefactor, if possible (McConnell, 2013). The virtue of gratitude involves an autonomous moral obligation, something freely and willingly accepted rather than being governed by rule-based thinking or fear of consequences (heteronomous obligation).
We developed a pilot 4-week intervention curriculum to help children identify and express connective gratitude. The intervention had two main components: (a) weekly 1-hour long curricular activities, and (b) daily journaling about individuals to whom they were grateful, and why. Curricular activities included a discussion-based educational component, journaling, letter writing, and creating and performing a skit about the cycle of connective gratitude. Participants were 28 11- to 13-year-olds (M age = 149.57 months, 61% male) attending a Montessori school in a southeastern city in the United States, and 14 same-age control-group peers (M age = 152.93 months, 50% male). The children participated in a pretest and two posttests, one a week following the curriculum and one a week later. We anticipated increases in both connective gratitude and autonomous obligation. Pretest and posttest materials allowed us to assess, among other things, the type of gratitude expressed (verbal, concrete, connective, or other) and, based on responses to a gratitude vignette, whether the children felt that the protagonist had no obligation, heteronomous obligation, or autonomous obligation to reciprocate a benefactor.
We were surprised that at pretest 67% of the children expressed connective gratitude, higher than same-age students from public schools (51%) and private schools (40%) in the same city (data from a related study). Nonetheless, the intervention proved effective: Of children not expressing connective gratitude at pretest, most used connective gratitude at posttest 1 (67%) and posttest 2 (80%), whereas of those who had expressed connective gratitude at pretest, very few declined at posttest 1 (9%) and posttest 2 (22%). The intervention was equally effective with regard to developing an autonomous sense of obligation. Of children not expressing autonomous obligation at pretest, 50% used it at posttest 1, although this dropped to 33% at posttest 2. Of those who had expressed autonomous obligation at pretest, there was some decline (22%) at posttest 1 but much less (6%) at posttest 2. Although only a pilot, this approach has promise for encouraging the development of gratitude as a virtue.

Authors

• Sara Etz Mendonça, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Jess L. Navarro, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ruitong Li, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jonathan Tudge, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author