**3. What causes gratitude?**

As we have seen, gratitude is important to human flourishing. Because gratitude is vital to SWB, it is vital to understand what causes gratitude. To discuss the causes of gratitude, however, we need a basic definition of gratitude. Here we will define gratitude at two levels of analysis: state and trait. The emotional state of gratitude may be defined as a positive emotional response to a benefit that one believes was largely provided by someone else [10]. We define "benefit" in a wide sense as it may be the addition of a positive event in one's life, but it may also be an aversive event that does not happen or even positive aspects that are perceived from a negative event. Although many definitions of gratitude merely require that one perceives that the benefit came from an outside source, we include the source as "someone" because the outside source is personalized in some way. Although some recent work has tried to argue that the source of the benefit can be oneself, we believe that this confuses gratitude with pride, and thus is not a helpful direction for the study of gratitude.

The trait or disposition of gratitude is simply one's propensity to experience state gratitude. Thus, a grateful person—or one high in trait gratitude—experiences grateful emotion frequently across a wide variety of circumstances. Stated differently, one high in the disposition of gratitude has a low threshold for state gratitude. There are now several measures of trait gratitude with good psychometric properties that researchers can use [2, 3, 11].

What causes a grateful emotional response? In exploring the antecedents of gratitude, we take an appraisal approach [12, 13]. In brief, the appraisal theory of emotion argues that each distinct emotion is caused by its own distinct appraisal or construal. An appraisal is simply one's interpretation of an event. Thus, if one interprets a gift of flowers as a kind, thoughtful act, one is likely to experience gratitude. If, however, one sees the flowers as an attempt to manipulate them in some way, one will probably not feel grateful.

From the seminal research of Tesser and colleagues [14] to the present, researchers have held that three primary appraisals of an event cause gratitude: value, altruism, and cost. Thus, one is more likely to experience gratitude when they value a benefit, when they think the benefactor provided the benefit from altruistic motives (i.e., it was given primarily for the beneficiary's benefit), and when they interpret the benefit as being costly for the benefactor to provide.

### *Gratitude and Happiness: The Causes and Consequences of Gratitude DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106297*

Recent research has supported the importance of value and altruism appraisals to gratitude. For example, when surveying faculty regarding a significant raise that they received, the more they valued the raise and felt the university provided the raise for the faculty's benefit, the more gratitude they reported [15]. Indeed, the psychological value of the raise predicted gratitude above and beyond the objective value of the raise. What was interesting about this study is how strongly value drove gratitude, and this finding is consistent with Forster et al. [16].

These findings emphasize the importance of understanding the psychology of valuing an event, and we believe that progress in understanding how humans value an event is important to understanding the causes of gratitude. We propose that this relates closely to an understanding of *appreciation*, a cognitive process that is essential but not identical to gratitude [17]. What is appreciation? Whereas some have defined appreciation quite broadly, we feel it is most helpful to limit appreciation to cognitive processes (although it undoubtedly affects and is influenced by emotion). In this regard, we put forth Janoff-Bulman's definition of appreciation as most helpful to advancing research on appreciation. According to Janoff-Bulman and Berger [18], when we appreciate something there is an "Appraisal of increased value or worth … We increase its perceived value in our eyes" (p. 32). When our home appreciates, its monetary value increases. When we appreciate something, the psychological value of the object increases for us. A review of the psychology of appreciation is beyond the limits of our chapter [10, 17], but hopefully, this discussion will foster future research on valuing and appreciation.

We have seen that altruism and value are critical appraisals to the experience of gratitude. But recent research has questioned the importance of cost appraisals to gratitude [16]. Indeed, in the Watkins et al. study [15], appraisals of the cost to the university for faculty raises showed very low correlations with gratitude for the raise, and in a simultaneous multiple regression, cost was no longer a significant predictor of gratitude. We found these findings surprising because obviously, providing these raises presented a significant objective cost to the university. Following up on this finding, McLaughlin and associates manipulated cost to the benefactor in a scenario study [19]. Although this was an intentionally large cost manipulation, it had no impact on recipients' gratitude. Moreover, self-reported cost appraisals were not correlated with gratitude. Indeed, participants appeared to be insensitive to the costs to the benefactor. Once again, however, value appraisals showed robust correlations with gratitude. Taken together, this evidence suggests that people make a more global appraisal of the "goodness of the giver" [10], rather than a more detailed analysis of the benefactor that would include cost. We suggest that future research continue to investigate the importance of cost appraisals to gratitude.

In sum, research supports the idea that appraisals of value and altruism are cognitive antecedents of gratitude. Are there other cognitive characteristics that shape gratitude responses? Recent research has shown that the characteristics of the benefactor impact gratitude. In the scenario study described above, McLaughlin et al. [19] manipulated the type of benefactor. They found that people were more grateful to an individual benefactor than to an institution (in this case, the university), for an equivalent monetary benefit. Thus, the characteristics of the benefactor seem to determine grateful responses. Clearly, more research on this issue is needed.

The nature of the benefactor brings up another interesting question: What if the source of the benefit is supernatural, rather than a human? Recently, a major research effort has commenced investigating gratitude to God. Although research has consistently demonstrated that religious/spiritual people tend to be more

grateful [2, 3], gratitude to God appears to be particularly important to spiritual well-being. In a prospective study, Watkins et al. found that trait gratitude to God at time 1 predicted increased religious well-being at time 2, after controlling for baseline levels of religious well-being, Big-5 personality traits, and time 1 trait gratitude [20]. Thus, gratitude to God may prove to be an important variable in the psychology of religion and spirituality.

Although research is still developing in this area, a few observations can be made. In one study, participants were randomly allocated to recall a benefit received from a human benefactor, a benefit they received from God, or a "happy occasion" [21]. In terms of appraisals, gratitude to God looked very much like gratitude to humans. In other words, the same appraisals that predicted gratitude to humans predicted gratitude to God. This study, however, did not assess spiritual appraisals such as whether participants interpreted the benefit as a sacred gift. Thus, future work should emphasize spiritual appraisals to identify the unique appraisal structure of gratitude to God. We look forward to seeing more research in this developing area.

We have seen that gratitude is associated with a distinct appraisal structure. But do these appraisals actually *cause* the emotion of gratitude? Much of appraisal research uses designs that are not able to determine whether these appraisals are cognitive antecedents to the emotion under study. However, cognitive bias modification for interpretation (CBM-I) is a paradigm that can more definitively determine the causal status of the cognitive antecedents of emotion [22]. The cognitive bias modification paradigm typically uses computer tasks to modify target cognitive biases. These tasks involve a number of trials, and if the participant adopts the target bias, this makes the tasks easier for them. In CBM-I, participants are forced to disambiguate scenarios in a positive or negative direction. Initially, CBM-I was used to change interpretation biases related to anxiety and depression [22]. For example, the participant would be presented with a scenario where they are speaking in front of a crowd. The crowd laughs and it is unclear whether they are laughing because they think your speech is funny, or because they think you are foolish. Participants are forced to disambiguate the scenario in either a positive or negative way by completing a word fragment at the end of the scenario (for an example disambiguation trial, see below). CBM-I has been very successful in changing interpretive biases known to underlie anxiety and depression [22]. Moreover, often in these studies changing the participant's interpretation bias also changes their emotion in the expected direction. Thus, encouraging a positive interpretation bias through the disambiguation trials decreases one's anxiety. Changing the cognitive bias and one's subsequent emotion lends more credence to the causal status of interpretation/ appraisal biases to emotion [22].

Cognitive bias modification has been used successfully to modify cognitive biases associated with emotional disorders [22], but until recently, this approach has not been used to modify cognitive biases that are thought to be causes of positive emotions. Recently, Watkins and associates [23] used CBM-I in an attempt to modify interpretation biases important to gratitude. Participants were randomly allocated to either grateful or non-grateful disambiguation training using benefit scenarios. Following is one of the disambiguation trials:

*You have missed a day of class and when you return to class an acquaintance has copied their notes of the previous lecture for you. Your professor posts all of their PowerPoint slides online, so you wonder why your acquaintance copied their notes for you. In the end, you feel that your friend's assistance was (c\_ \_siderate / p\_ \_ntless)*

"Considerate" completes the scenario in a grateful manner, whereas "pointless" was the completion of non-grateful training. Participants in the grateful training find it easier to complete the word fragment with "considerate" if they adopt a grateful interpretation bias.

Training resulted in large effect sizes on grateful interpretation bias. Moreover, compared to non-grateful training, grateful training produced greater gratitude and higher value and altruism appraisals for a benefit of episodic memory. Thus, this study was able to more definitively establish that particular appraisals cause grateful emotion. In short, when an individual appraises an event as "someone has done something important for me," they will probably experience gratitude.

Research has provided us with useful information as to the cognitive antecedents of state gratitude. Now we turn to the causes of trait or dispositional gratitude. What makes a grateful person? Much could be discussed here about distal causes of trait gratitude (e.g., secure attachment), but here we will focus on more proximal causes of dispositional gratitude. To understand the causes of trait gratitude it is imperative that we comprehend its constituents. We propose the following cognitive characteristics of trait gratitude. First, grateful people should be more prone to noticing blessings in their life. Anecdotally, this is what many who engage in daily counting blessings exercises report: it forces them to look for and notice the good things in their day. Thus, grateful people should have the tendency to look for and notice benefits in their life. Second, grateful people should exhibit a more grateful interpretation style. Those high in dispositional gratitude should value or appreciate benefits that come their way. Given our discussion above, they should also be more likely to appreciate "the goodness of the giver" [10]. They will be more likely to interpret the motivations of their givers in a benevolent way — that the benefits are given simply because their giver wants to enhance their wellbeing. Indeed, research supports this characterization of the interpretation style of grateful people [24, 25]. Third, grateful people should be biased toward recollecting benefits from their past, and research supports this cognitive bias of gratitude [8, 26].

In sum, we have seen that noticing the good, interpreting benefits as being valuable and given by altruistic motives, and reflecting on one's past in a positive manner are facets that lead a person to be more grateful. It would seem to follow that interventions designed to enhance dispositional gratitude would focus on these facets. But this begs the question: Can a person become more grateful? Although many studies have shown that gratitude exercises enhance happiness, research investigating interventions to improve one's disposition for gratitude is sparse. In an important seminal study, Froh and colleagues designed an intervention to enhance trait gratitude in youth [27]. This intervention focused on classroom instruction regarding gratituderelevant appraisals. Compared to the control condition, children in this intervention did exhibit improved grateful thinking and became more grateful, and this improved their emotional well-being.

A few subsequent studies have developed successful interventions to enhance trait gratitude [28, 29]. Thus, we can conclude that people can become more grateful, but much more work in this area is needed. Notably, Baumsteiger et al. [29] focused on developing specific treatments for specific mechanisms of gratitude, and we believe that this will prove to be the best way forward in developing interventions to enhance dispositional gratitude. Following our analysis above, we propose that treatments should focus on three aspects of gratitude: attention (training individuals to notice the good), interpretation (training a grateful appraisal style), and memory (training a positive memory bias). First, we believe that a one or two week daily grateful

recounting exercise is likely to improve attention to benefits [8], but research needs to test this theory. In the cognitive bias modification paradigm research has also focused on modifying attention bias [30]. If one could train individuals to attend to positive information, this should provide the needed positive attention bias for trait gratitude. Most of the interventions described above have focused on encouraging grateful appraisals. This has been successful, but the appraisals are taught in an instructional setting, so more than likely this is training a more deliberative appraisal style. Emotions, however, are more likely to result from automatic than from deliberative appraisals. Thus, although explicit instruction has been shown to be important to dispositional gratitude interventions, we would argue for adding training modules that enhance a more automatic grateful interpretation style, and it is here where CBM-I may add a valuable component to treatment packages designed to enhance dispositional gratitude. Extant research supports the idea that CBM-I can change habitual interpretation biases that are crucial to gratitude.

In sum, what causes trait gratitude? What makes a person more grateful? Enhancing a positive attention bias, a more grateful interpretation style, and a tendency to reflect more positively on one's past should lower one's threshold for gratitude. To date, very few studies have focused on interventions designed to enhance dispositional gratitude. Long-term happiness is not likely to result from a few isolated experiences of gratitude. Rather, it is the disposition of gratitude that is vital to longterm emotional well-being. Thus, we believe that more research should focus on how to enhance the trait of gratitude.
