Gratitude and

Compassion

David DeSteno, Paul Condon and Leah Dickens

Presentation outline

● Introduction Questions
● General Information

● Gratitude- helping, forming, maintaining, promoting, well-being

● Compassion- social systems, well-being, and moderators

● Conclusion
● Gratitude/Compassion Activities
● Discussion Questions
Introduction questions
● How would you define gratitude?

● How would you define compassion?

● What is the connection between the two?

 General information
● Serves to increase social capital and well being
● Motivates decisions and behaviors
● Demonstrates motive for relationship development
● Together, gratitude and compassion facilitate social
exchange
 What is gratitude?
● A positive emotion one feels with the receipt of a gift from
another person or entity
● Unlike indebtedness, gratitude is a positive state
○ It is different cognitively and behaviorally from the general
feeling of positive affect
 Benefits for relationships
● Helping
● Forming relationships
● Maintaining and strengthening relationships
● Promoting social inclusion
 Helping
● Accept short term costs in exchange for long term gains
● Bartlett and DeSteno (2006) induced gratitude
● Grateful individuals reported increased motives to give back
to others
○ Expressions of gratitude by one person motivated receivers
of that expression to work harder to assist him or her
 Forming relationships

● Gratitude plays and important role in forming relationships

● Algoe et al. (2008) examined the ways in which gratitude

influenced the relationships between new members of a
sorority
○ Stronger expressions of gratitude corresponded to more
positive views of the relationships by the big sisters
Maintaining and strengthening relationships
● Gratitude aids the maintenance of relationships
○ Higher levels of gratitude expression significantly predicted
relationship durability in friendships and romantic
relationships

● Receiving and experiencing gratitude are reciprocal

Maintaining and strengthening relationships
● Gratitude helps with discussing relationship concerns

● Perceived responsiveness plays a central role in positive

relationship outcomes
○ Gratitude motivates behavioral responses that build and
maintain relationships
 Promoting social inclusion

● Increases social network development through social

inclusion and cooperation

● Bartlett and colleagues (2012) study

○ Promoted social inclusion even at the cost of individual reward
● DeSteno et al. (2010) study
○ Mediated decisions that favored the equal sharing of profits
through cooperation
 General Well-Being
● Positive correlation between a grateful disposition and
aspects of general well-being
● Can be cultivated and produce benefits over time

● Found to aid individuals in achieving self-improvement goals

● Related to decreased materialism
 What is compassion?

● “An other-oriented emotional state that arises in response

to another’s suffering and motivates one to act in a
prosocial manner to alleviate another’s suffering” (Goetz
et al., 2010)

● Compassion promotes helping behavior that aims to

alleviate another person’s suffering, unlike gratitude
 Compassion and stable social systems
● Promotes the attainment of cooperative social
relationships

● Cooperative groups accumulate the largest amount of

resources over time

● Effective mechanism for reducing escalations of violence

 Compassion and individual well-being
● May serve as a nourishing, replenishing experience that
contributes to well-being

● Crocker et al., 2010 study

● Caregiving for a spouse predicted reduced risk of mortality

(Brown et al., 2009)
 Modulating compassion

● Numerous factors decrease and increase compassionate

responding to another’s suffering

● Meditation increases prosocial and compassionate

responses to another’s suffering

● Goal of meditation techniques is to foster a state of

equanimity
 Conclusions
● Gratitude and compassion share commonalities
● Gratitude motivates behaviors likely to maintain
relationships

● Compassion motivates supportive behavior

● Gratitude and compassion work together to build social
capital
 Gratitude Activity
● Divide yourselves into groups no larger than three individuals
● Have a sheet of paper on hand and delegate who the writer will
be

● You will have 20 seconds to write as many responses to the

prompt as possible
● The team with the most written responses in each round will
be encouraged to share and gain a point
 Prompt

Name/list out as many……… you are grateful for

Round 1

PEOPLE
Round 2

PLACES
 Round 3

MEMORIES
 Round 4

QUALITY
OR SKILL
(something you are
good at)
 Compassion Activity
● Compassion for a loved one
● Compassion for self
● Compassion for a neutral person
● Compassion for an enemy
Discussion questions

● How have you or how could you demonstrate gratitude

and/or compassion to clients?
○ When would be an appropriate time to demonstrate these
concepts?

● In a therapy session, how would you provide

psychoeducation about factors that increase and decrease
gratitude and compassion?
 Reference

DeSteno, D., Condon, P., & Dickens, L. (2016). Gratitude and compassion. Handbook of
emotions, 4, 835-846.