Children’s and Adolescents’ Gratitude Expression and its Association with their Greatest Wishes across Ethnic Groups in the United States

Merçon-Vargas, Elisa A.; Tudge, Jonathan

doi:10.1007/s12144-019-00525-1

Cited by 9 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…For simplicity of comparison across societies, we did not examine ethnic differences within our diverse sample in this article. The DGRG has begun the complex process of investigating ethnic differences within the United States regarding the development of the virtue of gratitude (Merçon-Vargas, 2017)…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Gratitude in the United States

O’Brien

Mendonça

Price

2017

Cross-Cultural Research

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Gratitude develops over the course of childhood and adolescence. However, the processes involved are largely unknown. We propose that cultural context may play an important role in gratitude development. As a whole, this special issue examines cultural influences on the development of gratitude. In this article, we focus on the development of gratitude in the United States. According to Kağıtçıbaşı, the United States would demonstrate features of autonomy and separateness. We describe the culture of the United States and Greensboro, North Carolina, specifically. To examine gratitude development in the United States, we recruited 426 children between 7 and 14 years of age (M = 10.23 years) in Greensboro, North Carolina. In this sample, we found that older children were more likely to express connective gratitude and also to save their money. It is important to understand the features of culture that encourages the expression of gratitude.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Gratitude in the United States

O’Brien

Mendonça

Price

2017

Cross-Cultural Research

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“…Similarly, it is unwarranted to ignore within-society cultural variability related to racial markers or ethnicity, as our analysis of racial/ethnic variation revealed. However, with the exception of Merçon-Vargas (2017; Merçon-Vargas & Tudge, 2021), there seems to be little or no research that has examined ethnic variation in gratitude expression within the United States, and no gratitude research that has focused on possible variations by social class. We were unable to analyze our data by parents’ social-class background because in two samples (from Brazil and Turkey) we could only assess class by the type of school children attended, and in one case (from Russia) did not collect data on parents’ education.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How weird is the development of children’s gratitude in the United States? Cross-cultural comparisons.

Freitas

Palhares

Cao³

et al. 2022

Developmental Psychology

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Our interest is in the development of gratitude as a moral virtue, and its variability across different cultural contexts. Given psychology's overreliance on samples collected from the United Sates, Western Europe, and Australasia, we contrasted patterns of age-related expressions of gratitude among a sample of U.S. 7to 14-year-old children with those from same-age samples from Brazil, China, Russia, South Korea, and Turkey (N = 2,540, 54.7% female, M age = 10.61 years). The U.S. sample was diverse (n = 730: Black 26.4%, White 40.4%, Latinx 19.9%, Asian 3.8%, Other 1.6%, Missing 7.0%; 55.7% female, M age = 10.52 years). The remaining samples were largely homogeneous by ethnicity. Our data were gathered using one quantitative scale to measure variations in the extent of gratitude that children expressed, and one qualitative measure to assess variability in the types of gratitude expressed by children of different ages. Both measures were chosen for their fit with the definition of virtuous gratitude. Hypotheses that the U.S. sample would differ from the others in extent and type of gratitude were largely supported. However, age-related differences in the type of gratitude expressed were similar across societies (e.g., in most samples older children were less likely to express concrete gratitude and more likely to express connective gratitude). Our results reveal the importance of treating gratitude as a virtue that develops during childhood and that is influenced by one's cultural group. Reliance on samples from a limited set of cultures is thus to be avoided.

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“…Thus, what gratitude means as well as when, how, and for what gratitude is expressed are culturally embedded norms (Corona et al, 2020). Prior research on culture has focused on gratitude in terms of what children would do in response to receiving their most desired wish and indicates cultural and ethnic variation in how children express gratitude as a virtue (Freitas et al, 2011;Merçon-Vargas & Tudge, 2019;Payir et al, 2018). However, we do not yet understand the connection between parenting and gratitude as a developmental socioemotional process across cultures.…”

Section: Culturementioning

confidence: 96%

Parenting and the development of children’s gratitude

Hussong

Coffman

Halberstadt

2021

Child Dev Perspectives

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Fostering gratitude is often among the socialization goals parents hold for their children. In this article, we explore work that portrays gratitude as a complex socioemotional process that occurs during a moment in time and becomes more frequent, integrated, and rich with development. Researchers have identified at least four parent socialization practices that may foster children’s gratitude: modeling, daily scaffolding, niche selection, and conversations with children about gratitude moments and missed opportunities for gratitude. Parent training tools based on this work have yielded modest results. More work is needed to understand further the ways parenting and children’s gratitude are culturally embedded, place the work on gratitude socialization within the larger task of value socialization faced by parents, and explore gratitude as an ontogenetic tool for making meaning of the world around us.

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Children’s and Adolescents’ Gratitude Expression and its Association with their Greatest Wishes across Ethnic Groups in the United States

Cited by 9 publications

References 40 publications

The Development of Gratitude in the United States

The Development of Gratitude in the United States

How weird is the development of children’s gratitude in the United States? Cross-cultural comparisons.

Parenting and the development of children’s gratitude

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