Gratitude Increases the Motivation to Fulfill a Partner’s Sexual Needs

Abstract

Maintaining sexual satisfaction is a critical, yet challenging, aspect of most romantic relationships. Although prior research has established that sexual communal strength (SCS)—i.e., the extent to which people are motivated to be responsive to their partner’s sexual needs—benefits romantic relationships, research has yet to identify factors that promote SCS. We predicted that gratitude would increase SCS because gratitude motivates partners to maintain close relationships. These predictions were supported in three studies with cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental methods. Specifically, experiencing and receiving expressions of gratitude were associated with greater SCS. These studies are the first to investigate the benefits of gratitude in the sexual domain and identify factors that promote SCS. Together, these results have important implications for relationship and sexual satisfaction in romantic relationships.

Gratitude Increases Recipients’ Commitment Through Automatic Partner Evaluations, Yet Unreciprocated Gratitude Decreases Commitment Through Deliberative Evaluations

“…Third, they are among the first to reveal a drawback of expressing gratitude. As previously noted, considerable research has identified several benefits of gratitude (Algoe & Haidt, 2009; Algoe et al, 2008, 2016; Brady et al, 2020; Lambert & Fincham, 2011). Further, several therapeutic interventions (Emmons & Stern, 2013), best-selling books (Kaplan, 2015), and popular articles (Brooks, 2015) all suggest that intimates should express gratitude.…”

“…Intimates often express feelings of gratitude for their partners by acknowledging those partners’ actions (e.g., “Thank-you for taking out the trash”) and/or qualities (e.g., “I love that you are so supportive”). Although extensive research suggests that gratitude adaptively motivates grateful individuals (i.e., “actors”) to maintain relationships with valuable partners (i.e., “targets”; Algoe & Haidt, 2009; Algoe et al, 2008; Brady et al, 2020; Joel et al, 2013; Lambert & Fincham, 2011; for review, see Algoe, 2012), it is unknown whether expressions of gratitude similarly increase targets ’ commitment to those relationships. On one hand, given that receiving gratitude tends to be rewarding for targets (Algoe et al, 2016), and people automatically evaluate others who elicit rewarding experiences favorably (e.g., Hicks et al, 2016), targets of gratitude might develop more favorable automatic evaluations of, and thus become more committed to, grateful actors.…”

Implementation intentions to express gratitude increase daily time co-present with an intimate partner, and moderate effects of variation in CD38

“…Methodologically sophisticated longitudinal dyadic studies show that expressing gratitude is associated with beneficial relational outcomes for both members of an ongoing relationship independently of social support and other behaviors 14 , 15 . Critical for the present work, gratitude is frequently expressed between romantic partners in everyday life 15 – 17 , and both one-time in-lab experiments as well as correlational evidence suggest that gratitude expression appears to draw the other partner in to the relationship 12 , 18 – 21 , creating a positive feedback loop between both people 22 , 23 . Expressed gratitude is thus a prime behavioral target in order to establish the causal influence of relationship behaviors on couples’ outcomes.…”

Gratitude Expressions Improve Teammates’ Cardiovascular Stress Responses

“…Building on a substantial body of evidence that the momentary emotional response of gratitude to another person for their kind actions helps promote a high-quality, communal relationship between the grateful person and their benefactor (see review in Algoe, 2012), many researchers have focused on expressed gratitude as a behavioral mechanism that facilitates that dyadic process (e.g., Williams & Bartlett, 2015). One nice feature of this rapidly expanding body of literature is that the evidence often comes from studies involving both members of the dyad (e.g., Algoe, Fredrickson, & Gable, 2013;Brady et al, 2020;Leong et al, 2020;Park et al, 2019); as one example, couples randomly assigned to express gratitude to one another over a month-long period reported greater daily adaptation to change as well as positive mood compared to couples in a control condition (Algoe & Zhaoyang, 2016). At the same time, most Running Head: GRATITUDE PROMOTES TEAMS' CHALLENGE RESPONSES 4 of these data come from just one type of relationship that is important to everyday liferomantic-whereas other important types of relationships deserve increased attention.…”