Recent Work on the Concept of Gratitude in Philosophy and Psychology

Abstract

This paper constitutes a critical review of the recent philosophical and psychological literatures on the concept of gratitude, literatures which have proliferated in recent years. Indeed, it seems everybody nowadays wants to enthuse about gratitude. In theological circles that is no novelty; ever since St. Paul's exhortation in Thessalonians 5:18, ''In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God,'' most scholars working within the Christian tradition have accorded gratitude a high value. More surprisingly, however, academics reared in the secular disciplines of psychology and philosophy have recently jumped on the pro-gratitude bandwagon. Gone are the days when gratitude was deemed the ''emotion most neglected by psychologists'' and when philosophers could rightly observe that contemporary philosophy has had ''comparatively little to say about gratitude.'' 1 Suddenly, eliciting the conceptual contours of gratitude has become a popular endeavor in philosophy, and psychologists have eagerly started to tease out the relationship between gratitude and a number of positive personal and social variables. Many of those psychologists hail from the newly established positive-psychology camp which has shifted attention within social science to a number of understudied topics alongside gratitude, such as forgiveness, hope, and optimism, and even those hot-tohandle-for-empirical-scientists concepts of moral character and virtue, previously banished from the discipline.

Educating gratitude: Some conceptual and moral misgivings

“…Our approach has been to examine gratitude both theoretically and empirically, combining an interdisciplinary literature review of the concept of gratitude in philosophy and psychology (see Gulliford et al, 2013) with an empirical attempt to elucidate the conceptual contours of gratitude from a lay perspective. We believe it is important to try to determine whether, and to what degree, the conceptual controversies about gratitude evident in the academic literature actually reflect or inform peoples' (including students') understanding of the concept.…”

“…Whilst we cannot describe all of the complexities that are involved in the normative grammar of gratitude here, we might direct you to one of our previous papers for an in depth discussion on this topic (Gulliford et al, 2013).…”

“…The complexity in experience and understanding of gratitude is particularly apparent when looking to the dyadic/triadic distinction of gratitude (see, for some recent discussion of this distinction, Carr 2013; Gulliford, Morgan & Kristjánsson, 2013;Lambert, Graham, & Fincham, 2009). Triadic gratitude, as the name suggests, is a three place relation involving a beneficiary, a benefit, and a benefactor.…”

Negative Feelings of Gratitude

“…Positive feelings, like those associated with joy or pride, are pleasant, agreeable, and enjoyable. 9 Appreciation, the proper response to a beneficial state of affairs, likely includes certain positive feelings like those associated with joy. By contrast, negative feelings, like those associated with itchiness or guilt, are uncomfortable or painful.…”

Components of Appreciative Functioning: A Thematic Analysis of Relevant Literature and Content Analysis of Existing Measurement Scales

“…However, insufficient attention has been given to how it is defined, understood and measured (Gulliford et al 2013;Lambert et al 2009). …”