The Development of Gratitude in the United States

Abstract

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.

Expressions of Gratitude, Wishes, and Spending Preferences Among Chinese Children and Adolescents

“…In contrast, the United States has been described by Kağıtçıbaşı (2007) as fitting into the independent family model, in which parents attach high levels of importance to autonomous and separate socialization goals (for more detail, see Merçon-Vargas et al, 2018; O’Brien, Mendonça, & Price, 2018). These cultural differences have been reflected in children’s expressions of gratitude.…”

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

“…This also suggests that Hispanic and Brazilian immigrant children and adolescents internalize and maintain some cultural practices related to gratitude from their culture of origin, despite exposure to mainstream host cultural values (Kağıtçıbaşı 2003). Importantly, the findings provided further support for age-related patterns of gratitude expression, in which older children and adolescents across groups were more likely to express connective than concrete gratitude (e.g., Baumgarten-Tramer 1938;Freitas et al 2011;O'Brien et al 2018;Tudge et al 2015a;Wang et al 2015). These results strengthen the claim that gratitude involves the development of cognitive skills, such as being able to consider others' perspectives and think autonomously.…”

“…Other variables entered as predictors included ethnic group (African Americans; European Americans; Hispanics; Brazilian immigrants), participants' age (from 7 to 14), and gender (control variable). We decided to control for gender based on findings from the United States indicating that girls were less likely to express concrete gratitude than were boys (O'Brien et al 2018). 1 (0.7%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 1 (0.2%) Self-sufficient 0 (0%) 2 (0.9%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 2 (0.3%) Other 4 (2.7%) 10 (4.4%) 11 (10.0%) 1 (0.9%) 26 (4.4%) N 147 228 110 110 595 Note.…”

“…Replications of Baumgarten-Tramer's (1938) study in the United States with children and adolescents aged 7 to 14 provided further support for her hypotheses. Specifically, younger children in the United States were more likely to express concrete gratitude and less likely to express connective gratitude than were those who were older (O'Brien et al 2018;Tudge et al 2015a). Age differences have also been found in other countries, with some of the results showing similar trends.…”

“…no attention is paid to possible ethnic variations in the expression of gratitude (recent examples include Bausert et al 2018;Kiang et al 2018;O'Brien et al 2018;Ramsey et al 2018).…”