Is It Better to Give or Receive?

Happy Thanksgiving!

While we were traveling recently, I made my wife a cup of coffee and brought it to her in bed. Her immediate reaction wasn’t thank you, but to say she wasn’t ready to drink it yet. When she sent me a kind text 15 minutes later, I begrudgingly hearted the text.

So were we showing each other gratitude or not?

Don’t be fooled by the hearts

It’s a tricky question to answer. As it turns out, gratitude is one of the more complicated human emotions because it is social and contingent upon others. People are rarely, if ever, grateful to themselves, so gratitude usually involves at least two people, and often more.

And there are few places where gratitude is more important or nuanced than in a relationship. Since it is Thanksgiving day in the United States, it seems fitting to explore how to make gratitude a foundational element of a relationship.

So how can we make gratitude “work” for us and for those around us?

Why Gratitude Matters

Scientists used to believe gratitude was a way of showing reciprocity in relationships. I scratch your back, and you scratch my back. We’re both happy.

The problem is that this thesis is wrong about both relationships and gratitude.

Especially in close relationships, the more individuals keep score, the less happy they are; showing gratitude should not become obligatory. A leading scientist who has studied gratitude hypothesizes that its purpose is to build and sustain the most important relationships in our lives, rather than a simple scoreboard; she calls this the “find-remind-and-bind” effect of gratitude.¹

This theory tells us that gratitude’s role is to:

• Find people who care about us.

• Remind us who those people are.

• Bind us even closer to those people.

It’s not about keeping score. It’s about showing others we care and identifying those who care about us.

Being grateful to others is also shown to benefit us too. People who frequently show gratitude experience greater happiness, have more proactive health behaviors, achieve more, have better relationships, are more resilience in the face of trauma, and have better health.²

But as smart phones and social media have flattened out our relationships, making close friends and distant acquaintances side by side on an endless feed, showing gratitude has gotten harder than ever. To properly give thanks to the people who matter to you, there are a few things to know.

The 3 Actors of Gratitude

It turns out that gratitude involves (at least) 3 different people:

1. The Gratituder: The person who expresses gratitude to someone else.

2. The Receiver: The person to whom the gratitude is expressed.

3. The Witness: Others who observe the gratitude.

It turns out there are distinct benefits for each of the three parties. Each person must take key steps to reap those benefits.

The Gratituder starts the process with awareness: shifting their point of view somewhere new to notice the benefits they are receiving from someone in their life. Then, having observed that kindness, they express thanks to them.

The Receiver of the gratitude reaps the benefit of feeling appreciated and bonding with someone. The key to doing this is something psychologist-philosopher James Pawelski calls “the gratitude dance”. You need to follow the steps of Appreciation and avoid the steps of Deflection to fully benefit from someone’s gratitude towards you:³

The 3 A’s of Appreciation

• Accept: A sincere “thank you” or “wow, I appreciate you saying that.”

• Amplify: Savor the gratitude by slowing down, feeling what it implies, and making eye contact.

• Advance: “That means a lot to me. It highlights how much we both value ____”

The 3 D’s of Deflection

• Deflect: “That’s just what I’m supposed to do.”

• Duplicate: “Well, thank You for doing X”

• Discount: “It wasn’t as big a deal as you think.”

In other words, while it’s natural to say “don’t mention it,” or “it was nothing” when someone thanks you, try instead to look them in the eye and say “Thank you, that means a lot to me and I appreciate you a lot.”

Finally the Witness of the act of gratitude experiences a change too. They reappraise their opinion of the gratituder, perceiving them as warmer and more communal than they did before. This in turn makes them more interested in collaborating with them, potentially laying the groundwork for a new or deeper friendship or relationship.⁴

Needless to say, gratituders and receivers benefit most if they are in a relationship with each other. Consistent gratitude increases fondness between partners, which is one of the best predictors of relationship stability and longevity⁵ and is correlated with the quality of sex and romance.⁶ A little gratitude goes a very long way.

Get All These Benefits, and More, By Practicing Gratitude

I see three fun, underutilized opportunities to integrate gratitude and all of its benefits into our lives:

Rituals: A ritual is different from a routine (anything we do regularly) in that we have infused meaning into the activity. For example, my wife and I have a weekly brunch with our parents, my sister, and our son where we share who at the table we’re grateful for and why. Do your best to integrate expressing and receiving gratitude in a healthy way -- facilitate gratitude, not indebtedness from the gratituder, and appreciation not deflection from the receiver.

A Handful of Gratitude: A friend⁷ recently shared a 30-second exercise that can be done individually or collectively at any time to help us feel grateful:

• 👍Thumb: Something you are grateful for in the world that is good

• 👆Pointer Finger: Something you can point to in your immediate surroundings

• 🖕Middle Finger: Adversity you faced that helped you to grow

• 💍Ring Finger: A relationship you are grateful for that you haven’t focused on

• 🤙Pinky Finger: Something very small you are grateful for

Find Novel Sources of Gratitude for Your Partner:

Here is a partial list of areas of potential gratitude you can periodically skim to shine your spotlight of awareness somewhere new to unearth additional reasons to be grateful to your significant other:

1. How your partner uses their strengths

2. Habitual things they do so often you forget to notice

3. Good times

4. Romantic times

5. Physical traits

6. Qualities or characteristics

7. Shared values, interests, or goals

8. Strengths your relationship has that other relationships don’t

9. Times they provided you with support

10. Things only they know about you

11. How they help you to calm down when you are stressed

12. A way they support with the household chores

13. Ways you plan together

14. Pride you have in the relationship

15. Benefits from being in a relationship together

16. Tough times you weathered together

17. Something you find interesting about them

18. Something they did that you admired

19. Your physical intimacy

20. Shared accomplishments

So, was our coffee-texting exchange gratitude or not? I think it was, but after reviewing all the facets of gratitude, we can also agree there were additional opportunities to reap the benefits. I hope you are able to put some of this into practice both today and in the future. Happy Thanksgiving!

1. Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(6), 455–469. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2012.00439.x

2. Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Gillett, R., Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2008). The role of gratitude in the development of social support, stress, and depression: A longitudinal study. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(4), 854–871.

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389.

Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905.

Kashdan, T. B., Uswatte, G., & Julian, T. (2006). Gratitude and hedonic and eudaimonic well-being in Vietnam War veterans. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(2), 177–199.

Hill, P. L., & Turiano, N. A. (2014). Purpose in life as a predictor of mortality across adulthood. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1482–1486. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614531799

Mills, P. J., Redwine, L. S., Wilson, K., Pung, M. A., Chinh, K., Greenberg, B. H., & Maisel, A. S. (2015). The role of gratitude in spiritual well-being in asymptomatic heart failure patients. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1037/scp0000050

Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., Lloyd, J., & Atkins, S. (2009). Gratitude influences sleep through the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 66(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2008.09.002

3. Pileggi Pawelski, S., & Pawelski, J. O. (2018). Happy together: Using the science of positive psychology to build love that lasts. TarcherPerigee.

4. Algoe, S. B., Dwyer, P. C., Younge, A., & Oveis, C. (2020). A new perspective on the social functions of emotions: Gratitude and the witnessing effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(1), 40-74.

5. Buehlman, K. T., Gottman, J. M., & Katz, L. F. (1992). How a couple views their past predicts their future: Predicting divorce from an oral history interview. Journal of Family Psychology, 5(3–4), 295–318.

6. Gottman, J. M., & Gottman, J. S. (2017). The natural principles of love. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 9(1), 7–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12182

7. Wayde Elliot - he’s a very smart guy!