Este estudo investigou, em uma perspectiva construtivista, se existe desenvolvimento das relações entre gratidão e humildade na infância. Participaram 28 crianças, distribuídas em três grupos etários (6, 9 e 12 anos), pareadas por sexo. Utilizaram-se duas histórias: em uma delas, o benfeitor foi humilde; na outra, o benfeitor não foi humilde. Cada história foi seguida de uma entrevista semiestruturada. Evidenciou-se que o sentimento de obrigatoriedade de retribuir um favor apresentou variações dependendo do tipo de benfeitor (humilde ou não-humilde). Houve uma maior tendência das crianças mais velhas levarem em conta a humildade e a falta dessa virtude quando comparadas com as crianças mais novas. Ao explicitar-se a diferença entre as histórias, a frequência deste tipo de resposta aumentou em todas as idades, além de ter surgido o tema da generosidade. Os resultados sugeriram que existe um desenvolvimento das relações entre gratidão e humildade na infância. / Based on a constructivist approach, this study examined whether the relations between gratitude and humility develop over childhood. Twenty-eight children, divided into three age groups (6, 9 and 12 years old), participated in this research. We used two vignettes: in one of them, the benefactor was humble; in the other one, the benefactor was not humble. Each story was followed by a semi-structured interview. The feeling of obligation to return a favor showed variations depending on the type of benefactor (humble or not humble). There was a greater tendency for older children to take into account the benefactor’s humility and the lack of this virtue when compared to younger children. When the differences between the vignettes were made explicit, the frequency of this type of response increased in all ages and the theme of generosity appeared. Results showed that the relations between gratitude and humility develop over childhood.

abstract: Introduction: Less than half of U.S. adults meet the aerobic physical activity guidelines to exercise at least 150 minutes a week. An individual's decision to be physically active is influenced by their perceptions of physical activity. To address perceptions, interventions need to be implemented where adults spend one third of their day; the workplace. A number of physical activity interventions have been conducted and few have been successful at improving physical activity; therefore, there is a need to explore novel approaches to improve physical activity in the worksite. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the impact of a seven-day gratitude intervention on perceptions of physical activity and happiness in the workplace. Methods: Full-time employees at two worksites participated in a seven-day online journaling study. Participants were randomized into the intervention (gratitude) or control group and were assessed for perceptions of physical activity and happiness at baseline, immediate post-test (day 7) and one-week follow-up (day 14). Results: Results of this study indicate that the seven-day gratitude intervention may not significantly improve perceptions of physical activity or increase happiness. Future research should consider assessing the individual's readiness for change at baseline, increasing the length of the intervention, testing participant level of gratitude at baseline and employing a larger sample size. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Exercise and Wellness 2014

The present study is an exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development of expressions of gratitude, specifically, gratitude after receiving a favor. Expressing gratitude is a speech act that is taught at an early age and is commonly performed by native speakers of most languages. It is, thus, often assumed that learners can successfully say thank you in the target language. However, studies show that even advanced learners have difficulty adequately expressing gratitude. The objectives of the present study are: (a) to investigate how native speakers of Chinese and native speakers of English express gratitude as defined by length of speech and use of strategies; (b) to examine whether there is evidence of pragmatic development in the speech act behavior of expressions of gratitude among Chinese learners of English with the increase of the length of residence in the United States; and (c) to examine whether there is evidence of pragmatic influence from L1 Chinese in English expressions of gratitude among Chinese learners of English. The data were collected through a discourse completion task questionnaire. Subjects' responses were classified into eight thanking strategies. Descriptive and t-test analyses were conducted to identify the pragmatic differences that distinguished the behavior of the three English learner groups, which varied according to their length of stay in the United States, from that of Chinese and English native speakers. The results show that Chinese and English native speakers have different preferences for thanking strategies in the eight situations. They are significantly different in the length of speech and use of strategies. In addition, there is a positive effect of the length of residence in the United States on English learners' pragmatic development. The results also show evidence of pragmatic influence from L1 Chinese. Moreover, contextual variables, social status, familiarity and imposition, have a significant influence on the length of speech and the use of strategies for all subject groups.

Religion is a known contributor to suicide risk, with both positive and negative effects. Negative religious experiences, such as spiritual struggle, can exacerbate suicide risk. Alternatively, religion may promote positive psychological characteristics associated with reduced suicide risk, such as forgiveness, gratitude, and humility. However, research has yet to assess how religious changes, including conversion and deconversion, affect the linkage between religious risk and protective factors and suicidal behavior. We conducted three studies assessing these associations across four belief status groups: life-long religious believers, former religious non-believers who now believe, life-long religious non-believers, and former religious believers who no longer believe. Participants recruited online completed the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire – Revised, the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale, the Heartland Forgiveness Scale, the Gratitude Questionnaire, and the Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale. In our first study, we assessed differences in mean levels of spiritual struggle, forgiveness, humility, and gratitude, across each group. In our second study, we assessed the association between forgiveness, gratitude, humility, spiritual struggle and suicide risk, and differences in these relations across each group. In our final study, we assessed the potential moderating effect of forgiveness, gratitude, and humility on the relation between spiritual struggle and suicide risk, and differences in these moderating effects for each group. Our results indicate that some positive psychological virtues, and their impact on suicide risk may differ based on religious belief status. Similarly, our results suggest that while spiritual struggles are associated with suicide risk regardless of religious belief status, positive psychological variables (i.e., forgiveness, gratitude, humility) may mitigate suicide risk differently based on one’s religious belief status. Changes in, or the maintenance of, one’s religious beliefs may be an important consideration in the development of positive psychological interventions (e.g., forgiveness therapy, gratitude diary) aimed at ameliorating suicide risk in the context of spiritual struggle. Additionally, religiously oriented psychotherapies (e.g., RI-CBT) may be an important therapeutic intervention for individuals at high risk for suicide experiencing spiritually related distress.

Bakgrund: Sjuksköterskor kommer alltid besitta en viktig roll i vårdandet av patienter där samhällsfarliga sjukdomar existerar. Covid-19 har resulterat i en förändrad vård och det finns idag bristande kunskaper kring hur svenska sjuksköterskor upplevde vården under pandemin. Syfte: Att undersöka sjuksköterskors upplevelser av att vårda patienter med Covid - 19. Metod: Metoden som valdes var en kvalitativ intervjustudie med nio deltagande sjuksköterskor. Materialet analyserades utifrån en kvalitativ innehållsanalys enligt Graneheim& Lundman (2004). Resultat: I resultatet framkom det att känslorna varierade i upplevelsen av att vårda patienter med Covid-19. Det framkom en maktlöshetskänsla av att inte inneha kunskap om sjukdomen vilket ledde till psykisk stress hos sjuksköterskorna. Kunskapsbristen ledde också till en minskad trygghet och patientsäkerhet. Rädslan att själv bli smittad var lägre än att riskera smitta sina anhöriga. Dock var uppskattningen från patienterna en stor bidragande faktor att sjuksköterskor fortsatte gå till arbetet med glädje. Slutsats: Sjuksköterskor saknar kunskap och erfarenhet av att vårda patienter med Covid-19 vilket har haft stor betydelse för deras välmående samt patientsäkerheten. Användandet av skyddsutrustning har haft inverkan på den vård sjuksköterskorna bedrev. Det visade sig vara av stor vikt att ta hänsyn till vad sjuksköterskorna kände sig säkra i gällande skyddsutrustning. Upplevelsen av pandemin har varit påfrestande men mycket lärorik. / Background: Nurses will always play an important role in the care of patients where socially dangerous diseases exist. Covid-19 has resulted in a change in care and today there is a lack of knowledge about how Swedish nurses experienced care during the pandemic. Aim: To investigate nurses' experiences of caring for patients with Covid - 19. Method: The method chosen was a qualitative interview study with nine participating nurses. The material was analyzed based on a qualitative content analysis according to Graneheim & Lundman (2004). Results: The result showed that the emotions varied in the experience of caring for patientswith Covid-19. There were feelings of powerlessness from not having knowledge about thedisease that have led to mental stress among the nurses. The lack of knowledge also led to reduced security and patient safety. The fear of becoming infected yourself was lower than the fear of infecting someone in their family. However, the appreciation from the patients and a major contributing factor was the reason why nurses returned to work with joy. Conclusion: Nurses lack knowledge and experience of caring for patients with Covid-19, which has been of great importance for their well-being and patient safety. The use ofprotective equipment has had an impact on the care provided by the nurses. It turned out to beof great importance to take into account what the nurses felt safe in current protective equipment. The experience of the pandemic has been stressful but very instructive.

Please note: this work is permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for this item. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / Poems written by Sean Beckett, many inspired by walks with his father, William Stewart Beckett, in 2020-2021. / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

Gratitude and indebtedness facilitate cooperative relationships and altruism. Although most of the world endorses some belief in God, gratitude and indebtedness to God have not received adequate empirical attention. The "Gratitude to God" research initiative was created to address this gap, of which the current project is an appendage. This project encapsulates a multiphase research proposal, including three parts; a pilot study and two experimental studies. The purpose of the pilot study (N = 475) was to create and test experimental manipulations for the two experimental studies. Experiment 1 (N = 659; highly religious emerging adult sample) was a 3x2 experimental design with six conditions; 1) gratitude-only to humans, 2) indebtedness-only to humans, 3) gratitude and indebtedness to humans, 4) gratitude-only to God, 5) indebtedness-only to God, and 6) gratitude and indebtedness to God. Experiment 2 (N = 1081; nationally representative sample) was a replication of Experiment 1. Multiple and multivariate regression analyses and MANOVAs provided evidence that conditions 3 & 6 and state responses of gratitude and transcendent indebtedness led to more prosocial giving, more positive affect, and increased relationship proximity in response to receiving a benefit from either God or humans. Gratitude with low levels of indebtedness or indebtedness with low levels of gratitude were associated with worse outcomes. Two types of indebtedness were found, transcendent indebtedness (agentic) and transactional indebtedness (obligated). More positive outcomes were associated with transcendent indebtedness. Further, positive affect and relationship proximity was moderated by secure attachment to God when God was the benefactor.

Självtranscendenta känslor har påvisats ha prosociala effekter, men ur ett kognitivt perspektiv är dessa känslor tämligeno utforskade. Här undersöks vilka slags bedömningar av situationer (så kallade appraisal) som utmärker de självtranscendenta känslorna förundran, medkänsla och tacksamhet. Femtiofyra individer mellan 25 och 78 år deltog. Deltagarna skattade varje känsla i ett frågeformulär vars påståenden var relaterade till sju olika appraisaldimensioner. Envägs beroende ANOVOR visade att skattningarna skilde sig åt mellan känslorna för sex av de sju appraisaldimensionerna. Medkänsla skilde sig mest frekvent från de andra känslorna,medan förundran och tacksamhet endast skilde sig från varandra avseende målrelevans. Förundran och tacksamhet, men inte medkänsla, präglades av behaglighet. Vems beteende som var orsak till händelsen varierade mellan känslorna, men alla känslor skattades i låg utsträckning som normöverträdande. Diskussionen tar upp att nuvarande appraisal-teorier har svårt att ringa in självtranscendenta känslor. För framtida forskning skulledet vara av värde att bredda och justera befintliga teorier.

This thesis aims to investigate and present what the most recent research can disclose about moral emotions and their neural correlates. This literature review provides an overview of some frameworks and theories regarding moral emotions and their neural correlates, with a specific focus on positive and negative moral emotions such as compassion, pride, gratitude, guilt, shame, and embarrassment. The theoretical background of moral emotions within cognitive neuroscience has been introduced together with research of the emotional brain and morality to further clarify the main topic of this thesis, moral emotions and their neural correlates. Moral emotions are very crucial in understanding humans’ behavioural adherence to their moral standards. For example, shame is described as the way we relate and perceive ourselves. It is related to how we believe and think other people see us and our incompetence or failure to fulfil the desire to be a good person, e.g. “I think, feel and believe that I am a bad person for lying to someone”. These topics have been discoursed through this thesis showing significant results. There are many neural regions, e.g. medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) which get activated whilst experiencing distinct moral emotions. However, studies have shown that there is no one-to-one correspondence between a specific brain area and a specific emotion, instead, research has suggested there are particular topographical anatomical networks in the brain which get activated when experiencing different emotions. There are few studies in this field; their results should be taken with caution. The field continues to grow, and we can learn more about moral emotions and their neural correlates today and in the future.

While a large body of social psychological literature is devoted to studying helping behavior between social groups, the study of gratitude as the most common reaction to help is virtually absent from the intergroup literature. However, gratitude has been a constant theme in the history of intergroup relations, particularly in the history of the systematic oppression of socially disadvantaged groups by socially advantaged groups. The “grateful slave” trope that justified the oppression of Black people in North America or modern narratives of “ungrateful” immigrants in Europe exemplify advantaged groups’ attempts to evoke gratitude among disadvantaged groups to secure their conformity and loyalty, or to receive recognition for apparent benefits they provide - even for equal rights. Not only do these examples question the undisputed positivity of gratitude, but they also suggest that disadvantaged groups’ gratitude expressions might be involved in the regulation of power relations between social groups. The present research introduces the empirical study of gratitude to intergroup relations. The specific aim of this dissertation was to examine how disadvantaged groups’ gratitude expressions in response to advantaged group help might function to promote social inequality. At the same time, the present work addresses gaps within previous research that studies how advantaged group help itself affects status relations. Based on a synthesis of the literature on gratitude and intergroup relations, across three manuscripts, it was examined whether disadvantaged groups’ gratitude expressions, alongside advantaged group help, affect intergroup power relations through a) influencing psychological pathways to social change, b) regulating group-specific needs, and c) enacting and transmitting paternalistic ideology. In Manuscript #1, the novel idea of a potentially harmful side of gratitude expressions for low power groups was tested. Using correlational, experimental, between- and within-subjects designs, the results from five studies showed across different contexts that when low-power group members expressed gratitude for a high-power group member’s help, they were less willing and less likely to protest against the high power group members’ previous transgression. Forgiveness and system justification mediated this pacifying effect, providing insights into the underlying psychological process. In Manuscript #2, results from two correlational studies demonstrate that ideological beliefs can guide advantaged groups to provide help that differs in its potential to bring about social change. Paternalistic beliefs parsimoniously distinguished whether members of the receiving society provide dependency- or autonomy-oriented help to refugees. Both groups indicated that autonomy-oriented help has a higher potential for social change than dependency-oriented help. Reflecting group-specific needs and convictions that underlie paternalism, receiving society members’ concern for a positive moral image of the ingroup was positively related to their willingness to provide dependency-oriented help, and beliefs about refugees’ competence were positively related to their willingness to provide autonomy-oriented help. In Manuscript #3, it was investigated why advantaged group members react negatively to refugee protests and demand more gratitude from the refugees. The results of two experiments showed that refugees’ protest decreased perceptions among receiving society members that they are socially valued, but expressions of gratitude from refugees increased perceptions of being socially valued. Refugees were perceived as more agentic when they protested, however, not when they expressed gratitude. Perceptions of social worth determined receiving society members’ attitudes toward refugees on other dimensions. In a third experiment, the underpinnings of gratitude demands were examined. The results of a third experiment showed that receiving society members, who endorsed paternalistic beliefs, labeled protesting refugees as ungrateful and demanded gratitude from them. In sum, besides theoretically and empirically advancing several areas of intergroup relations (e.g., intergroup helping, intergroup contact, intergroup reconciliation, and paternalism), the present research suggests that gratitude expressions, which occur in intergroup contexts that are characterized by social injustice, can have negative consequences for disadvantaged groups. Implications for theory and social change are discussed, and promising avenues for future research are suggested.