Thanks, and thanks again: Unveiling the temporal dynamics of gratitude

Gratitude is a fundamental social emotion for interpersonal interaction. Previous studies have identified appraisals of benefactor’s behavior (i.e., attribution-dependent evaluation) and recipient’s benefit (i.e., outcome-dependent evaluation) as crucial determinants of interpersonal gratitude. However, they largely ignored the dynamic nature of gratitude and left unclear how attribution- and outcome-dependent evaluation processes interplay over time to affect the feeling of gratitude. Here we developed an interpersonal interactive paradigm and asked participants to report their feelings at different stages of the interaction. Our findings suggest that the partners’ decision to help could substantially elicit gratitude without outcome evaluation, while the outcome that can be attributed to benefactors’ crucial help has a strong effect on gratitude change over time and the outcome that is not directly affected by the help could nevertheless promote or dampen gratitude. This study advances our understanding of attribution-dependent and outcome-dependent evaluations underlying interpersonal gratitude via a dynamic appraisal framework.