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A longitudinal study of 308 white-collar U.S. employees revealed that feelings of hope and gratitude increase concern for corporate social responsibility (CSR). In particular, employees with stronger hope and gratitude were found to have a greater sense of responsibility toward employee and societal issues; interestingly, employee hope and gratitude did not affect sense of responsibility toward economic and safety/quality issues. These findings offer an extension of research by Giacalone, Paul, and Jurkiewicz (2005, Journal of Business Ethics, 58, 295-305). Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007
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On the relationship of hope and gratitude
to corporate social responsibility
Lynne M. Andersson
Robert A. Giacalone
Carole L. Jurkiewicz
ABSTRACT. A longitudinal study of 308 white-collar
U.S. employees revealed that feelings of hope and grati-
tude increase concern for corporate social responsibility
(CSR). In particular, employees with stronger hope and
gratitude were found to have a greater sense of respon-
sibility toward employee and societal issues; interestingly,
employee hope and gratitude did not affect sense of
responsibility toward economic and safety/quality issues.
These findings offer an extension of research by Giac-
alone, Paul, and Jurkiewicz (2005, Journal of Business
Ethics,58, 295-305).
KEY WORDS: corporate social responsibility, hope,
gratitude
Introduction
With the ongoing scandals in business and govern-
ment, organizational scholars continue to struggle to
understand the reasons for a recurrence of socially
irresponsible organizational behavior. Two diver-
gent approaches, one which posits that the primary
corporate responsibility is financial performance
(Friedman, 1970/1983; Marcoux, 2003), and an-
other which regards financial performance as but one
aspect of the corporation’s responsibility, have fo-
cused on understanding the goals of socially
responsible organizational behavior. Within the lat-
ter approach, sensitivity to other constituencies such
as employees, customers, the community, generally
referred to as ‘‘stakeholder management’’ (Freeman,
1984; Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics, 1999) or
‘‘multi-fiduciary management’’ (Freeman, 1994) has
directed the dialogue toward a more expansive
collective forum.
But when all is considered, the question of what
constitutes socially responsible behavior is seemingly
embedded within the individual level, where each
person’s perceptions of social responsibility will drive
his/her sensitivity to the myriad concerns that arise
in organizational life (Hemingway and Maclagan,
2004). What is considered a worthwhile individual
and collective outcome thus potentially emanates
both from one’s socialization (Inglehart, 1997) as
well as one’s dispositions (see Snyder and Lopez,
2004).
Within the dispositional tradition, the study of
positive psychology and positive organizational
scholarship has focused on attributes and traits that
constitute strengths and improve the quality and
meaning of life (see Seligman, 1999a, b; Seligman
and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The expansiveness of
this perspective is best understood in three volumes
that focus on the various aspects of positive psy-
chology from both a psychological (Lopez and
Snyder, 2003; Snyder and Lopez, 2002) and an
organizational perspective (Cameron et al., 2003),
Lynne M. Andersson, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Human
Resource Management at the Fox School of Business and
Management, Temple University, in Philadelphia, Penn-
sylvania. Her teaching and scholarship focus on the dark side
of business organizations; in particular, she’s been examining
some social maladies that are arguably associated with late
capitalism (cynicism and incivility) as well as the role of social
activism in countering capitalist barriers to sustainability.
Robert A. Giacalone, Ph.D. is Professor of Human Resource
Management at the Fox School of Business and Manage-
ment, Temple University, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
His research interests focus on the impact of workplace spiri-
tuality and changing values on business ethics. He is currently
Co-editor of the Ethics in Practice book series.
Carole L. Jurkiewicz, Ph.D. is the John W. Dupuy Endowed
Professor and Women’s Hospital Distinguished Professor of
Healthcare Management at Louisiana State University. She
has published numerous research articles, books, and news
articles on the topics of organizational ethics, leadership, and
behavior.
Journal of Business Ethics (2007) 70:401–409 !Springer 2006
DOI 10.1007/s10551-006-9118-1
along with concept-specific volumes on areas such as
hope (Snyder, 2000) and generativity (McAdams
et al., 1998).
Recent work has shown a relationship between
positive psychological constructs of gratitude and
hope and concerns for social responsibility within
the context of consumer reactions to corporate social
performance. McCullough et al. (2001) conceptu-
alize gratitude as a moral affect that serves to
motivate individuals to engage in prosocial behavior
and acts as a moral barometer providing an affec-
tive ‘‘readout’’ (Emmons, 2003). Emmons and
McCullough (2003) found that grateful persons not
only demonstrate more positive mental states (e.g.
enthusiastic, determined, and attentive), but also are
more generous, caring, and helpful to others. Even
when independent assessors rated them, grateful
individuals were found to be more prosocial
(McCullough et al., 2002).
Hope has been defined as a ‘‘positive motiva-
tional state that is based on an interactively derived
sense of successful (a) agency (goal-directed energy)
and (b) pathways (planning to meet goals)’’ (Snyder
et al., 1991, p. 287). The emotional state of hope is
thus forward-looking and action-oriented. Higher
levels of hope have been associated with higher
problem-solving expectations (Schwartz and Post,
2002) and greater social problem-solving abilities
(Chang, 1998).
Giacalone et al. (2005) hypothesized that the pro-
social inclinations of grateful individuals require high
levels of hope to translate into social responsibility
concerns. Grateful individuals who do not perceive
that their prosocial actions can accomplish a goal (e.g.,
are low in hope) should be less likely to be concerned
with prosocial behaviors. Indeed, using a measure of
consumer sensitivity, the Consumer Sensitivity to
Corporate Social Performance Scale (CSCSP), Gi-
acalone and colleagues found that when hope is high,
increasing levels of gratitude result in increases on the
CSCSP score. However, when hope was low, there
was no impact of gratitude on the CSCSP score.
But as Giacalone and colleagues (2005) noted, the
effects of hope and gratitude on consumer sensitivity
to social responsibility may or may not generalize to
social responsibility concerns more broadly, partic-
ularly from the standpoint of employee concerns for
social responsibility. They recommended that other
social responsibility measures should be assessed to
determine whether the interactive impact of hope
and gratitude generalized to these measures as well.
The present study seeks to extend previous findings
by employing other measures of corporate social
responsibility (CSR). In order to test whether the
effect is robust, two different measures of social
responsibility concern are used: Boal and Peery’s
(1985) and Singhapakdi et al.’s, (1996) measures.
If gratitude is associated with greater prosocial
behavior, grateful individuals should demonstrate
more concern with CSR than less grateful individuals.
Additionally, because hope is associated with both
agency to accomplish a goal and pathways for
achieving that goal (Snyder et al., 1991), hopeful
individuals should feel a greater ability to impact CSR
and increased confidence in the pathways to do so.
However, consistent with previous results (Giacalone
et al., 2005), we predict that the impact of gratitude
on social responsibility will be moderated by indi-
vidual level of hope, since individuals who do not
perceive that their prosocial actions can accomplish a
goal (support of socially responsible companies or
punishment of socially responsible companies) would
be less likely to engage in prosocial behaviors. Thus,
the following hypotheses are offered:
Hypothesis 1a: When hope is high, increasing levels of
gratitude will result in increasing levels
of corporate social responsibility con-
cerns.
Hypothesis 1b: When hope is low, there will be no
impact of gratitude on levels of corpo-
rate social responsibility concerns.
Methods
Sample and procedure
The data was collected at two points in time. At
Time 1 (T1), business school graduate students at a
large, public university in the southeastern U.S. each
volunteered to provide the e-mails of adults living
in the U.S. who were working full-time and held
managerial or technical/professional positions
(white-collar employees). Students secured permis-
sion from the potential participants prior to
402 Lynne M. Andersson et al.
submitting their e-mail addresses to the researchers.
An e-mail cover letter with an attached survey was
then sent to the 603 solicited participants. The cover
letter explained that the focus of the attached survey
was to learn more about workers and their values. In
addition, the cover letter guaranteed the potential
participants confidentiality and advised them that a
second survey would be sent to them in 3 weeks.
Three days following the original e-mail, a reminder
e-mail was sent.
At Time 2 (T2), 3 weeks following the adminis-
tration of the first survey, a second survey was sent to
respondents who had completed the first one. A
total of 308 second surveys were returned, for a
response rate of 51%. Of the individuals who
completed both surveys, 40% were between the ages
of 26–35, 67% females and 45% had been working
for their organizations for 1–5 years. A comparison
of early and late responders revealed no differences.
T1 Measures
T1 measures assessed respondents’ hope and grati-
tude, as well as demographic variables. Respondents
were administered the 12-item Adult Dispositional
Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1996). Respondents rated
each item on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1
(definitely false) to 4 (definitely true). Four items are
distracters and not used for scoring. Four items are
summed to create the Pathways subscale score; the
remaining four items are summed to create the
agency subscale. Hope is the sum of the four
Pathways and four Agency items.
Respondents were administered the Gratitude
Questionnaire (GQ-6) (McCullough et al., 2002), a
6-item self-report questionnaire designed to assess
individual differences in inclination to experience
gratitude in daily life. Respondents rated each item
on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), and their ratings were
averaged. Previous studies have shown acceptable
Cronbach’s alpha estimates (McCullough et al.,
2002). Representative items include ‘‘I have so
much in life to be thankful for’’ and ‘‘If I had to list
everything that I felt grateful for, it would be a very
long list.’’
T2 Measures
At T2, we assessed one measure of ethics and two
measures of social responsibility.
Boal and Peery CSR outcome measure. Respondents
were administered the 16 items from Boal and
Peery’s (1985) outcome measures of CSR, which
describes four socially responsible outcomes for each
of four categories (organizational, employee, con-
sumer, societal). Using a Likert-type scale that ran-
ged from 1 (not at all important to me) to 5
(extremely important to me), respondents were
asked to rate the extent to which each of the out-
comes was personally important to them.
Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility
(PRESOR) scale. Respondents were administered
the PRESOR scale (Singhapakdi et al., 1996) a
13-item measure that assessed respondents’ percep-
tions of ethics and social responsibility. Responses
were obtained using 1 (very strongly disagree) to 9
(very strongly agree).
Analyses and results
Descriptive statistics
Table I summarizes the means, standard deviations,
and correlations among the variables.
Factor analysis and regression on the PRESOR scales
The 13 items comprising the PRESOR scale were
subjected to a principle components factor analysis
with varimax rotation. Using a 0.45 loading as a
criterion value for inclusion (Cook and Campbell,
1979), the factor analysis revealed one distinct factor
having an eigenvalue of greater than 1.0 accounting
for 40% of the variance. The results of this analysis
can be found in Table II. The single factor is
characterized as focusing on the interconnection of
profitability to social responsibility and ethics to the
functioning of business, and includes items such as
‘‘Business ethics and social responsibility are critical
to the survival of a business enterprise,’’ ‘‘Business has
a social responsibility beyond making profits,’’ and
‘‘The ethics and social responsibility of a firm is
essential to its long-term profitability.’’ A single
variable was constructed, based on the items which
loaded on this single factor.
The PRESOR score was analyzed by regressing
it on gender (Step 1), on hope and gratitude (Step
2), and on the interaction term of hope and
Hope and gratitude to corporate social responsibility 403
gratitude (Step 3). Table III shows that gender has
a small but significant negative relationship to the
PRESOR score in the first step alone. In the
second step, gratitude alone was significantly
related to the PRESOR score, accounting for 16%
of the variance. In the third step, a significant
interaction was found, albeit not entirely consistent
with Giacalone and colleagues’ (2005) results. As
Figure 1 shows, although high hope and increasing
levels are gratitude are associated with increasing
levels of social responsibility concerns, low levels
of hope and increasing levels of gratitude also are
associated with increasing levels of social
responsibility. What is different is that high hope
and increasing levels of gratitude bring about a
more precipitous increase in social responsibility
concern.
We probed the effect further by doing two
additional analyses. In these analyses, we performed
the identical analysis above, except that we used
TABLE II
Factor loadings for Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility (PRESOR) scale
Item Loading
Being ethical and socially responsible is the most important thing a firm can do 0.69
The most important concern for a firm is making a profit, even if it means bending or breaking the rules
(R)
0.44
The ethics and social responsibility of a firm is essential to its long-term profitability 0.76
The overall effectiveness of a business can be determined to a great extent by the degree to which it is
ethical and socially responsible
0.76
To remain competitive in a global environment, business firms will have to disregard ethics and social
responsibility (R)
0.43
Social responsibility and profitability can be compatible 0.61
Business ethics and social responsibility are critical to the survival of a business enterprise 0.80
A firm’s first priority should be to employee morale 0.61
Business has a social responsibility beyond making profits 0.79
If survival of a business enterprise is at stake, then you must forget about ethics and social responsibility (R) 0.48
Efficiency is much more important to a firm than whether or not the firm is seen as ethical or socially
responsible (R)
0.52
Good ethics is often good business 0.72
If the stockholders are unhappy, nothing else matters (R) 0.36
R indicates items that are reverse scored.
TABLE I
Means, standard deviations, and correlations
Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. Gender 1.33 0.47
2. Gratitude 38.50 3.67 )0.15** (0.67)
3. Hope 25.48 2.92 0.01 0.20*** (0.74)
4. PRESOR 68.19 12.24 )0.13** 0.41*** 0.16
**
(0.86)
5. Boal economic responsibility 19.94 3.17 0.06 0.27*** 0.09 0.05 (0.81)
6. Boal responsibility toward
employees and society
24.93 3.61 )0.25*** 0.12*** 0.17
***
0.55*** 0.12* (0.80)
7. Boal safety and quality 22.57 2.38 )0.12* 0.19*** 0.04 0.40*** 0.36*** 0.55*** (0.77)
*p< 0.05; **p< 0.01; ***p< 0.001; Coefficient Alphas are on the diagonal, in parentheses.
404 Lynne M. Andersson et al.
the agency and pathways components hope in
each analysis, instead of the total hope. What we
found was that the interaction was a function of
the pathways component, not the agency com-
ponent, which was not significant (p> 0.07). The
plotted pathways !gratitude interaction (see
Figure 2) was identical to the hope !gratitude
interaction.
Factor analysis and regressions on the Boal and Peery
CSR outcome scale
The 16 items comprising the CSR outcome scale
were subjected to a factor analysis with varimax
rotation. Using a 0.45 loading as a criterion value
for inclusion (Cook and Campbell, 1979), the
factor analysis revealed three distinct factors having
eigenvalues of greater than 1.0 accounting for 57%
of the variance. The results of this analysis can be
found in Table IV. Factor 1 is characterized as a
factor focusing on responsibility toward employees and
society and includes items such as ‘‘promotes
employee rights’’ and ‘‘promotes social justice.’’
Factor 2 is characterized as a factor focusing on
economic responsibility such as ‘‘promotes economic
interests of the business,’’ and ‘‘maintains high
levels of productivity.’’ Factor 3 is characterized as
a factor focusing on safety and quality and includes
items such as ‘‘safe working conditions’’ and
‘‘produces safe products.’’ Three variables were
constructed, one for each of the three factors,
based on the items that loaded for each factor.
The score for each of the three factors was ana-
lyzed as follows. First, the score was regressed on
gender (Step 1), on hope and gratitude (Step 2), and
on the interaction term of hope and gratitude (Step
3). Table V shows that for the responsibility toward
employees and society score, gender was a significant
predictor in all steps. In the second step, hope and
gratitude were both positively related to responsi-
bility toward employees and society, accounting for
8% of the variance. Finally, in the third step, the
interaction was significant, accounting for an addi-
tional 1% of the variance. As Figure 3 shows, the
pattern of results mirror those found previously:
when hope is high, increasing levels of gratitude
result in greater responsibility toward employees and
society concerns. But when hope is low, there is no
impact of gratitude on responsibility toward
employees and society.
As we did for the PRESOR analysis, we probed
the effect further by conducting the two additional
analyses. In these analyses, we did the identical
analysis above, except that we used the agency and
pathways components hope in each analysis, instead
of the total hope. What we found was that the
interaction was a function of the agency component,
not the pathways component, which was not
-0.6
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Gratitude
PRESOR Score
High Hope
Low Hope
Figure 1. Interaction of Hope and Gratitude: PRESOR
score.
TABLE III
Multiple regression results for PRESOR
PRESOR
Step 1 Step 2 Step3
Gender )0.14** )0.09 )0.09
Gratitude 0.40*** 0.40***
Hope 0.07 0.08
Hope !Gratitude
nteraction
0.13*
Df (1,304) (3,302) (4,301)
F6.29** 21.59*** 17.94***
DR
2
0.02** 0.16*** 0.01**
*p< 0.05; **p< 0.01; ***p< 0.001.
Tabled values are standardized regression weights.
Responsibility Toward
Employees and Society
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
Gratitude
High Hope
Low Hope
Figure 2. Interaction of Agency and Gratitude: respon-
sibility toward employees and society.
Hope and gratitude to corporate social responsibility 405
significant (p> 0.10). The plotted agency !grati-
tude interaction (see Figure 4) was identical to the
hope !gratitude interaction.
The results for economic responsibility, however,
were not consistent. Gender was not significant in
any of the steps. More importantly, only gratitude
was positively related to economic responsibility,
and no significant interaction was found. Overall,
the Model R
2
was not significant for any of the three
steps. The results for safety and quality resulted in a
significant gender impact and a significant positive
relationship with gratitude (accounting for 3% of the
variance), but there was no impact of hope or an
interaction.
Discussion
Our results were not entirely consistent with pre-
vious research. Although the pattern for responsi-
bility to employees and society were consistent
with those found by Giacalone and colleagues
(2005) and the results for the PRESOR measure
were similar, the results for economic responsibility
and safety and quality responsibility were not sig-
nificant.
The results indicate that, when dealing with a
measure of social responsibility focusing on
employees and societal concerns, the pattern is
consistent with the results for consumer sensitivity to
corporate social performance. The likely reason is
that in both measures, the foci are ethical and/or
philanthropic responsibilities. But when economic
and legal responsibilities are assessed (as in economic
responsibility and safety and quality responsibility),
no significant results were obtained. Thus, it appears
that hope and gratitude effects cannot be generalized
to economic and legal responsibilities.
The results for the PRESOR measure show a
sensitivity to what the measure is assessing: the
relationship of profitability and social responsibility.
As a result, unlike the Giacalone and colleagues’
(2005) study, where the relationship of hope and
gratitude was driven by agency component of hope,
the relationship between hope and gratitude was
driven by the pathways component. This tells us
that impact of hope and gratitude on PRESOR
scores is a function of whether individuals are able
to see that planning to meet these goals (pathways)
is possible. Subjects need not have the goal-directed
energy (agency) to achieve profitability within the
TABLE IV
Factor loadings for Boal and Peery CSR items
Item Responsibility toward
employees and society
Economic
Responsibility
Safety and quality
responsibility
Jobs that allow employees to use valued
skills and abilities
0.56
Does not degrade the environment 0.62
Job security for employees 0.67
Supports social and cultural activities 0.70
Promotes social justice 0.73
Promotes employee rights 0.80
Promotes economic interests of the business 0.84
Maintains high levels of productivity 0.83
Promotes long-range survival of business 0.80
Promotes interests of stockholders 0.70
Produce products desired by customers 0.47
Company prices products fairly 0.67
Maintains high quality of products and services 0.73
Produces safe products 0.81
Company obeys the law 0.59
Safe working conditions 0.47
406 Lynne M. Andersson et al.
context of socially responsible acts – only an ability
to see that such a goal could be planned and
achieved.
The data demonstrates that the importance of
socially responsible actions can be impacted by an
interaction of hope and gratitude when dealing with
issues of ethics and philanthropy, but not when
economic and legal responsibilities are concerned.
Conversely, the acceptability of a socially responsible
direction (as measured by the PRESOR) is a func-
tion of both gratitude and pathways – respondents
who were more grateful and see that that planning
can meet such goals were more likely to be in
agreement with social responsibility, regardless of
their agency.
Future directions
Overall, the results must be considered in terms of
limitations in the study. As with the Giacalone and
colleagues (2005) study, we used self-report data, and,
as such, our findings are subject to potential biases and
problems with common method variance when
measures come from the same source (e.g. Podsakoff
TABLE V
Multiple regression results for economic responsibility, safety and quality responsibility
Responsibility toward employees and society Economic responsibility Safety and quality responsibility
Step 1 Step 2 Step3 Step 1 Step 2 Step3 Step 1 Step 2 Step3
Gender )0.25*** )0.22*** )0.23*** 0.05 0.06 0.06 )0.13** )0.10 )0.10
Gratitude 0.22*** 0.24*** 0.12 0.11** 0.17*** 0.18***
Hope 0.13* 0.13* 0.06 0.05 0.00 0.00
Hope !Gratitude
interaction
0.14** )0.05 0.02
Df (1,304) (3,302) (4,301) (1,304) (3,302) (4,301) (1,304) (3,302) (4,301)
F20.59*** 16.69*** 13.60*** 0.064 2.12 1.76 4.82* 4.96** 3.73**
DR
2
0.06*** 0.08*** 0.01** 0.00 0.02 0.00 0.02 0.03** 0.00
*p< 0.05; **p< 0.01; ***p< 0.001. Tabled values are standardized regression weights.
Responsibility Toward
Employees and Society
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
Gratitude
High Agency
Low Agency
Figure 3. Interaction of Hope and Gratitude: responsi-
bility toward employees and society.
-0.6
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
Gratitude
PRESOR Score
High Pathways
Low Pathways
Figure 4. Interaction of Pathways and Gratitude:
PRESOR score.
Hope and gratitude to corporate social responsibility 407
and Organ, 1986). Independent ratings of social
responsibility or behavioral measures will be needed
to determine whether this relationship is robust.
Second, while the results were significant, the R
2
in the analyses were relatively low. The low R
2
indicates that these positive psychological constructs
play a small role and that considerable amount of
variance remains unaccounted. Particularly in the
case of social responsibility, when a few within
the hierarchy can have a significant impact on the
organization’s socially responsible decision making,
even small effect sizes may have a meaningful prac-
tical consequence (Endler, 1973).
Third, actual behaviors were not measured in our
study, and thus it is not possible to say that positive
psychological dispositions are associated with socially
responsible behaviors. While previous studies dem-
onstrate significant positive relationships between
positive psychological measures and behaviors that
reflect the concepts (McAdams et al., 1998;
McCullough et al., 2002), future research must
make this link to socially responsible behaviors.
Future research should build on these limitations.
Experimental studies (e.g. Emmons and McCul-
lough, 2003) manipulating participants’ experiences
of hope and gratitude could be performed that
would allow researchers to witness actual behavioral
outcomes such as socially responsible behaviors. On
the other hand, employee feelings of hope and
gratitude may manifest in more subtle ways than
can be captured via survey methodology; qualita-
tive methods of inquiry such as participant obser-
vation and semi-structured interviews may enhance
the researcher’s ability to understand hope and
gratitude in some of the many ways (i.e. via
imagination, metaphor, and dramatization) they
may exist within organizational life. No doubt,
positive workplace emotions such as hope and
gratitude seem highly worthy of further investiga-
tion as the powerful effects of positive psychology
on organizational life continue to be uncovered
(Cameron et al., 2003).
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Lynne M. Andersson and Robert A. Giacalone
Human Resource Management Department,
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Philadelphia, PA, 19122, U.S.A.
E-mail: landerss@temple.edu
Carole L. Jurkiewicz
Public Administration Institute,
E. J. Ourso College of Business Administration,
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Hope and gratitude to corporate social responsibility 409
... In a meta-analytic review of prosocial behaviour, Ma et al. [24] found a clear connection between gratitude and prosocial behaviour. Gratitude has also been reported to be related to organisational citizenship behaviour, that is employee behaviour important for the organisation although it isn't the individual's main work task [25,26] and a greater sense of responsibility towards employee and societal issues [27]. Similarly, gratitude is reportedly associated with a better job satisfaction [28][29][30], as well as less burnout and exhaustion, more psychological well-being, and fewer absences due to illness [29][30][31]. ...
... In the present study, we did not measure the effect of intervention on customer satisfaction. There is evidence that gratitude can increase prosocial behaviour [24], organisational citizenship behaviour [25,26], and a sense of responsibility [27]. It seems logical that these factors can have a positive spill-over effect on customer satisfaction. ...
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Background: In a demanding working life, it is important to determine how individuals can thrive at work. In a previous study we investigated whether a program of gratitude interventions can increase psychological wellbeing, engagement, job satisfaction, and psychological capital showing promising results. The objective: of the present study was to present the development of a manager coached group intervention program related to gratitude at workplaces and to investigate the effects of such a program on the same variables. Methods: The intervention included five group sessions of gratitude dialogue between employees, supervised by their first line managers. Participants were assigned to an intervention or control group. Assessments were made before and after the intervention program and followed-up at 6 months post-intervention. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed. Both groups completed instruments measuring positive psychological capital (PCQ), work engagement (UWES), psychological wellbeing (PGWB-S), and job satisfaction (aJDI). All managers were interviewed after the intervention. Result: Compared with the control group the gratitude dialogue intervention was found to significantly enhance psychological wellbeing, engagement, and job satisfaction. The results were supported by the interviews with managers. In conclusion: our results suggest that gratitude dialogues at work may be an effective way of improving employee wellbeing. Suggestions on how to improve the results from this kind of gratitude intervention further are presented.
... Employees and the community at large are the most influential stakeholders in terms of CSR. Andersson et al. (2007) posit that employees with higher levels of hope and gratitude showed a greater sense of responsibility towards societal issues (Andersson et al., 2007). Studies from Hartmann & Vachon (2018) show that workers prefer to work for companies believed to have eco-innovative practices; this helps them build positive sentiments, preferences and perceptions of the company's performance (Hartmann and Vachon, 2018). ...
... Employees and the community at large are the most influential stakeholders in terms of CSR. Andersson et al. (2007) posit that employees with higher levels of hope and gratitude showed a greater sense of responsibility towards societal issues (Andersson et al., 2007). Studies from Hartmann & Vachon (2018) show that workers prefer to work for companies believed to have eco-innovative practices; this helps them build positive sentiments, preferences and perceptions of the company's performance (Hartmann and Vachon, 2018). ...
... Gratitude leads to lower materialism (Polak & McCullough, 2006), higher life-satisfaction (Lambert et al., 2009), counteracts hedonic adaptation (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005), broadens one's outlook (Fredickson, 2004), develops psychological and social capital (Fredickson, 2004) and cancels out negative effects (Garland et al., 2010). Work-related benefits of gratitude include higher job performance (Grant & Wrzesniewski, 2010), job satisfaction (Garg, 2017), organisational citizenship behaviour (Andersson et al., 2007), lower work stress (Saxena et al., 2020), less chances of workplace burnout (Chan, 2011), improved leadership Petrocchi and Couyoumdjian (2015) and Disabato et al. (2016) reported that grateful people experience lower levels of stress, depression and anxiety. Several other studies have revealed a link between different gratitude interventions and decreased mental stress and anxiety. ...
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Although there is an exponential rise in the literature on gratitude research, there is no attempt to systematically identify the historical development and recent trends in gratitude research. Gratitude has been defined diversely as an emotion, an attitude, a moral virtue, a habit, a personality trait or a coping response. As an emotion, people experience gratitude when they receive something valuable from someone else. As a trait, it is defined as a tendency to recognise and respond to goodness in others. The present study uses bibliometric analysis to review gratitude publications from the last 20 years, that is from 2001 to September 2023. WoS (Web of Science) identified 2982 publications referring to gratitude in title, abstract or keywords. It comprised 2860 articles and 122 review papers. The extracted data were analysed and visualised with the help of two analytical tools, that is the WoS analysis and VOSviewer (version 1.6.16). This study elicits the number of publications and citations from 2001 to September 2023, and most cited publications, and the most influential authors, articles, publishers, universities and countries as performance analysis. Furthermore, collaboration among countries, keyword co‐occurrence and recent trend analysis are employed through science mapping. The results reveal that the major research areas of gratitude research are psychology, social sciences, business economics, psychiatry and public environmental and occupational health. The keywords co‐occurrence suggest five major research clusters: evolutionary studies of gratitude, gratitude and health, gratitude and positive psychology, gratitude among children and adolescent and mediating and moderating studies of gratitude. Also, the analysis of recent 5‐year studies highlights a clear trend of scientific explorations of gratitude against earlier trends of articles on philosophical and religious connotations of gratitude.
... 15 (2) Such individuals easily perceive the positive results brought by pro-social behaviors and are more likely to engage in pro-social behaviors. 53 (3) Such individuals are better at managing their own emotions and cognition and have stronger psychosocial functions, so they are more likely to pay attention to the needs of others and make corresponding positive responses. Moreover, the individuals' happiness of positive emotional experience is more substantial, 54 and their happiness is more conducive to helping individuals. ...
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Introduction Because the mechanisms by which moral elevation triggers an individual’s pro-social behavior remain unclear, this study examined the mediating role of self-control resources in the relationship between moral elevation and pro-social behavior. Methods Experiment 1 examined the effects of moral elevation on self-control resources using two task paradigms, the Stroop task and the Go/NoGo task, with 80 college students as study participants. Experiment 2 was conducted with an additional 140 college students, using both experimental and questionnaire methods to examine the mediating role of self-control resources in the effects of moral elevation on pro-social behavior. Results (1) The results of Experiment 1 showed that the self-control ability of the moral elevation induction group was significantly better than that of the non-induction group. The accuracy rate of self-control tasks in the induction group (0.94 ± 0.01) was significantly higher than that in the non-induction group (0.89 ± 0.01, F(1,79)=19.10, p <0.001, η²=0.50). The mean reaction time of the self-control tasks in the induction group (393.63 ± 3.5) was significantly lower than that in the non-induction group (415.38 ±7.30, F(1,79)=5.87, p =0.026, η²=0.24). (2) The results of Experiment 2 showed a significant positive correlation between moral elevation and self-control resources (r=0.46, p<0.001), a significant positive correlation between moral elevation and pro-social behavior (r=0.33, p<0.001), and a significant positive correlation between self-control resources and pro-social behavior (r=0.31, p<0.001). Not only did moral elevation significantly and positively predict pro-social behavior (β= 0.23, p=0.011), but it also significantly and positively predicted self-control resources (β= 0.46, p<0.001). Self-control resources significantly and positively predicted pro-social behavior (β= 0.20, p=0.025). The bootstrap test for the mediating effect of self-control resources showed that the upper and lower limits of the 95% confidence interval did not include 0 (indirect effect 0.09, 95% CI [0.023, 0.242], p<0.001), and the mediating effect accounted for 28.13%. Conclusion This study revealed the mediating role of self-control resources in the relationship between moral elevation and pro-social behavior, which has important theoretical and practical implications for cultivating pro-social behavior and moral education among college students.
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With the increasing significance of gratitude studies at the workplace, the present study aims to lay a roadmap for researchers and practitioners interested in workplace gratitude. It provides an updated overview of gratitude at the workplace (2001–2021) and identifies the critical issues in the available literature. By reviewing the antecedents and consequences of workplace gratitude, the study attempts to answer three questions: to critically evaluate the issues in gratitude measurement, to whom the employees feel grateful in the workplace (target of gratitude), how the employees reciprocate the feeling of gratitude, and which theory best explains the workplace gratitude. The study concludes by offering primary direction for future research in workplace gratitude and recommendation for gratitude measurements.
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Gratitude is conceptualized as a moral affect that is analogous to other moral emotions such as empathy and guilt. Gratitude has 3 functions that can be conceptualized as morally relevant: (a) a moral barometer function (i.e., it is a response to the perception that one has been the beneficiary of another person's moral actions); (b) a moral motive function (i.e., it motivates the grateful person to behave prosocially toward the benefactor and other people); and (c) a moral reinforcer function (i.e., when expressed, it encourages benefactors to behave morally in the future). The personality and social factors that are associated with gratitude are also consistent with a conceptualization of gratitude as an affect that is relevant to people's cognitions and behaviors in the moral domain.
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In four studies, the authors examined the correlates of the disposition toward gratitude. Study 1 revealed that self-ratings and observer ratings of the grateful disposition are associated with positive affect and well-being prosocial behaviors and traits, and religiousness/spirituality. Study 2 replicated these findings in a large nonstudent sample. Study 3 yielded similar results to Studies 1 and 2 and provided evidence that gratitude is negatively associated with envy and materialistic attitudes. Study 4 yielded evidence that these associations persist after controlling for Extraversion/positive affectivity, Neuroticism/negative affectivity, and Agreeableness. The development of the Gratitude Questionnaire, a unidimensional measure with good psychometric properties, is also described.
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The effect of a grateful outlook on psychological and physical well-being was examined. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions (hassles, gratitude listing, and either neutral life events or social comparison); they then kept weekly (Study 1) or daily (Study 2) records of their moods, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals. In a 3rd study, persons with neuromuscular disease were randomly assigned to either the gratitude condition or to a control condition. The gratitude-outlook groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures across the 3 studies, relative to the comparison groups. The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.
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Defining hope as a cognitive set comprising agency (belief in one's capacity to initiate and sustain actions) and pathways( belief in one's capacity to generate routes) to reach goals, the Hope Scale was developed and validated previously as a dispositional self-report measure of hope (Snyder et al., 1991). The present 4 studies were designed to develop and validate a measure of state hope. The 6-item State Hope Scale is internally consistent and reflects the theorized agency and pathways components. The relationships of the State Hope Scale to other measures demonstrate concurrent and discriminant validity; moreover, the scale is responsive to events in the lives of people as evidenced by data gathered through both correlational and causal designs. The State Hope Scale offers a brief, internally consistent, and valid self-report measure of ongoing goal-directed thinking that may be useful to researchers and applied professionals.
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Defining hope as a cognitive set that is composed of a reciprocally derived sense of successful (1) agency (goal-directed determination) and (2) pathways (planning of ways to meet goals), an individual-differences measure is developed. Studies with college students and patients demonstrate acceptable internal consistency and test–retest reliability, and the factor structure identifies the agency and pathways components of the Hope Scale. Convergent and discriminant validity are documented, along with evidence suggesting that Hope Scale scores augmented the prediction of goal-related activities and coping strategies beyond other self-report measures. Construct validational support is provided in regard to predicted goal-setting behaviors; moreover, the hypothesized goal appraisal processes that accompany the various levels of hope are corroborated.