Personnel
Project personnel University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA) site:
Principal Investigator: Dr. Amrisha Vaish (av8u@virginia.edu)
Post-Doctoral Researcher: Dr. Qiao Chai (eze8fd@virginia.edu)
Project Manager: Naomi Rader (fga5kk@virginia.edu)
Project personnel Christ University (Bengaluru, India) site:
Principal Investigator: Dr. Aneesh Kumar (aneesh.kumar@christuniversity.in)
Post-Doctoral Researcher: Dr. Parvathy Viswanath
Research Assistant: Rohit Jaiswal (rohit.jaiswal@christuniversity.in)
Project Description
This cross-cultural study examines the socialization and development of gratitude in children in the US and in India. This project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Goals of this Project
Using multiple methods (interviews, experiments) with children, and surveys with parents, the project seeks to answer three Big Questions:
1: How do adults in distinct cultures think about, experience, express, and respond to gratitude?
Which aspects of these cognitions, emotions, and responses are culturally more similar? Which are more distinct?
2: How do parents socialize these aspects of gratitude in their children?
What do they emphasize as being important or relevant? What do they de-emphasize? How do these aspects change as their children develop?
3: How does gratitude develop and what social functions does it serve among children in distinct cultures?
How do children think about and express gratitude? Does gratitude motivate direct reciprocity (paying back a favor) and upstream reciprocity (paying it forward) across cultures? Do children across cultures value displays of gratitude and if so, which aspects of gratitude displays do they value?
The project thus examines the role of culture in shaping how gratitude is elicited, expressed, and valued, how it is socialized, and how it develops.
Our Published Work on Gratitude
Beeler-Duden, S., & Vaish, A. (in press). Feeling good and feeling thankful: The role of positive emotions in sustaining early prosocial behavior. In M. D. Matthews and R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Multidisciplinary Handbook of Character Development. Taylor & Francis.
Vaish, A., & Savell, S. (2022). Young children value recipients who display gratitude. Developmental Psychology, 58(4), 680-692. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001308
Vaish, A., & Hepach, R. (2020). The development of prosocial emotions. Emotion Review, 12, 259-273. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073919885014
*Beeler-Duden, S., *Yucel, M., & Vaish, A. (2020). The role of affect in feelings of obligation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e56: 1-58. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19001742 *Equal contribution
Beeler-Duden, S., & Vaish, A. (2020). Paying it forward: The development and underlying mechanisms of upstream reciprocity. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 192, 104785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104785
Vaish, A., Hepach, R., & Tomasello, M. (2018). The specificity of reciprocity: Young children reciprocate more generously to those who intentionally benefit them. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 167, 336-353. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.11.005
Additional Resources
Greater Good Science Center: https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/
The Love Consortium: https://www.theloveconsortium.org/
The Gratitude Project by The Love Consortium: https://www.theloveconsortium.org/gratitude
The Global Gratitude Dataverse: https://dataverse.unc.edu/dataverse/ggdv
Events
The Love Consortium will hold the 2024 TLC Love Conference May 15-17 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Click here for more information.