Interpersonal Gratitude: An Important Positive Emotion in Social Life

Abstract

Interpersonal gratitude is a cognitive emotion, it refers to the thankful and joyful attitude that a certain individual expresses towards other’s benefaction with kindness. Situational appraisal is the key mechanism for the formation of interpersonal gratitude. Besides, the emotion is also affected by other factors including characteristics of the beneficiary, and the dyadic relationship features, etc. Thus, the researchers have designed various paradigms to induce interpersonal gratitude, such as scripts of plot, and interactions tasks, etc. In addition, the function of interpersonal gratitude has three levels including individual, dyadic and group. In the future, the research focus of interpersonal gratitude can be studying the underlying neurophysiological mechanism, investigating the cultivation of trait gratitude from interpersonal gratitude, extending the study of the function of interpersonal gratitude, as well as exploring the Chinese cultural impact on interpersonal gratitude.