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Prosociality confers benefits to those who engage in the behavior, as well as those who receive it. So, how can prosociality, especially repeated acts of giving, be encouraged? Past research shows that receiving an expression of gratitude can promote prosocial behavior. However, existing work has focused on the benefits of receiving gratitude in comparison to receiving nothing, thereby leaving the content of gratitude expressions unexamined. Drawing upon past research demonstrating the benefits of identity-relevant appeals, we compare how two different gratitude expressions – one that references an individual's kind personality (i.e., prosocial character ) and another that references an individual's kind actions (i.e., prosocial action ) – impact future prosocial behavior in comparison to each other and to a no-gratitude control condition using two high-powered pre-registered studies. In both studies, participants (603 undergraduate students in Experiment 1; 876 online adult sample in Experiment 2) engaged in a prosocial task and were then randomly assigned to receive one of two gratitude expressions or a no-gratitude control condition. Afterwards, participants had the opportunity to help again. Comparing helping rates across conditions we found no significant differences among helping behavior in Experiment 1. However, in Experiment 2, results indicated that individuals who received an expression of gratitude, regardless of content, donated more than individuals that solely received an acknowledgement of their help. We interpret these findings as mixed support for gratitude's function as a moral reinforcer and consider why gratitude expressions referencing an individual's generous character vs. action may have had little impact.
Amarasekera et al. (Wed,) studied this question.