A new perspective on the social functions of emotions: Gratitude and the witnessing effect.

the person toward whom gratitude was expressed. Experiments 6-8 used within-subjects designs to test hypothesized behavioral and social-perceptual mechanisms for these effects, with videos of real gratitude expressions. Gratitude may help build multiple relationships within a social network directly and simultaneously. By specifying proximal interpersonal mechanisms for reverberating consequences of 1 person's communicated emotion, the present work advances theory on the group-level functions of emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).