Dr Liz Gulliford and Dr Blaire Morgan
individually presented at the Fourth Australian Positive Psychology and
Well-being Conference, ‘Developing a Sustained Impact’ at the University of
Melbourne.
We are looking forward to the possibility of future collaboration with the University of Melbourne. The papers presented can be found below.
Understanding Gratitude
The topic of
gratitude has become extremely popular in recent years, and with good reason;
studies from psychology have highlighted that gratitude is related to a host of
positive psychological, interpersonal and health benefits, whilst the work of
eminent philosophers has emphasised how gratitude is a fascinating, complex
concept that warrants considerable debate.
Over the last 14
months, the Jubilee Centre for Character and Values’ “Attitude for Gratitude”
project has endeavoured to unite ideas from both psychology and philosophy. In
a recent paper, [Gulliford, L., Morgan, B., & Kristjánsson, K. (2013). Recent
Work on the Concept of Gratitude in Philosophy and Psychology. The Journal
of Value Inquiry, 47(3), 283–317] we discuss the numerous conceptual
controversies that surround gratitude, for example, issues of supererogation,
presence of benefactors and conditions surrounding the benefit. To shed further
light on such controversies we have developed two new investigative methods; a
vignette questionnaire for adults and gratitude stories for use with children.
These methods seek to elucidate how gratitude is understood by the British
public and what factors influence when, and to what degree, gratitude is
experienced.
Using prototype analysis to explore cultural differences in gratitude between UK and the US
In this
paper we examine gratitude from the bottom up using a prototype analysis,
following the example set by Lambert and colleagues (2009). In our recent prototype
study of gratitude (Morgan,
B., Gulliford, L., & Kristjánsson, K. ‘Gratitude in the UK: A new prototype
analysis and cross-cultural comparison’ (under submission)), we examined gratitude in the U.K., contrasted features of gratitude with
those identified in the U.S., and explored whether gratitude is associated with
virtue.
In
these studies, laypeople generate features that exemplify gratitude, rate their
valence and centrality, and the researchers examine how the centrality of these
features affects laypeople’s cognition about gratitude.
In
three studies we demonstrated that gratitude is prototypically organized; that
there are cross-cultural similarities and differences between U.K. and U.S.
descriptions of gratitude; and that judgments of gratitude are closely related
to judgments of virtue.