School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, England.
Emotion. 2011 Feb;11(1):175-80. doi: 10.1037/a0021553.
We argue that more help does not necessarily lead to more gratitude. Rather, gratitude depends on how a given instance of help compares with the help that a person is used to receiving. Participants read vignettes detailing an event in which 11 different friends either lent them varying amounts of money or spent varying amounts of time providing help. The amount of gratitude elicited by a given amount of help (e.g., a loan of £36 [about $56] or 49 min help) differed substantially depending on how this amount ranked among the help they were getting from their other friends. Comparison across four experimental conditions suggested that these judgments operated via the same general cognitive mechanisms used to judge other social events and psychophysical stimuli (as outlined by range frequency theory). Although more help does lead to more gratitude, people appear to be sensitive to how that help compares with what others are providing, and experienced gratitude depends on these relative judgments.
我们认为，更多的帮助并不一定会带来更多的感激之情。相反，感激之情取决于特定帮助的情况与一个人习惯接受的帮助相比如何。参与者阅读了详细描述一个事件的小插曲，在这个事件中，11 个不同的朋友要么借给他们不同数量的钱，要么花不同数量的时间提供帮助。给定数量的帮助（例如，36 英镑[约 56 美元]的贷款或 49 分钟的帮助）所引起的感激程度，很大程度上取决于该数量在他们从其他朋友那里获得的帮助中的排名。在四个实验条件下的比较表明，这些判断是通过用于判断其他社会事件和心理物理刺激的相同一般认知机制进行的（如范围频率理论所述）。尽管更多的帮助确实会带来更多的感激之情，但人们似乎对这种帮助与他人提供的帮助相比如何很敏感，而实际的感激之情取决于这些相对判断。
