Karns Christina M, Moore William E, Mayr Ulrich
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, United States.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2017 Dec 12;11:599. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00599. eCollection 2017.
Gratitude is an emotion and a trait linked to well-being and better health, and welcoming benefits to oneself is instrumentally valuable. However, theoretical and empirical work highlights that gratitude is more fully understood as an intrinsically valuable moral emotion. To understand the role of neural reward systems in the association between gratitude and altruistic motivations we tested two hypotheses: First, whether self-reported propensity toward gratitude relates to fMRI-derived indicators of "pure altruism," operationalized as the neural valuation of passive, private transfers to a charity versus to oneself. In young adult female participants, self-reported gratitude and altruism were associated with "neural pure altruism" in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and nucleus accumbens. Second, whether neural pure altruism can be increased through practicing gratitude. In a double-blind study, we randomly assigned participants to either a gratitude-journal or active-neutral control journal group for 3 weeks. Relative to pre-test levels, gratitude journaling increased the neural pure altruism response in the VMPFC. We posit that as a context-dependent value-sensitive cortical region, the VMPFC supports change with gratitude practice, a change that is larger for benefits to others versus oneself.
感恩是一种与幸福和更健康相关的情感和特质，对自己有益是具有工具性价值的。然而，理论和实证研究强调，感恩更应被理解为一种具有内在价值的道德情感。为了理解神经奖励系统在感恩与利他动机之间关联中的作用，我们测试了两个假设：第一，自我报告的感恩倾向是否与功能磁共振成像（fMRI）得出的“纯粹利他主义”指标相关，该指标通过对向慈善机构与向自己进行被动、私下转移的神经估值来操作化。在年轻成年女性参与者中，自我报告的感恩和利他主义与腹内侧前额叶皮层（VMPFC）和伏隔核中的“神经纯粹利他主义”相关。第二，神经纯粹利他主义是否可以通过践行感恩来增强。在一项双盲研究中，我们将参与者随机分配到感恩日记组或积极中性对照日记组，为期3周。相对于测试前水平，写感恩日记增加了VMPFC中的神经纯粹利他主义反应。我们认为，作为一个依赖情境的价值敏感皮层区域，VMPFC支持感恩练习带来的变化，这种变化对他人的益处比对自己的益处更大。
