All 5 Terms & Definitions
- Gratitude
- A positive emotion and social-moral response to receiving a benefit that the recipient perceives as valuable, costly to the giver, and intentionally provided. Can be a transient state (feeling grateful to a specific person) or a stable disposition (a grateful personality trait).
- Find-remind-bind theory
- McCullough et al.'s account of gratitude's social function: gratitude helps people find new relationships with potential benefactors, reminds them of existing valued relationships, and binds them to those relationships through reciprocal prosocial motivation.
- Moral emotion
- An emotion that functions to regulate social and moral behaviour — helping individuals navigate norms of fairness, reciprocity, and obligation. McCullough classifies gratitude alongside shame, guilt, elevation, and awe as moral emotions. Gratitude specifically enforces norms of reciprocity and cooperative helping.
- Gratitude journal
- An intervention in which people regularly write down things for which they are grateful. Emmons & McCullough (2003) showed that individuals who wrote weekly gratitude lists reported higher wellbeing, more positive affect, and fewer physical complaints than controls. The technique has become a cornerstone of positive psychology practice.
- Broaden-and-build
- Fredrickson's theory that positive emotions — including gratitude — broaden momentary thought-action repertoires (widening attention and cognition) and build lasting personal resources (social bonds, coping skills, resilience). Gratitude broadens social awareness and builds the bonds of reciprocal helping over time.