Since it is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, how about a study about gratitude? This particular study comes from the lab of David DeSteno. Prof. DeSteno is at Northeastern University, and he is the PI for a group that studies emotional effects on prosocial behaviors. You could do worse than to read his book, Emotional Success: the power of gratitude, compassion and pride. I would quibble with some of the evolutionary accounts that he provides in the book, but the general gist – that emotions are informational, adaptive “lenses” – is an important perspective. I’ll definitely try to unpack this perspective a bit at some point in this blog.
Anyway, for this particular study, Desteno asks a question concerning impulsivity. The question is whether all emotions get in the way of non-impulsive, rational, deliberative choice. Or, are there particular emotional states that actually reduce impulsivity? Certainly the zeitgeist is that emotions are a hindrance to deliberation. Zen, man. That’s the ticket.
A modern psychologist, though, would tend to say that “Zen, man” is as much an emotion as “anger.” The issue isn’t clearing away emotion, so much as it is understanding the congruence between the decisions you are being asked / attempting to make and the emotional state from which you are attempting to make them. If you are being asked to saw a board in two, a hammer isn’t of much use. The same could be said of emotions. So, is there an emotional state that helps rational, deliberative choice?
That’s a loaded question, of course. So let’s anchor it with a more specific question. Are there particular emotions that make us less impulsive? This is the question that DeSteno et al sought to address in their study “Gratitude: a tool for addressing economic impatience” (DeSteno, Li, Dickens and Lerner, 2014).
Now, the first thing to appreciate about any scientific study, is that when a researcher asks about whether x affects y, x and y are going to be defined in operationable terms. This means, they are going to be defined in measurable terms. Not only that, but they are going to be defined in measurable terms that are described in such a way that other scientists can go out an perform the same measurements. Impulsivity is a word. You might be able to provide a meaning for it: “actuated or swayed by emotional or involuntary impulses” However, this definition is meaningless for a scientist. How do you determine actuated or swayed? What counts as an involuntary impulse? What counts as an impulse?
Here is how DeSteno et al operationalized impulsive behavior: How much money do I need to give you in T amount of time so that you will choose to wait rather than take a different choice of money now? For example in the image below a subject has been presented with a choice between $4.50 now versus $10.00 in 30 days. Which would you choose?
Impulsivity, then, is being measured in terms of a choice between a dollar amount now vs. a dollar amount in the future. Sometimes in the literature this is referred to as a temporal-discounting or delay-discounting curve, and the information it provides is essentially “how easily you can wait.” The more money I have to give you to wait, the higher your impulsivity score.
Ok, so in the the DeSteno et al study subjects will be primed with a particular emotion: happiness, neutrality, or gratitude. This is done by having the subjects in each of these groups write about an autobiographical moment in which they felt this emotion. Next, the subjects will be given a series of questions that ask them to rank (1 – 5) their current emotional state. Finally, the subjects will be given a series of choices between a dollar amount now versus a dollar amount in the future. By the way, subjects had a 1-in-3 chance of actually receiving one of the dollar choices that they made. If you were one of these lucky subjects, the experimenters randomly selected one of your choices (e.g., $30 in 6 months), and made it a reality.
- Trigger Emotions: Happy, Neutral, Grateful.
- Compare subjects in each group in terms of their impulsivity scale.
That’s the study. Here is what was found.
What this figure shows is the average impulsivity score for each group. The numbers on the y-axis can essentially be interpreted as a measure of patience. Specifically, they indicate the ratio between an amount of money now, and an equivalent psychological amount a year from now. In other words, a discount factor of .5 would mean that $10 now equals an offer of $20 a year from now. A discount factor of .1 would mean that $10 now equals $100 a year from now. In other words, you would need to pay the “.1 subject” five times as much money to wait a year, than you would need to pay a “.5 subject.”
Back to the figure, when you look at how the different emotional groups scored, it is clear that the gratitude group displayed more patience. This is true even when compared to another group that was feeling a positive emotion – the happy group. Feeling happy did not make a subject any more patient that feeling “neutral.” The only emotion of the three manipulated that improved impulsivity was gratitude.
Gratitude. Patience. The season stretches out towards winter and the cold settles in. Thanksgiving readies our waiting, keeping a future spring valued and available.
Happy Thanksgiving 2019!
[Edit: Talk about coincidence. Who should have a column in the NY Times, but David DeSteno! Give it a read to learn some more about the science of gratitude.]