Sara Algoe || Positive Relationships

I'm delayed to have Sarah Aljaoe on the podcast. Doctor al Joe is Associate Professor of Social psychology the University of Virginia. Her expertise spans of motions, relationships, and health psychology. Her basic research questions illuminate the social interactions that are at the heart of high quality relationships. These include giving to others, expressing gratitude, and sharing laughter. Thanks so much for chatting with me today, Sarah. Yeah, it's a pleasure

to be here. Yeah, your research does span quite a gamut. But there is a theme there. There's a theme I can't quit gratitude. There's something there. Well, Oh, that's funny. I was going to say the theme was relationships. Oh that's great to hear Yeah, that's what happened, especially lately. Yeah, So I thought we'd start there because gratude seems to be only one part of the larger umbrella for you, and I thought we could start by explaining to me,

what does this phrase you use? What does this mean? Positive interpersonal process? Oh, yeah, that's a great question. What was that sounds? Is that something I want? I want that? Is that a good thing? For the most part, it's usually a good thing. Yeah, it's all the good stuff in your relationships. It's the reason that you want to hang out with your friends. It's the I don't know, the goodness that infuses your very favorite relationships, you with

your favorite aunt or a romantic partner. And so these are things like laughing together and expressing gratitude and sharing moments of joy with someone. So you find out something great happened and you tell them about it, and then they're excited with you. In the ideal situation, they're also excited with you, and so that can amplify the kind

of positivity of the moment. And so positive interpersonal processes are really these kind of great little opportunities in everyday life where one person or both people experience a positive motion, and then by the way that it's communicated and then the way that the other person responds, it can provide opportunities for connection. Yeah, that's really cool, And I'm thinking of two research programs just seemed to relate to this.

One is Love two point zero by Barbara Frederickson. That's not research programs as her book, it's the book titled but her research program on the positive micro moments of love and connection. And then also, you know, you made

me think of Sharon Salzberg's work on love. It maybe comes a different direction because she's not a psychologist, but she's a Buddhist meditator, And for some reason I felt like it dovetailed nicely with your work of kind of having to like being in the moment with the person for a good, solid relationship. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually really interesting that you say that. So I started studying positive emotions,

little moments of positive emotions. If you don't mind, I'm going to give you a little bit of a history of Oh, please do how I got here, because we

love that on the Psychology podcast together. And so when I was in graduate school at the University of Virginia, I started studying positive emotions, and I was really especially interested in how these moments between people can all these kind of everyday things that happened in our environment, so you might admire someone, or somebody might do something that makes it feel grateful, and so I started studying those when I was at Virginia and I worked with three

really awesome emotions researchers, so to moscent On Height and Jimmy Chlore. It didn't take very long for me to get into studying emotions and especially my interest in how they shape interpersonal interactions to realize that actually a lot of people who study emotions just focus on the person who's experiencing the emotion in the moment, but my interest was really in how they actually coordinate behavior between people.

So I started working with gratitude way back when, and that was this moment when I was really realizing that gratitude is really about connecting people together, and if that's true, then you should be able to see the effect of one person's gratitude on the other person. And so I started getting into trying to figure out how to study these moments interpersonally, kind of really bringing in both sides of the coin. And so then I actually went off to do a post TALC with Shelley Gable, who was

doing a lot of work on positive relationship processes. So she was studying how people what happens when you share joy with someone else, and then she found that not only does it make you feel good to share your good news with people start to feel better about yourself, but the way that they respond really makes you. It changes the way that you think about the opportunity that

came up for you. So like you've got a promotion at work, and if the other person says, oh, man, we're never going to see you anymore because you're gonna be working all the time, instead of saying, oh, that's so great, You've been working so hard for that, that really makes a difference for the person who's experiencing that moment.

So anyway, so she was doing all this really great stuff and awesome methodological stuff, you know, working with couples over time and looking at daily reporting from each member of the couple and doing sophisticated statistical modeling, and I really wanted to work with her to figure out how to test gratitude in this context as well, in this like more interactive kind of opportunity. So then I started thankfully got a post talk to work with Shelley as

one of one of my mentors. That was two thousand and five. Yeah, and then I started talking to bar Bark Frederickson, and so then I was we kind of started having these really great conversations about positive emotions and ongoing interactions, and so she asked me to join her lab as well, and so I was able to join her as opposed to her and so she started studying loving kindness meditation with Sharon Salzburg. And so that was right around that time that we kind of all connected.

And so it's funny to hear you bring up Barb and Sharon because since that time we've had several collaborations that kind of came as a result of that path that I took along the ways, and she was of course Barb's Barden and Build theory of positive emotions was like one of the things that was really exciting to me when I started studying emotions, because gosh, I am getting really excited talking about all this stright now actually.

But so Barb Broad and Build theory of positive Emotions came out around the time that I was in graduate school studying the emotion of gratitude, and it really again, in the same way that a lot of emotions researchers had been focused on how the emotion changes your own the person experiencing the emotion's own thoughts and feelings and behavior, many emotions researchers have also really focused on the negative emotions.

So we knew a lot about anger and sadness and things like that, and the main sometimes researchers would study a positive emotion, they would put one in there in among all of the negative emotions just to have a conference, and it was happiness. Usually it was just happiness. And she was like, no, no, no, no, much our emotional tapestry. Yeah,

there's way more richness to our emotional tapestry. And not only that, but they're actually really valuable opportunities in people's lives, and so that was kind of so it was really fun to kind of come full circle. And now Barber's my colleague here and awesome friend and collaborator. Cool, that's really awesome there. But yeah, I'm also thinking of Jane Unnan's work, right, Yeah, yeah, Jane's a wonderful researcher and

really a pioneer in this area. Yeah, so the whole concept of a high quality relationship seems to dovetails nicely with positive interpersonal processes. They kind of go together, like trying to think of an analogy. They're almost the exact same thing, like a hand in hand. Like strawberry jam and blueberry jam. You think they go's go well together? Yes, anyway, yeah,

they both jam. True. What about like strawberry mango. I think that's Sharon Salzburg who also belongs there, so yes, and I think she'd be okay that I just like in her to that particular flavor. But anyway, Yeah, so there's this kind of I mean, it's nice when that happens. It's nice when there's the of ideas. I mean, that's what we want in science. I mean, you want that, right,

So that's a good thing. These confluence is. You know, I thought we could talk about some interesting nuances that I've seen in the literature and you know that I think would be fun to kind of just chat with

you what you think about it. So I think there's this merging idea that positive psychology is also contextual and that like we shouldn't put these absolute labels on our emotions or actions or behaviors or traits, even traits like for instance, I'm not a big fan of labeling emotions positive or negative because some seemingly positive emotions can be like you go to a if you go to a funeral and you're in a chipper mood and you're like, I'm so happy, you know, people will look at you like,

you know, inappropriate time for positive emotions in a little bit of yeah, I mean so, And that is one exam I mean, there's plenty of negative emotions that we want to not evaporate from our system. You know that like are important important. So I've tended to like to just be just to describe the experience like comfortable, exuberant, uncomfortable, painful, you know, like actually like describe as clearly as possible, actually what the experience of the emotions without labeling whether

or not that's positive or negative. That's sure the perspective I've started to taking my own research, and I just wanted to throw that out there and think what you thought of that? Yeah, No, I think I absolutely agree with you, and I really respect that position. And it's helpful because it gives me an opportunity to actually really clarify that when I'm talking about a positive when I say positive emotion, I mean the valence. So in the

moment that you're experiencing it, is it generally enjoyable? Is it more or less pleasant? And so the more pleasant it feels when you're experiencing it, the more positive. And so it's I also, as an emotions researcher, am comfortable with people with the idea that people have can have and actually as a meditator, as an emotions researcher and a meta I'm comfortable with the idea that people can experience or kind of co experience positive and negative emotions simultaneously.

In this so this comes up actually and we're talking about gratitude, I think some people mistake the situations that sometimes people mistake situations that cause gratitude for situations that cause indebtedness or you know, just because someone does something for you to beholden into them and so therefore and just by kind of objectively describing the situation, they would

assume that you have this. But I would say, based on my research that indebtedness is a negative feeling and it's a more uncomfor a negative emotion and it's a more uncomfort, you might say, in cover of unpleasant emotion, whereas gratitude is a pleasant emotion, and they can kind of co occur even within moments of each other, so you might think like, oh my gosh, that's so awesome, you didn't have to do that for me, and they feel this gratitude and then immediately follow up by oh gosh,

there's no way I can repay that person, And that's okay. For my definition, it still works to kind of have both, and then it helps me to make additional predictions based on valence. So barbes broad and build theory really taps for production's broaden and build theory really taps into the valance component as providing these opportunities for broadening your perspective.

And I have another paper with the student where he has this really cool series of studies showing that for emotions that are experienced as being more pleasant, when we experience those emotions, we actually experience greater agency. And so valance valence is a real dimension and it really has these different psychological implications, and so for me, that's why

it makes sense. And so far I'm comfortable with continuing to call the more pleasantly experienced emotions as positive emotions, and I absolutely agree that those don't always produce positive I would say beneficial outcomes. So yeah, yeah, I appreciate your perspective as well, and I think that it has become a little unaility for me in trying so hard to do this. It's like someone who wants to like that's just determined in our society today to replace all

gender pronouns with like gender neutral. So you try to make sure everything, and it's hard because you're living in a world that that you're going against a green This new book I'm working on, I'm I set out the principle and the beginning that I don't want to use the label positive negative. But once I set myself to that task, I'm actually finding it's like I keep slipping.

It's so much easier to say positive or negative as opposed you know, I'm like, I get to all these tricky situations because then I say, well, comfortable, No, it's not really comfortable. You know, they don't really describe all all the all experience of the positive emotion, but it's

not comfortable. So what do I wabele that? So now I actually have to invent different subclasses of experiential labels for different classes of emotions, and I'm doing that, but I don't know if I'm right, and it's certainly just my subjective impression. I'm like, oh, well, to me, that feels not It's not just pleasant. I mean, like, would you describe you know, like transcendent love is pleasant? You know, know, right, right, No, there's more to it, but that's one of the core

features of this Yes, of course, of course. But it's like that doesn't fully describe it. Like I want to really like nail, like how certain things really feel, but it's hard. It's hard. So anyway, I think it's a lot easier from a just a descriptive like communication perspective sometimes, like you know, just from like two people communicating with each other easily. There are certain benefits for certain things.

Say thank you for that perspective. Now you have a specific theory I want to talk about called the find, remind and bind theory of gratitude. You pauseive, most researchers love catching days. You all love that stuff. Okay, it is catchy. I will admit I feel like that's a very barol prediction. Thin you do, so, yeah, can you tell me a little bit about that theory of yours and how it may is differentiated from some other theories

of gratitude in the literature. Yeah, so I'll start with what the find and find in mind theory is, and that is that moments of gratitude. Actually, let me start with my definition of gratitude because that matters because a lot of people use gratitude in different ways in their everyday life. And so when I'm talking about the emotion of gratitude, it's an emotion that a person can experience when someone else does something nice for them. And a starting point that I like to use is that we

don't always notice when somebody does something nice for us. Objectively, somebody else might say that was really nice of them to do, but you might not even notice because you expect it from the person. We might have a lot of different kinds of emotions when they do this nice thing for us. Some of them might be negative. I mean, you see, like a very nice person, but I sometimes feel like, what do they want from me? Every once in a while you're like, oh, oh, let's going on

here are you? Or like you might think, oh gosh, why did they think I would want that, but anyway, sometimes their gesture really stands out and you feel grateful. It's this positive emotion. And so what I say is that moments when we experience graduates, it's that we notice that someone else has really gone under the way on our behalf and that they might make a good relationship partner.

And it's not necessarily explicit, but so we can gratify also alert us to people in our environment who are good for us, who are looking out for our best interests. So it helps to find new people who maybe we didn't notice before, or you know, we kind of get used to people who we have regular interactions with, and it might remind us of, oh, that's what I love

about you. And then and the emotion kind of coordinates your mind and bodying behavior in that moment to help set you up to actually bind yourself more closely with that other person. So we might do things to make sure that they know that we really appreciated it, or that we care about them too. And ultimately, my data now shows that those kinds of gestures actually can help draw the other person closer into the relationship, even closer than they were when they first did the nice thing.

They probably did the nice thing for you because they liked you in the first place. And then yeah, so we have some nice evidence about the process. Thank you for explaining that. So I'm trying to think if bind is the right word, because it's like, you're not saying you're bound. So there's a difference thing in bind and bound. I guess, right, Like, you're not saying that like by doing this you are actually as a contract, You're not.

Actually it's not like a contextual binding exactly. Yeah, okay, good, because that's not conducive to positive interpersonal relationships to feel as though you are actually bound to the person, right, that's not good. Yeah, well, and that's that's the thing that differentiates it a little bit. We have to kind of have these tip for tet relationships with people just to go through everyday social life. This is how we get through the world. You scratch my back, I scratch

your back. If I don't repay a favor, then you're not going to want to do that favor for me necessarily in the future. So we have to have that kind of exchange type of relationship with lots of people just to kind of navigate social life. But this is a different kind of potential relationship, and it's based on this idea that like, wow, this person just seems to be open to looking out for my best interests. And it's a qualitatively different kind of experience, and so the

emotion really motivates you to it's like a desire. You really want to make sure that they know, Oh my gosh, you're so great. Did you see what this person just did. I can't believe you did that. You know. It's like it's more of an approach orientation, right, And it also seems to be something though, that is not tied to that necessity for tit for tat Like you know, you we tend to have gratitude towards people who, like you said,

don't seem like they want something in return. That seems to increase the likelihood we'll have gratitude for a person. But what about this sort of like just general domain general gratitude that one can cultivate as just a way of being in the world, you know, in any Davidan's a collaborator of mind. He's at Penn and he he's doing great work on transcendent experiences, and he laid out in a review paper he wrote recently. Actually, Jonathan Hyde,

you're a mentor. It was a co author of that paper laying out a whole self to treaded emotion continuum, and gratitude is on that continuum, as there are self transcendent positive emotions which are different than other positive emotions. So it seems like gratitude falls within kind of a unique class of pose of emotions there that allow us

to really transcend self interest. Yeah, absolutely, and so, and that's one of the things that we find is so actually so just so I can come back to the question about domain general gratitude that I have a different answer about that, But regarding gratitude as it's self transcendent emotion, that's really what our most recent evidence is showing is that we've been trying to do some comparisons between the social consequences of feeling something like joy, which would be

I got a positive book for myself, so just perfectly it's a wonderful experience, as opposed to gratitude, which is, I got a positive outcome for myself because of your praiseworthy actions, and so it's elevating as hype, Yeah exactly. And so it's because of the praiseworthiness of your actions. And so we've been doing work to show that this really the social consequences of gratitude go beyond just feeling joy.

And so if I feel grateful to you, it's you will experience a consequence because my gratitude will I will naturally be inclined to make sure that you know it in a way that you know, really calls out what it is about your what you did that was praiseworthy, and then that has an impact on you absolutely, And you know, it's fun looking at your work and looking at the development of your thinking, and I'm thinking also, you know how that interacts with the development of your

collaborators thinking. You know, so at the time in two thousand and five when you were working with jol A Heighted, he had he come up with the elevating Emotions construct. Yet was that there did that exist? Yeah? Yeah, so he when I first started working with him, he had just maybe published one he had published some stuff with Daker Cutner on ah I think right around that time, and then he was publishing some stuff on elevation and I think right around that time he won the Templeton

Prize as well for his work on elevation. And so the reason that I actually started working with Don was on my interview with him or the the I don't know, in our whatever. First my first meetings with him, he told me about this idea of elevation and he's like, we need some data, and so he said that sounds great. I'm really intrigued by that, and then we want into

compare it with a few other positive emotions. And one of the things that he said was, you know, something that I've been noticing is that when so elevation is when you see another person. It's not related to you, just see one person do something nice for a third party, and so there's no benefit to you, but you see this and it can be really moving to see that. Actually, there are a lot of commercials where they have this

kind of like pay it forward. Then if you see someone helps help somebody pick up something and then they go off and do something fit in. So that's what elevation is. And he said, when I ask people about their experiences of when they see this happen and they have this feeling, a lot of people say that they want to thank the person who originally, you know, was kind to someone else we need to know more about gratitude. And so I was I jumped into the literature and

I didn't. I would just say the literature was there was some really healthy reviews out there, but it just didn't resonate with me as especially because Barbe's work was coming out around that time about positive emotions and it was like it was all about economics. The gratitude literature at the time was really about economics and it wasn't didn't even infused with this idea of broadening or these

real opportunities. Bob emmonds research around that time was economic orientation. No, no, no, Bob Emens was doing research on counting your blessings, which is very positive. And there was a really foundational a foundational review mccallaugh and Emmonds and Kilpatrick and Larson. It is a really wonderful review and it was a review

of the literature that had been done. And so they concluded things that are still I would say, there are still true to this day that when you experience now, I won't remember the three things that they could included about gratitude, but that let me try. Let's give myself a little test. So they that gratitude is a morality detector, so when someone else doesn't good, it's a moral reinforcer. So when I thank you, you're more likely to do something nice for me in the future again, or like

the same thing again. And that was all stuff that had been demonstrated. And then there's one more thing. It's about the repayment or something like that, And that's all totally accurate, and it was based on literature that other people had, studies that other people have done, and they weren't interested in gratitude is an emotion they were really interested in, Like the question actually a totally different question, which is like, why would anybody ever be nice? Touch? Yeah?

Why would evolves? Yeah? Well no, no, this is about altruism. So their question was like why would anyone Yeah, it wasn't McCullin stuff, but like the people who were doing the research were like, why would you ever be nice to someone? Well, probably because the other person, of course, feels grateful when you do something nice for them, which

we don't know isn't true. And then and then the more gratitude they feel, the more likely will be to repay you for the thing, so then your costs are balanced. And so that's the way that previous researchers had kind of come at that question, and I just came at it from a different perspective of really like looking at emotions and thinking about positive emotions in these like really uplifting experiences. So again, like that review is awesome. Everything

that they've concluded, almost everything that they conclude. I have a little twist on one of the conclusions that I think adds to this relationship side of things. But everything that they concluded is like really well supported. But it just felt like it didn't resonate because I didn't have that when I experienced gratitude, I think, oh my gosh, we'd never do that. But so, yeah, it was an awesome review. And then but then Bob Evans's word was the thing that he led at the time was about

counting your blessings. And that's really another way that people think about gratitude a lot. And that gets back to your question about general orientation toward life. Yea, there's like an analog to loving kindness for all humans, even your enemies. There's an analog in the gratitude world. It seems like there's a demain general like brother or sister to that, right, the generalize because just like you know, loving kindness, meditation, you can like generalize it to all the cosmos. You

can go all the way up with that one. You know, you can do the same thing with gratitude. I like it, and you can go all the way down as well and be like, I'm only have gratitude. Like you know, some people are like I only have gratitude. It's just people who are royal to me. Yeah, there's like an in group gratitude only. So I really think that, like, you know, there's a continuum of gratitude there where of in terms of like how expansive is yourself. Oh, that's

really interesting to think about. Yeah, because I think about it in a really different way. So now you've got me.

I'm just throwing that out there. I don't know makes any sense, but I try to make it kind of an dichotomy for my own brain put after my research, which is like, I mean that the other kind of gratitude, which is so much I'll define right now, is like appreciating the good things in your life, like understanding that you have these really amazing blessings in your you know, wow, this a good thing thing happened to me and I have you know, like the or the sky is blue

or whatever, and I, for my own ease, I call that appreciation, which is a more cognitive construct and it's easier for me. But I do agree with you that it I often think about how appreciation came to be because the other way that I think about appreciation, the way I just defined it, is as a meta positive emotion. Yeah. I like the idea of a meta positive emotion. So you have it. Yeah, I feel like there is a super category that of a way of being in this

world that blends. And I'm gonna throw some things out here. It blends gratitude. It's like, okay, you tell me what you get when you get the perfect fusing of these things. Gratitude, mindfulness, savoring, death, acceptance. I'm throwing that one in there. I'm throwing that one in there. But no, it's not. I really I really think that when you combine these things, you have a way of seeing and perceiving the world that you're like

constantly on. As Abraham Maslow referred to it as like a high plateau, not the peak experience, but you living your life turned on all the time. Yeah, So I think there is this you said meta, but there is a super ordernate something that construct that hasn't been well studied in the field. But that whyse above some of

these things. So anyway, something to think about and study, well, something to study, not just think about we're scientists, think about think about that idea though it's pretty it's pretty cool. And about appreciation is that, I mean there's some pretty good evidence or you know, gratitude or like having a grateful disposition and just kind of having a way of being in the world where you get that there's a lot of goodness in your life and you can see

it in the everyday little things. You don't need to have somebody do something for you, you don't need to have an amazing, luxurious house or you know, whatever the things are that you need in your life, just as a way of being in the world. Because I was thinking about it and actually walking into my office leading up to this our conversation today that it seems like it the data suggests that it's actually necessary for mental health. So there's some cool. Yeah, so that's something else to

play around with. And now I might not tell me the cool and then you just didn't tell me so I'm on the edge of my seat. You say, you tell me cool. Yeah, really time to suggest that so people who are not mentally I mean, it doesn't seem like it's just a correlation, but to mean having being a grateful person and having better mental health. But that is actually like a necessary precondition. And I you know, I could write that paper, but I can't just pull

all the data points for you right now. No, I mean you're obviously hitting a thing really existentially profound. I mean, you're kind of making a case the way, even though you haven't said it is like the famous answer to the question why not kill myself? You know, like we as scientists need to answer that question as well being researchers. And I think that's actually a good question for us positive psychologists to help quarify our priority list of things

that we study. And it sounds to me like you're saying one of those reasons is that we can generate gratitude in our lives, you know, and that's almost an essential. Yeah. So I think it's actually a really interesting question even within the field. What are the essentials, you know, and what are the luxuries of you know, I'm trying to think right now. Well, what I because I like them all, they're all good. What's a luxury like? Well, no, that was not a luxury for me all. No, you know

what if you take all away from my life? No gratitude? No, Yeah, I'm just trying to think, what are there any luxuries? There certainly are some that differ in their strength of correlation with well being. But I don't know if that's

the right way to answer the question. But any right, So you in two thousand and nine wrote this paper with Jonathan Height on what you called other praising emotions, and it seemed like you divided it into two classes, not two classes, but you differentiate other praising emotions such as elevation which is a response to moral excellence, gratitude,

and admiration. You differentiate them from joy and amusement. So, linking that to your most recent work on positive interpersonal processes, it seems like you make a differentiation then, orgo in your Positive Interpersonal Processes work, you make a differentiation between in our relationships other praising emotions versus other positive emotions. Do you make that same differentiation in your positive interpersonal

processes work? Now? Oh? No, because I've come to decide that well, especially I think, I mean, Shelley gables work on capitalization is just awesome and everybody should go find out everything they came about it, and yeah, to do the reading. But you know, that's about joy, that's actually

about your own joy. And one of the things that we found in that two thousand and nine paper was this echoes what Shelley talks about and just coincidentally, which is that I think in our paper, like we ask people what they did when they experienced joy when something good happened to them, and think, I'm right, like eighty percent the people said that they told somebody else about it. They're like, and we call it broadcasting. They told other people.

And that's I mean, that's all of Shelley's work, is what I described, is about this that she had doing separately in more wonderful ways. But it's just a nice coincidence, or is it. But anyway, anyway, so what we found there is like people still do this kind of social thing with their own emotion. And then, like I said,

Shelley's work has really shown that that matters too. We can really make great connections and actually the best way of responding when someone shares good news with you, is just to be excited for them if you want to preserve the relationship. But if you want to maybe there is something. We sometimes have negative feelings about our like, oh, I don't know if I would have made that choice, you know, when somebody shares some good news with us.

But like just being there for them and being being excited about the thing that they're excited about because you and you know that they care about it actually is a really cool opportunity for connections and important connections. So she shows that those opportunities for connections are even better predictors of your feelings of support from that person, your perceptions that that person gives you support. Then when that person actually gives you wow, like like when you say

something negative. Yeah, And so those positive moments between people really matter. Test These are everyday things like oh, I've got a paper accepted or not. That's not an everything, but you know, the way to test people, See how I feel like it's like a test. It's a way of testing people, Like you know, if you really want to test your friendship. It seems counterintuitive if I said to someone, tell me the best way to test a friendship,

like are they there when I need them? You know, It's like no, I would actually, you know, see how genuinely excited they are with your positive news. Seems like that's a very contextual thing, though, because it seems like just as positive that can be when you seem authentic. If you react to someone's positive news in a positive way, but you don't come across as though you genuinely care, that seems to be just as bad it seems to be.

That's another one of these catextual things I wanted to want to point out here because it's like, you know, I was really sick the other day, just really high fever, and someone was telling me some good news of theirs and I really inside cared, but I was like, you know, they couldn't overlook the fact that, like I was sick, Like it was just like, oh, you don't really care, you know. It's like, my gosh, what do I do in this moment? This person's taking it so personally, and

like I'm like, trust me, inside, I'm really excited. I just can't breathe right now because I have a high fever. But do you know what I mean? It seems like people can can be really sensitive with people as well. We all just need to maybe be a little more like you know, as well human as human with each other. But yeah, exactly, no, I mean, sincerity is the thing.

All of our research, Shelley's work and my work, and a lot of the work in the relationships domain really emphasizes that the you know, these things work when the other person who's responding is perceived to actually be understanding and actually seems to care and actually seems validating. That's the person that kind of the fact that it has on you that can then translate to these downstream you know, feeling like that person is around for you in the future.

So yeah, sometimes you know, people are strange and that's why we see them. Everything's wonderfully strange. I love. Well, that's why we do what we do. I mean, comedians live for the absurdity of the world. And I don't think that psychologists are fundamentally different in their motivations than comedians, to be honest, except we just are more nerdy maybe, and how we go about our methods. So, can you tell me a little bit about some meta analyses on

gratitude interventions? Can I can tell you a little bit? This is basically the meta and really it's like two sentences the meta analysis take your time, time, No. I mean it's like the meta analysis of gratitude interventions suggest that they work, especially for people who need them the most.

So there are lots of ways that people have done gratitude interventions, and I would say, because I've been watching literature for three years, I think researchers have started to discover more more effective ways of having people do these interventions.

And so I think some of the earlier work had a little bit of a lighter touch, and so it's maybe harder to have a big impact on everybody who was in it, and some of the more recent stuff, So Sonya Leibermersky has a really impressive body of work on these gratitude interventions, and I I've noticed that they

have turned more toward having people do interpersonal gratitude. So they actually say somebody that they feel grateful to, or they actually kind of yeah, so they kind of acknowledge somebody else's actions as opposed specifically as opposed to counting your blessings, or they have them maybe write a note to that person, and so those are some of them. More so it's kind of interesting that the literature has

shifted a little bit. And one of the reasons from that, I would say is because we know that relationships are so robustly associated with mental and physical health, and so in my mind, it really makes sense that to the extent that thinking about the nice things that other people do for us and feeling grateful for those things can help us to feel more close and connected to those people and feel like we have a safe set of relationships,

then that would really naturally lead to having better mental health. I don't know that many people have any's really tested that idea carefully, but it's you know, it makes a lot of sense for them. Sure, So I would say there's effectiveness of the interventions has started to get better. So the meta analysis that I've seen really support the conclusion that the gratitude interventions really work well for people

who need them the most. And that's one of the reasons that I have this idea that gratitude seems to be necessary, a necessary precondition, because people who already feel grateful, they're not going to move up higher in their mental

health necessarily. It's kind of a weird argument that I'm coming up with off the cuff, but anyway, so if it's the case that yes, So basically, if you're doing really well mental you've got fine mental health, are reasonably good mental health, you don't have depression, Then what possibility is that you when I ask you to gratitude intervention, like where you're writing about the good things in your life, you don't have very much room to move up on

the happiness scale. For example, you fill up the happiness scaling, you're pretty happy already, and so there's not a lot of room to move up. So maybe that's true, or it might be that people really need people who are already who already have gratitude in their lives, who are already happy. Maybe they already have gratitude in their lives, Maybe they already count their blessings on a regular basis and think about the good things in their lives like

a restricted range. So then that might be why that gratitude interventions don't do as much for people who are already mentally healthy. But in either case, it seems like gratitude feels like it's a necessary part of the equation. Is that right, though, because maybe it's a maybe it really is an inverted use shaped curve sort of phenomenon. It's totally possible. Yeah, I'm making this up. Well, I mean that's all my in terms of no, No, it's

totally We're just thinking through possibilities. I think the other thing that I would say about the graduate interventions is that they really do show a lot of promise. Sonia has been talking a lot recently about potential variations, so they might not be great for everybody, and sometimes they might backfire for some people. I couldn't tell you the specifics of the findings that she has, but I have seen a few. I saw her to the talk about a year ago, and she was going over because she

has a massive amount of data. Was that at the internation? Was that at the conference? Yeah, well I was thinking the same I'm thinking of the same talk. We were

both in the room together. Cool, that's so great. Yeah, so she and it was a great talk, and I mean, so she was really going through and I think there was like a so one consideration is a cultural consideration, and the excent to which graduate is value, or the extent of which thinking about the good things that other people do for you might also bring up indebtedness simultaneously.

And you talked about that a little bit earlier, and so then you would have this kind of negative obligatory feeling as opposed to feeling like oh and now you're like, oh, I forgot to do something for this other person, and I really get on that. I'm bound exactly. It's great work. And she also is why I'm thinking inverted U shaped curves thing because she said that there seems to be

a dosage effect. There's such thing as too much gratitude practices during your week that it's like a headonic too much of anything, is you know Schwartz and Grant their paper on all the character strengths. Any too much of anything you kind of get burnt out. You can get burnt out with gratitude, or at least if not burnout, it's not as novel, right, and that I would say, not only novel. But I don't know if you've ever tried to graduate practice, but I have. Oh yeah, good,

how did it go for you? Really really great. I find that gratitude infusing it more and my daily life really shifts my perspective in a very positive direction. So for me personally, it's been very very good. Oh good, Yeah, that's my experience as well, but if you do it too much then yeah, so I would say not only novel yeah, maybe novelty, but maybe authenticity slips a little

bit too. So you feel like you have to find something and so it's like hmm, yeah that thing, but it doesn't it's not like genuine Oh yeah, that was this great moment or this person's and I just really appreciated that swims or whatever it might be. Yeah, there we go, go go with the appreciation versus gratitude. Are they

the same thing? I have worked it into my book in Oh wow, we have such a devolution even within a one hour chat of Well, I want to end with not a gratitude but another topic that when I was digging through your papers, I found this amazing paper that you wrote with Jonathan on moral amplification and the emotions that attach us to saints and demons, and it really I found it so thought provoking it could you mind if we talk about it a little bit. You argue that that a part of human nature is to

divide the world into angels and demons. That's like maybe a social cognitive bias that we have built into ourselves. This has some pretty deep implications, right for lots of things. Anyway, I thought, I'm going to stop talking about your own paper, like since I I do dig up old things. Yes, No, I mean I don't have a lot to say about the people because I very since really haven't thought about that for quite a while. But it is it is

the case that praise and blamee. I mean, even if you just take this dimension of praise and blaine, we do very quickly do that. And then yeah, the argument is that morality really amplifies that. And that's as much as I've thought. It seems to me that too much gratitude is not good because it seems like we need the contrast in our lives. This is my way of integrating everything that we talked about, including that paper. It seems like, you know, we won't know we're not something's

gratitude until we see a devil. By devil, I mean someone who's out to get you, and it's obvious that they are not giving you something for self purely selfish, selfless reasons. Right, Yeah, so that when we see it, because we are there's the contrast. Yeah, and then we appreciate even more. Anyway, Look, I can't thank you enough for the work you've done for the field, and yeah, chang with me today. Thanks a lot, sir. Yeah, oh, it's been such a pleasure, such a joy. It's nice

to see you. Oh yeah, that was a very positive interpersonal process. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a rading and review of the Psychology Podcast on iTunes.

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