No Evidence That Gratitude Enhances Neural Performance Monitoring or Conflict-Driven Control

Blair Saunders; Frank F H He; Michael Inzlicht

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0143312

No Evidence That Gratitude Enhances Neural Performance Monitoring or Conflict-Driven Control

Blair Saunders
, Frank F H He
, Michael Inzlicht

Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

232 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

It has recently been suggested that gratitude can benefit self-regulation by reducing impulsivity during economic decision making. We tested if comparable benefits of gratitude are observed for neural performance monitoring and conflict-driven self-control. In a pre-post design, 61 participants were randomly assigned to either a gratitude or happiness condition, and then performed a pre-induction flanker task. Subsequently, participants recalled an autobiographical event where they had felt grateful or happy, followed by a post-induction flanker task. Despite closely following existing protocols, participants in the gratitude condition did not report elevated gratefulness compared to the happy group. In regard to self-control, we found no association between gratitude--operationalized by experimental condition or as a continuous predictor--and any control metric, including flanker interference, post-error adjustments, or neural monitoring (the error-related negativity, ERN). Thus, while gratitude might increase economic patience, such benefits may not generalize to conflict-driven control processes.

Original language	English
Article number	e0143312
Pages (from-to)	1-14
Number of pages	14
Journal	PLoS ONE
Volume	10
Issue number	12
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143312
Publication status	Published - 3 Dec 2015

Keywords

Adolescent
Brain
Conflict (Psychology)
Drive
Electroencephalography
Emotions
Evoked Potentials
Female
Happiness
Humans
Male
Memory, Episodic
Young Adult
Journal Article
Randomized Controlled Trial
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

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10.1371/journal.pone.0143312Licence: CC BY

Final Published Version
© 2015 Saunders et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Final published version, 894 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "No Evidence That Gratitude Enhances Neural Performance Monitoring or Conflict-Driven Control",

abstract = "It has recently been suggested that gratitude can benefit self-regulation by reducing impulsivity during economic decision making. We tested if comparable benefits of gratitude are observed for neural performance monitoring and conflict-driven self-control. In a pre-post design, 61 participants were randomly assigned to either a gratitude or happiness condition, and then performed a pre-induction flanker task. Subsequently, participants recalled an autobiographical event where they had felt grateful or happy, followed by a post-induction flanker task. Despite closely following existing protocols, participants in the gratitude condition did not report elevated gratefulness compared to the happy group. In regard to self-control, we found no association between gratitude--operationalized by experimental condition or as a continuous predictor--and any control metric, including flanker interference, post-error adjustments, or neural monitoring (the error-related negativity, ERN). Thus, while gratitude might increase economic patience, such benefits may not generalize to conflict-driven control processes.",

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N2 - It has recently been suggested that gratitude can benefit self-regulation by reducing impulsivity during economic decision making. We tested if comparable benefits of gratitude are observed for neural performance monitoring and conflict-driven self-control. In a pre-post design, 61 participants were randomly assigned to either a gratitude or happiness condition, and then performed a pre-induction flanker task. Subsequently, participants recalled an autobiographical event where they had felt grateful or happy, followed by a post-induction flanker task. Despite closely following existing protocols, participants in the gratitude condition did not report elevated gratefulness compared to the happy group. In regard to self-control, we found no association between gratitude--operationalized by experimental condition or as a continuous predictor--and any control metric, including flanker interference, post-error adjustments, or neural monitoring (the error-related negativity, ERN). Thus, while gratitude might increase economic patience, such benefits may not generalize to conflict-driven control processes.

AB - It has recently been suggested that gratitude can benefit self-regulation by reducing impulsivity during economic decision making. We tested if comparable benefits of gratitude are observed for neural performance monitoring and conflict-driven self-control. In a pre-post design, 61 participants were randomly assigned to either a gratitude or happiness condition, and then performed a pre-induction flanker task. Subsequently, participants recalled an autobiographical event where they had felt grateful or happy, followed by a post-induction flanker task. Despite closely following existing protocols, participants in the gratitude condition did not report elevated gratefulness compared to the happy group. In regard to self-control, we found no association between gratitude--operationalized by experimental condition or as a continuous predictor--and any control metric, including flanker interference, post-error adjustments, or neural monitoring (the error-related negativity, ERN). Thus, while gratitude might increase economic patience, such benefits may not generalize to conflict-driven control processes.

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KW - Female

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KW - Male

KW - Memory, Episodic

KW - Young Adult

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No Evidence That Gratitude Enhances Neural Performance Monitoring or Conflict-Driven Control

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Keywords

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