Association for Behavior Analysis International

This symposium will present three applied behavioral science studies that assessed the impact of practical interventions designed to boost expressions of gratitude in naturalistic settings, and revealed situational factors that influence expressions of interpersonal gratitude. For the first field study, pedestrian behavior was observed at two crosswalks on a university campus to assess the frequency of pedestrians waving to express gratitude to the drivers of stopped vehicles. A sign at the crosswalk with the prompt, “Please Thank Drivers with a Wave,” significantly increased the overall percentages of gratitude waves. The second study examined occurrences of interpersonal gratitude on campus buses. Behavioral observations evidenced that passengers were more inclined to express interpersonal gratitude when the bus driver made a prosocial remark. However, the frequency of a passenger expressing gratitude decreased significantly as the number of departing passengers increased. For the third study, students thanked their instructors after class with a customized “Thank You Card” (TYC), and recorded their subjective wellbeing (SWB) before and after delivering the TYC. Comparing the SWB of TYC benefactors to students who did not express gratitude to the instructor when leaving class revealed significantly higher SWB among those students who used the TYC to express gratitude.

This ongoing study has been comparing the differential behavioral influence of two notable psychological theories—observational learning and diffusion of responsibility. Observational learning predicts individuals will take cues from the actions of others and model relevant behavior. In contrast, diffusion of responsibility predicts that people will be less likely to take responsibility for the welfare or wellbeing of another person if others are available to actively care. This field study has been observing expressions of interpersonal gratitude between drivers and passengers on campus buses. For three semesters, trained undergraduate researchers have been recording whether passengers thank bus drivers as they disembark, and whether a “Thank you” is influenced by the drivers exhibiting prosocial behavior (e.g., saying “Have a nice day!”). Behavior analysis is ongoing and comparing the relative impact of observational learning vs. diffusion of responsibility. Systematic observations have indicated that a kind remark from the driver significantly increased expressions of gratitude from exiting passengers. While 68.8% of 5,347 passengers followed a driver’s kind remarks with a “Thank You,” those passengers exiting after this passenger were unlikely to express gratitude, supporting diffusion of responsibility over modeling or observational learning. Naturalistic behavioral observations are ongoing and additional findings will be reported.

For 21 consecutive weeks, research students observed and recorded pedestrian-to-driver signs of gratitude at two crosswalks on the Virginia Tech campus. One observer randomly selected a vehicle that stopped for pedestrians. That selection was then relayed to a second reliability observer. These observers recorded the observations independently that included counting the number of pedestrians crossing in front of the vehicle and the number of those pedestrians who gave a hand-signal of gratitude. After 11 weeks of Baseline, a student held a sign at each crosswalk that read, “Please Thank Drivers with a Wave,” as shown in Figure 2. Following this Intervention, the same prompting sign was placed on a stand at the crosswalks for six consecutive weeks (i.e., Intervention 2). Figure 3 depicts the percentage of pedestrians who exhibited gratitude at the crosswalks per phase. During 11 weeks of Baseline, the percentage of pedestrians who showed gratitude was 7.1% of 40,510 pedestrians. During the first Intervention phase, gratitude waves increased to 26% of 1650 pedestrians. During the second intervention stage, the percentage of gratitude waves decreased to 15% of 14,536 pedestrians. A Withdrawal phase at the two crosswalks showed a return to Baseline, with 5.7% of 49,280 pedestrians showing gratitude.