Jo-Ann Tsang

Transcript

Derek Smith:
Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors, and more, discussing important topics in higher education, research and student life. I'm Derek Smith, and today we are talking gratitude with Jo-Ann Tsang. Dr. Tsang serves as associate professor of psychology at Baylor. She joined the Baylor faculty in 2002 and is a published expert in the areas of social psychology, psychology of religion, gratitude, forgiveness, and more. A widely published and widely funded researcher. Her work yields understanding of gratitude as well as practical applications for individuals. And she's with us today on the program.
Dr. Tsang, a fascinating topic and appreciate you being with us. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Thank you so much for having me.

Derek Smith:
Well, we're going to talk about the gratitude as a science and as something we can apply, and there's no one better to talk to about that than you.
And so I'm curious, Dr. Tsang, when you tell people that gratitude is one of the topics you study as a psychology professor, are there common questions or comments that you get in response?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Well, they usually ask me some of the questions that you're interested in. How do people encourage gratitude in their lives and what effect does it have? And another interesting question that people have asked me, which I don't quite know the answer to, but they've noticed that around Thanksgiving in the month of November, people start posting on social media what they're grateful for every day. And a lot of times people want to know, is that real? Does it still have the same benefits? And I think that's a really fascinating question because it adds the gratitude journaling literature, but it adds a layer of publicness and how might that affect things?

Derek Smith:
Yeah, that's true in some cases. Is it to be seen or is it to be grateful on your own?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Yeah.

Derek Smith:
Well, the month of November does kind of provide a natural opportunity to talk about gratitude here, but it's important. It's important year round. So as we discuss this together, it'd be good to make sure we're seeing gratitude through your eyes. So when you talk about gratitude as a researcher with your students, what all are you talking about? What does that include?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Well, because I'm a social psychologist, most of what I look at is a discrete instance of gratitude. So something that someone feels in a particular situation where someone else has done something good for them. So if someone gives me a gift or someone this morning texted me an encouraging text, and so because I have this positive outcome from someone else, then I'll feel this feeling of gratitude, which tends to be a positive emotion.
But gratitude is more than that. And others study a broader sort of gratitude. So you can also study being grateful for someone, not necessarily contingent upon a particular thing they've done for you. So for instance, I'm grateful for my mother and grateful for my sister, and I don't necessarily feel that because my sister has done anything for me today. But when I think about what I'm grateful for, she's one of the people that comes up.
And then we can also be grateful more generally for being alive, for instance. And that's not a specific something that someone's done for me. I mean, sometimes you can frame it in those terms, but I have a feeling that when people feel that kind of more transcendent gratitude, it's different than, "Oh, someone just texted me and it was a positive thing."

Derek Smith:
So I could be grateful for my job. But if someone says something encouraging to me today or writes a note, that's more what you study, the latter a little bit.

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Most of what I study has to do with that, yes.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Jo-Ann Tsang here on Baylor Connections. So I'm curious, in social psychology research, how common of a topic is gratitude among researchers?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
In social psychology, it's not as big of a topic. But within the specific subfield of positive psychology, I think it's one of the more popular topics. I wonder if it's because it has a lot of clinical application, or perhaps it's because we have a holiday in our country dedicated to gratitude. It might also be due to the religious connotations associated with gratitude, but it's very popular within positive psychology.

Derek Smith:
You mentioned religious connotations. It feels like a strong fit here at Baylor. And when you think about human flourishing, there's a lot of faculty at Baylor whose research touches on human flourishing in some form or fashion. Where do you see your research fitting into that?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Well, I think gratitude and forgiveness and also other things that I look at that are related such as helping really fit into human flourishing because they nurture the social connections that we have with others. And because we're social creatures, relationships with others are very important to maintain people's mental well-being, and even their physical well-being.

Derek Smith:
Gratitude seems like a topic that could be hard to measure potentially. You could take us inside that. So when you do, where are the inroads? Where's kind of the low-hanging fruit for you to start to study this?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Well, one of the first things that I did in gratitude when I was a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Mike McCullough at Southern Methodist University is he and Dr. Bob Emmons and I put together a measure to look at the grateful personality. So are there certain people who just more often feel gratitude?
So when someone gives me a text, maybe I feel gratitude, but maybe I don't. Or when someone lets me into traffic when it's very busy, some people might be more likely to feel, "Oh, I'm so grateful for that," and other people might feel entitled or it just doesn't hit their radar screen. So we wanted to look at individual differences in grateful personality.
But I also measure gratitude more often now in terms of a state. So just asking people in a straightforward measure, "How grateful do you feel right now? How appreciative do you feel? How thankful do you feel?" is another way that I can look at it. And what I first did was test some of the intuitions that people had about what increases our gratitude. So when someone helps us intentionally, does that increase our gratitude more than when you just get something by chance? What are some of the basic things that encourage this momentary feeling of gratitude compared to not?

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Jo-Ann Tsang here on Baylor Connections, a Baylor psychology professor.
You're a scientist, you're a social psychology researcher. So what does the mix science and art look like as you described that, because it seems like you have to have a little of both.

Jo-Ann Tsang:
You basically ask people how they're feeling, but you also look at how they behave. And the problem with something like gratitude or love or helping is that we want people to love and to be grateful and to help. So one of the problems with measuring gratitude is when you ask someone, "How grateful are you?" like when we were trying to measure grateful personality. People are not going to say, "I'm not a grateful person." And in fact, on a 1 to 7 scale, most people score at a 6 or 7 on the grateful personality questionnaire because even if they don't feel grateful all the time, they might not want to admit it. Or the other thing is that you might honestly believe that you feel grateful a lot, but when it actually comes down to it, you don't feel it or you don't act, and you're just not aware that you're one of the less grateful people.
And so one of the ways that I look at that is to look at people's behaviors. I like to bring them into the laboratory and have something good happen to people in our experiments. And then see not only what they say they feel, but what they do. Are people going to return a favor when someone does them an intentional favor more than when something just happens by chance and they get the same good thing? So looking at things in ways that are less obvious is one way to get at it. So that's the scientific measurement issue.
But to talk about the bigger issue, how can you study something so spiritual, like gratitude? One of the things that I think about is that when we look at things like gratitude or love or helping in science, we can tell generally what people will do. So generally, when someone does something intentionally for me, that's good. More people who have that happen to them will feel grateful compared to if you just get something positive that wasn't intentional.
So I can tell you about groups of people and what people generally tend to do, but if I were to talk to you about your life right now, or if someone were to come in and hand you a special gift or say something encouraging to you, I can't really say how you'll react. Like you specifically, I can say generally if we have 20 people and they receive an intentional gift, more of them will feel grateful. But there's just so many things going on with you and so many things going on with me that will affect our reactions that I can't predict an individual person, and I can't put you into a formula and tell you what you're going to do.

Derek Smith:
Well, but what you described gets into what I was asking these secondary ways of someone might say, "Oh, yes, I'm this," but you have these other ways of looking and measuring and applying to what you've seen, hundreds and thousands and social scientists millions of times over time.

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Yeah, yeah. But again, I can't predict my own behavior or any one person's behavior. I can just say generally, when you look at a hundred people experiencing this, more of them are going to experience gratitude when this happens.
For instance, I mean, I've had some personal experiences where I've experienced gratitude, and I've known consciously that the gift was not intentional, yet it was still there. So there were other things going on that caused me to feel grateful.
And it was really funny. I was at a social psychology conference, so I was with another social psychologist. And as you do with conferences, you fly somewhere and then you meet with other professors and talk with them, and often after the presentations will go and eat. So I went and ate with a bunch of other professors and we're walking out and there was a man playing a saxophone on the street, and he had a hat out for donations. And I looked at him, and all of a sudden I ran back into the restaurant because seeing him ask for donations reminded me that I left my purse in the restaurant. And I was so relieved because my driver's license was in there, and I thought I would not have been able to get on the plane if I had lost my purse.
And so when I walked by the gentleman afterwards, I put a $20 bill in the hat, and my colleague turned to me and he said, "You're, feeling grateful, aren't you?" And I said, "Yes, I am." And he says, "Well, you know that he didn't do that on purpose to help you." I'm like, "I know he didn't, but I'm still feeling grateful." I don't know if it's because I was thinking about the universe or God doing something for me, but I just knew that if you were not here doing that thing, all of these bad things would've happened to me. And so I feel really grateful right now.
And so there's just so much other things that go into our experiences, but generally someone could tell me that, "Okay, more often than not, when something's intentional, you'll feel more grateful than when it's not." But that doesn't mean that there's not going to be the one-off situation where, Ooh, this was a tool, random thing, but I still feel grateful."

Derek Smith:
That's true. We have so many complexities, and yet you're able to bring all those together and study and then see the benefits that we're going to talk about here to people when they feel gratitude as we visit with Dr. Jo-Ann Tsang, associate professor of Psychology at Baylor.
So let's talk about, I think people inherently grasp that gratitude is meaningful and important, but tell us a little more why is it so important? What are the benefits of gratitude acutely for people?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
So one of my interesting reactions to this question is that people ask me all the time, "What are the benefits of gratitude?" And I want to start out by making sure to say that there's a context to the benefits of gratitude. Gratitude, just like any other thing, is beneficial in certain circumstances, but not all circumstances. It's kind of like what Ecclesiastes says about there's a season for everything. And so there are circumstances under which gratitude is really good, but they have to be the right circumstances.
So one of the circumstances under which gratitude is good is that it can increase your positive emotions and increase your wellbeing. So there's been research that shows that when people think about what they're grateful for every day, so these are gratitude journal or gratitude diary studies, when you write about at least three times what you're grateful for each day, so I'm grateful that I got an encouraging text or I was grateful for the opportunity to be at this interview, if I write that down for about a week, then that will increase my wellbeing and increase my positive feelings.
The interesting thing though is in American culture, I've noticed that we value wellbeing and satisfaction and positive feelings a lot. And I find this puzzling because I see wellbeing like an indicator on a fuel light. The fuel tank will tell me that my gas tank is full. And I feel like if we only chase positive emotions and wellbeing, it's like having the goal of having my fuel tank say it's full rather than having the goal that I actually have a full gas tank. So I could probably fix my car so that my gas tank always says it's full. And I feel like that's what we do when we chase after positive emotions too much, because positive emotions are there to tell us something. So when the fuel tank says it's full, it tells me that I've got a lot of gas. And it's equally valuable if my fuel tank tells me that it's empty, because then I know I have to go run out and put some gas in there, otherwise I'm going to get stranded somewhere.
So it bothers me that we chase after positive emotions as an end in themselves rather than looking to see what is it that's causing us to feel positive, and how can I nurture those? Those are important to me. I feel like a lot of people during this time will engage in gratitude journaling because it's November and it's near Thanksgiving, and they'll say, "I'm going to do this because I'm going to feel better about myself." And I think we need to think deeper and think to ourselves, "Okay, if I'm dissatisfied with my life, but I realize that I have a lot of privileges and a lot of blessings that I'm ignoring, so my dissatisfaction is really inaccurate, I've got these maladaptive cognitions, then yes, writing about what I'm grateful for all the time, writing about all of my blessings and the privileges that I have will make me feel better, and that's a worthy goal."
But if the reason why I'm feeling dissatisfied with my life is because maybe I'm doing something that I shouldn't be doing, maybe I'm in a job that I'm really dissatisfied about and it's not helping me work to my full potential, I could write a gratitude journal for a couple of days and maybe that would make me feel better, but that's not addressing the fuel tank issue. The bigger problem that, well, maybe I could be doing something else and maybe instead of feeling grateful for this terrible job and a boss who maybe yells at me or I'm not getting paid enough, I should use that negative emotion to be motivated and say, "You know what? I have to go back to school. And I've always wanted to go into nursing, and so maybe I need to start taking some classes and figuring out what I need to do to do that and be more fulfilled rather than just saying why should be grateful for what I have."
So positive affect is a good benefit in the right season. Gratitude will make us feel better about our lives and feel more positive emotions. The other important thing that gratitude does is it helps us appreciate the relationships that we're in. So Dr. Sara Algoe has a theory that says that gratitude helps us to find good relationships and maintain and nurture the relationships that we already have. So if I feel grateful because somebody texted me and encouraging text, I'll think to myself, "Oh, that person is very supportive. She just did something nice to me. Maybe it would be worth it to me to invest in my interactions with her, and we could become better friends. It looks like she's a really good person and I could appreciate what she does." Or I might feel grateful to my children for all of the hard work that they do around the house and how hard they work at school. And that reminds me that, "Oh, I have children who are very important to me and it will strengthen my relationship with them."
So another one of the benefits of gratitude is strengthening relationships. But again, there's a season for this. So if I have good relationships or if I have relationships where they're my role obligations, so I'm going to be my kid's mother no matter what, so it's good for me to strengthen my relationship with them, increase my satisfaction, think about all of the reasons why I'm grateful for all the time that I get to spend with them.
But if there's a relationship where I don't have an obligation and that the relationship is not going so well, we might need to step back and say, "Is it good for me to feel grateful in this relationship?" So if someone is in a relationship where they're experiencing verbal or physical abuse, or where the person is just neglectful to them, should they really think about, "Oh, here's all the reasons why I'm grateful for this small amount of attention that this person has given me"? Maybe they need to focus on, "I'm feeling very dissatisfied in this relationship, and the things I'm feeling grateful for are actually things that anybody should do in any relationship," and they might need to reassess. And so feeling grateful for a bad relationship where someone maybe shouldn't be investing in that relationship isn't necessarily a good thing, even if it increases your relationship satisfaction.
So again, the context is important. And I don't like people saying, "Oh, you should just feel grateful and then you'll feel better about your job, or you'll feel better about this relationship" when sometimes we might need to step back and say, "What's wrong here?" And even in our role obligated relationships, if there's something going on between my children and I, I shouldn't just put a bandaid on it and say, "Oh, let me write down all the things I'm grateful for." But I might think to myself, "Maybe we need to reassess how we're communicating with each other. Maybe we need to have a talk about changing the dynamics or maybe seek outside help go find a therapist and to fix our relationship in a deeper way rather than me just saying, 'oh, well, I'm just going to be grateful that I have kids'."

Derek Smith:
No, that makes sense. As we talk about this, and as I ask you about some of the applications that people can apply here, you mentioned we're not talking about it as a bandaid. We're going to be talking about it as an opportunity just to evaluate, to remind ourselves of the good where it's [inaudible 00:19:08] because I know you and Sarah Schnitger, who we've had on this program before, who I think I asked a similar question to her about measuring things that are hard to measure because you both do that well.
You've provided three keys to gratitude, some practical expressions I want to ask you about, deep reflection, recognizing a giver, and outward expression. Can you tell us about how people can apply those to notice the good in their life?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
I don't know if I'm going to interpret these terms in the same way that she meant them since I didn't hear the interview, but I think the deep reflection part comes from intentionally cultivating gratitude. Especially if you're starting out if you're not in the habit of thinking about being grateful, that intentionally setting aside time, maybe at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day, to make a list and really think about, "What am I grateful for?" And if you're not used to this, it might take a while and it might seem almost trivial, like, "Oh, I am grateful for that. I have a house and health insurance." And that can feel trivial, but then you can sit and think about it and think, "Gosh, I really am grateful that I have health insurance, and there's some people who don't, and they end up in bad places and in a bad way because they don't." So just really taking the time to think through things and to think about all the different ways that we're grateful.
And when you get into a habit of this, I think that it becomes easier to see things and then just experience gratitude just for, "Oh, it's a cloudy day and I see some sunshine. Or I just saw a butterfly, or someone picked some tomatoes for me and they have little star shapes on them where the flowers were." This doesn't often... I mean, for some people, maybe it comes automatically, but for others of us, we might have to get into the habit of seeing the good while still acknowledging that there's bad, but being able to be grateful for the good and appreciate that it's there. So that's what I would say for the deep reflection part.

Derek Smith:
Recognizing the giver?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
Recognizing the giver is very important because again, we're social creatures and relationships are very important to us. And so some of the biggest effects of gratitude have to do with our social relationships. And so it's not just that I have health insurance, but who worked to give me this health insurance? I can be grateful that, "Oh..." And a lot of people have told me, "Gosh, you're at Baylor. They have really good health insurance." And so it's not just the thing I'm grateful for, but this might strengthen my relationship with my employer and with the institution.
And then even more importantly, in our interpersonal relationships, when you're grateful to a relationship partner or grateful to your kids or grateful to your parents, this strengthening of relationships has all sorts of mental health and even physical health benefits, feeling like you have social support and having someone there to give you the positive things, but then also for you to reciprocate and feel like you're adding to the relationship. These are some of the most important benefits. And when you try and distill the focusing on the benefits compared to focusing on the people who are giving you those benefits, the people are so much more important.

Derek Smith:
And then the third is outward expression?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
The outward expressionism, it's linked to the relational part in that you can feel grateful for someone and not tell them, and that might increase your relationship satisfaction for them. But when you express it to them, that's where the relationship dynamics really kick into gear because then the person feels reinforced, they feel happy that, "Oh, you noticed that I did that for you." And then they're more likely to do that for you again because it feels good to them to be thanked. And so that increases an upward cycle of positive things and investing in the relationship. So that's where the expression is important.
I've read some interesting things by researchers, Dr. Kumar and Dr. Epley, where they've looked at gratitude expressions because one of the problems is that we know that saying thank you and expressing gratitude is important for relationships, but a lot of us feel reticent to do that because it seems awkward or it seems random that I would just text someone and say, "Oh, hey, thank you for doing that the other day." We're worried that will seem weird.
And so what Dr. Kumar did is ask people to write about a time when they're grateful, but that they haven't thanked someone yet. And then they also asked them, "How would it feel to thank someone?" And they rated that, "Oh, it's going to feel awkward. It might feel negative." And they said it would feel positive too, but there was a bunch of negative things that came out.
And so then they said, "Okay, we want you to write a letter or an email and actually send it to this person and give us the email address of this person because we want to ask them questions." And the participants somehow said yes. And so then the researchers emailed the people who were thanked and said, "So how did it feel?" And the people who were thanked said, "That was wonderful. It was so positive." The ratings of awkwardness were very low, but the ratings of positiveness were really high. And they realized that when people think about thanking, we focus on the logistics of thanking someone, "How is it going to come across? Am I using the right words? Is this going to come across as really random?" So we're focusing on the right way to think. But the people who are thanked focus on the fact that, "I was thanked. Oh my gosh, that person went out of their way to just say something, or I didn't even realize that they noticed it, but they did." And so they're just focusing on the experience of being thanked.
And so I always remember that because I have a problem with thinking, "Oh, this is going to seem random. It's going to be really awkward." Maybe I just think people because I'm a gratitude researcher and I'm doing it too much, but then I remember, "No. You know what? The research suggests that people are happy to be thanked." And so I can push through that awkwardness and that negative feeling to do it, and hopefully that increases the relationship satisfaction that comes from that. It just is so much more when it's between two people rather than just keeping it to yourself.

Derek Smith:
Well, that's a great thing for us to think about, not just this time of year, but throughout the year. Rather than focusing on the worry of it, just go ahead and do it and hopefully make someone's day better.
Well, Dr. Tsang, I really appreciate your time. We're coming up on the end of the program. I'm curious, as our listeners consider this, what are your hopes for them as they consider and apply?

Jo-Ann Tsang:
It doesn't hurt to try and feel grateful most of the time. If it's your time to be sad, then it's good to be sad. But if you're in a neutral time and you think to yourself, "Why don't I try this?" It's a very low cost way to try and strengthen your relationships and strengthen your mood. And it's something that I try and do on a regular basis, although, to be honest, it's hard for me to do it every day. But I like to pause and think either during a prayer time or at night if I'm journaling, like, "Okay, let me just write down the things that I'm grateful for." And it really does change your perspective. It's something that is especially appropriate during Thanksgiving, but it's also something that if you get into a habit, then when the sadness does come, you have this automatic way of also seeing the good, and so that you can see maybe a more comprehensive picture of what's going on in your life.

Derek Smith:
Well, that's great to consider. Hope people will do that. Dr. Tsang, thank you so much for taking the time to share with us and being with us today. Great to have you here. Dr. Jo-Ann Tsang, associate professor of Psychology, our guest today on Baylor Connections.
I'm Derek Smith. Reminder, you can listen to other programs online, baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe to the program on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.