Sketchy, influential, confident, narcissistic, manipulative, corrupt, uncompromising, and selfish: These are the adjectives I hear when I ask my college students to share what powerful people are like. I have never heard them say that the powerful are grateful.

Indeed, I did not start this research project expecting to find that the powerful feel more grateful either. When my colleagues and I set out to test the relationship between power and feelings of gratitude we were aware of general opinion (such as my students reported) as well as the robust amount of psychological research that suggests the powerful are self-focused and goal-oriented. This is a combination that can undermine relationships and doesn’t appear conducive to gratitude, the positive emotion felt when you notice the good that others have brought into your life. In fact, a study published in 2012 by Professor Ena Inesi and her colleagues found that powerful individuals were suspicious of others’ kind acts and therefore felt less gratitude for favors done in a work setting. Why, then, did we find something very different?  

In our first study we simply asked people to report how powerful they generally feel in their relationships with others using a well-known Sense of Power questionnaire. Participants indicated the accurateness of statements like, “I can get people to listen to what I say.” We also asked participants to tell us how grateful they generally feel using a standard measure of gratitude. They indicated how much, how often, and to how many people they tend to feel grateful answering questions like: “I am grateful to a wide variety of people.” We found a strong, positive relationship between these two things: the more powerful people feel, the more gratitude they report feeling.

We were surprised. This had to be tested again to be believed. While getting ready to run a second and third study, we started thinking about why power and gratitude may be positively linked. An interesting idea occurred to us. Those studying gratitude have argued that the emotion is predicated on recognizing that another person has done a kind act out of care and concern for you. In fact, if you think someone has been generous in order to gain future favors or because you are incapable, you are likely to feel something very different than gratitude—suspicion, indebtedness, irritation.

The Surprising Role of Self-Esteem

But, researchers have also long known that people with high self-esteem are likely to believe that others regard them highly and care about them—the very sorts of beliefs that underlie feelings of gratitude. Who is known to be high in self-esteem? Yep, you guessed it—the powerful! Thus, something like this seems to be happening: The powerful, who are higher in self-esteem, more often view others’ acts of generosity as done out of care and concern for them, thus leading to gratitude rather than a different emotional response.

In two more studies we tested the connections between power, gratitude, and self-esteem, to be sure that self-esteem might be the reason that power boosts feelings of gratitude. We found support again and again. In both studies, powerful American adults (measured with the Sense of Power questionnaire in our first two studies and created as a momentary feeling of power in our final study) felt more grateful. This relationship was due, at least in part, to high power people having higher self-esteem.

To the list “…..manipulative, corrupt, uncompromising and selfish,” we can now add grateful. In an odd twist, powerful people’s high self-esteem may allow them to read others’ acts of kindness as such because it reflects well on themselves. Maybe a win-win for everyone?


For Further Reading

Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6, 455-469. doi.org.gonzaga.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2012.00439.x

Bartlett, M. Y., Valdesolo, P. & Arpin, S. N. (2019). The paradox of power: The relationship between self-esteem and gratitude. The Journal of Social Psychology, 160, 27-38. doi.org.gonzaga.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/00224545.2019.1601609

Inesi, E. M., Gruenfeld, D. H., Galinsky, A. D. (2012). How power corrupts relationships:  Cynical attributions for others’ generous acts. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 795-803. doi.org.gonzaga.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.01.008

 

Monica Bartlett is Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at Gonzaga University. She studies emotions and their impact on decision-making and behavior.