They Do Not Deserve Your Thanks! Witness Reactions to Leader-Directed Expressions of Gratitude

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fehr, Ryan; Heng, Yu Tse; Wang, Yue; Guo, Yirong
• 署名单位: University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; University of Virginia; Xiamen University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0001228
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 197-219
• 关键词: gratitude; leader competence; leader warmth; prosocial identity; Deservingness

摘要

Gratitude expressions have received growing attention from scholars, with research emphasizing its many positive effects on expressers, recipients, and witnesses. Although our knowledge of gratitude expressions' benefits is accumulating, our understanding of its limits is less developed. In this article, we ask when employees' expressions of gratitude toward their leaders positively influence witnesses' perceptions of them, and when they do not. Across three studies including two multiwave surveys and an experiment, we find that expressed gratitude strengthens witnesses' perceptions of expressers' prosocial identities, especially when the leader is believed to be deserving of gratitude. Study 1 examines leader competence as an indicator of deservingness in a sample of leaders and employees in a manufacturing context. Studies 2 and 3 use survey and experimental methods to directly establish leader deservingness as a mechanism of the competence moderator and explore warmth as an additional component of employees' deservingness perceptions. All three studies show how gratitude expression ultimately shapes witnesses' tendencies to help expressers and seek feedback from them.