Gratitude statements like “Thanks! You are so kind!” and “Thank you! What you did was really helpful,” are common when someone receives assistance from another person. Such expressions of gratitude and appreciation have long been thought to encourage the helper to do kind things again in the future. But do they?

In contrast to past research, our new findings published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggest that gratitude does not always promote future helping.

Our research was conducted using a new approach called a Registered Report. It required that the design of our experiment, along with our hypotheses and analytic plans, were vetted by experts before we started. This new best practice in science increases rigour and transparency.

We conducted two large pre-registered experiments and found mixed results. In the first experiment, more than 600 university students recorded a short video to welcome a new student (played by a member of our research team) to campus.

In response to this kind act, we sent participants one of three randomly assigned pre-recorded videos. Some participants received a video in which the new student expressed gratitude for the participant’s kind act: “Thank you! What you did was very kind.”

Other participants received a........

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