Gratitude is a positive emotion (Emmons & Shelton, 2002; Fredrickson, 2004; McCullough et al., 2001) often experienced in response to a perceived benefit from a benefactor (Roberts, 2004; Tsang & McCullough, 2004).  The benefactor can be as abstract as luck or God; or specific, as in the case of an individual or an organization.  Hallmark^® promotes the latter with its identification of appropriate benefactors for our gratitude, including mothers, secretaries, bosses, and teachers.  Gratitude researchers have focused primarily on gratitude that involves a benefactor, giving little attention to gratitude as an experience without a benefactor.   In other domains, differences between responses to known and lesser known or anonymous others have been well documented (e.g., Epley & Dunning, 2000; Gilbert, Driver-Lynn, & Wilson, 2003; Kruger, 1999; Pennebaker, Hughes, & O’Heeron, 1987).  Increased perception of gratitude in others has been correlated with decreased familiarity with those others (Anderson & Cole, 1990).

Whether experiences are perceived as positive or negative, their affective power over us is sometimes reduced when we think we can explain them.  In other domains, degree of familiarity has been shown to affect cognitive as well as affective outcomes.  People have reacted with stronger and longer lasting effects when responding to lesser known or anonymous others than when responding to known others.  It is unknown whether the underlying mechanism is distraction from appreciation of the benefit, increased attention to the benefactor, a combination, or something else entirely.

For this study, it was hypothesized that the level of gratitude would be higher following awareness of a benefit from a poorly defined or abstract benefactor than the level after receiving a benefit from a specific person.  Gratitude levels were assessed with three measures: the Revised Gratitude, Resentment, and Appreciation Test (R-GRAT; Thomas & Watkins, 2003), the Gratitude Questionnaire-6 (GQ‑6; McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002), and the Gratitude Adjectives Scale (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang 2002).

Increased unfamiliarity of the benefactor was expected to increase the resultant gratitude level. To test this hypothesis, study participants in a veterinarian’s office completed gratitude measures after being primed for gratitude for their pet’s health care to the known veterinarian, an unknown pet care product’s researcher, or the abstract God, luck, chance, or fate.  Contrary to predictions, gratitude scores were the same across conditions.  However, supported by research on positive emotions and trauma, a secondary hypothesis received some support.  After a favored candidate’s presidential election defeat, a trend toward increased gratitude was displayed within one measure.  Rather than discarding the initial hypothesis, research method redesign and further gratitude measure development are indicated.

The intentional use of gratitude has been shown to contribute to an increase in well-being and to be distinct from general positive affect (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).  Illumination of the role of the benefactor in gratitude will have broad implications for gratitude’s quantification, its use in interventions, and in the work that distinguishes gratitude from indebtedness.