NEW YORK (AP) — It’s the season to give thanks — and it turns out humans have been doing it for a very long time.
As more researchers delve into the science of gratitude, they’re finding that the feeling may have played a key role in helping our ancestors band together and survive.
This legacy continues today, as being in the mood for gratitude shapes who we are as a species and how we relate to the people around us.
“This is something that’s part of our human DNA,” said Sarah Schnitker, a psychologist at Baylor University. “It’s the glue, in a sense, that holds us together.”
How we became grateful
Humans are social animals. So we continued for a long time; Not by being the biggest or strongest, but by knowing how to work together.
A key part of building relationships is the idea of reciprocity: “If you love me and do nice things for me, I love you and do nice things for you,” says Michael Tomasello, a developmental psychologist at Duke University.
Malini Suchak, an animal behavior researcher at Canisius University, said the animal kingdom has some parallel give-and-take behaviors. In experiments with Capuchin monkey And ChimpanzeeSuchak found that primates became more willing to help a partner if that person had helped them in the past.
Some scientists believe that gratitude evolved to keep the exchange of help going. In other words, if you get help, you’ll feel like you have to repay the debt with good debt in return, says Jenny Nelson, who researches gratitude at Baylor and Harvard universities.
“That give and take — that’s very primal and very important to the co-op community,” Nelson said. “Otherwise you will acquire a culture of taking.”
In animals and humans, these transactions do not always take place between two people. Sometimes a monkey who is wooed by another will support that partner in the fight, showing that reciprocity may not be about maintaining precise scores, but about forming broader emotional connections, Suchak said.
Although we can’t “talk to chimpanzees” well enough to know if they are actually saying thanks, it stands to reason that some form of this social debt emerged early in our lineage, Suchak added.
“This phenomenon did not appear out of nowhere when humans evolved,” Suchak said.
And how we remain grateful
Thousands of years later, gratitude has become ingrained in humans.
Studies have found that gratitude may appear in a few places on our bodies Genes And Minds – Including those associated with social connectedness, a sense of reward, and seeing others’ point of view.
Amrisha Vaish, who studies moral development at the University of Virginia, said this feeling emerges early: Children between the ages of two and three show a desire to give back. At age 4, children also show a tendency to “pay it forward,” she added.
in a studyWeisch found that when children get help completing a task — in this case, finding a key to open a box of stickers — they are more likely to share their sticker reward with someone new.
It’s this kind of behavior that shows gratitude, Schnitker said, and is more than just a simple exchange. It can make us more generous to others in general, even if they don’t help us first.
Giving thanks may also be helpful for you: 2016 study She found that people who wrote gratitude letters reported better mental health and experienced changes in brain activity — even months later.
But Nelson noted that acknowledging the donor, not just the gift, is key.
So, if Thanksgiving is in the mood for gratitude, she suggested focusing on thanking the people in your life, rather than just making “gratitude lists” for things you have. This is more in line with why the feeling developed in the first place, she said.
“It’s not just about stuff and materialism,” Nelson said. “It’s about relationships, the things people do for you, and then the things you can do for others.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Education Media Group. AP is solely responsible for all content.
