Interpersonal leverage: Individual differences in the endorsement of anger and gratitude

Abstract

Social emotions such an anger and gratitude evolved to help people navigate the adaptive problems posed by social interactions. Building on the logic of the recalibrational theory of anger, we argue that a systematically inverted relationship exists between the triggering conditions, inputs, outputs, and consequences of anger and gratitude, and we introduce the novel hypothesis that this inverted relationship between anger and gratitude extends to the individual difference characteristics that modulate the proneness of individuals to endorse and express each emotion. Where Sell, Tooby, and Cosmides (2009) found evidence that physical strength in men and attractiveness in women—two ancestrally valid dimensions of social leverage—predict greater proneness to anger, we suggest that these same dimensions of social leverage negatively predict proneness to gratitude. We report three studies (N's of 417, 309, and 728 adults, respectively, all recruited from MTurk) that collectively address three goals related to the above reasoning: 1) to replicate the findings of Sell et al. (2009) concerning strength and attractiveness as sex-differentiated predictors of proneness to anger; 2) to develop and validate a novel measure of interpersonal gratitude, based on Sell et al.'s (2009) measures of anger; and 3) to test the hypothesis that physical strength in men and attractiveness in women correlate negatively with proneness to gratitude. Results provide new support for Sell et al.'s finding that strength in men, and attractiveness in women, predict proneness to anger, but contrary to Sell et al. (2009) indicate that physical strength also predicts proneness to anger in women. Regarding gratitude, we find that physical strength in men and attractiveness in women correlate as expected with some but not all dimensions of proneness to gratitude.