ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2017
The Cultivation of Pure Altruism via Gratitude: A Functional MRI Study of Change with Gratitude Practice.
Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effects of gratitude interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Einstein (Sao Paulo, Brazil) · 2023Pooled it
- Neural signatures of prosocial behaviors.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2020Pooled it
- A daily gratitude listing intervention is associated with selection of smaller food portion sizes.Appetite · 2026Trial
- Amygdala-putamen connectivity links gratitude to greater well-being.Dialogues in clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- The neurophysiological correlates of altruism: A scoping review of fMRI, EEG, and autonomic studies.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- An interdisciplinary team's experiences of a university-led community engagement intervention in the Tshwane district.Health SA = SA Gesondheid · 2025Article
- Risk of burnout, psychological growth, longevity of career and making sense of Covid-19 in senior Australian radiation oncologists.Journal of medical radiation sciences · 2023Article
- Psychological and Personality Characteristics Associated With COVID-19 Vaccination Behavior in Korean General Population.Journal of Korean medical science · 2023Article
- Comparing gratitude and pride: evidence from brain and behavior.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2022Review
- Neural mechanisms of social learning and decision-making.Science China. Life sciences · 2021Review
- The Work Gratitude Scale: Development and Evaluation of a Multidimensional Measure.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Neural responses to intention and benefit appraisal are critical in distinguishing gratitude and joy.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- The Critical Role of the Right Dorsal and Ventral Anterior Insula in Reciprocity: Evidence From the Trust and Ultimatum Games.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- Praising others differently: neuroanatomical correlates to individual differences in trait gratitude and elevation.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2018Article
- Decomposing Gratitude: Representation and Integration of Cognitive Antecedents of Gratitude in the Brain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2018Article
- Psychopathy to Altruism: Neurobiology of the Selfish-Selfless Spectrum.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Gratitude is an emotion and a trait linked to well-being and better health, and welcoming benefits to oneself is instrumentally valuable. However, theoretical and empirical work highlights that gratitude is more fully understood as an intrinsically valuable moral emotion. To understand the role of neural reward systems in the association between gratitude and altruistic motivations we tested two hypotheses: First, whether self-reported propensity toward gratitude relates to fMRI-derived indicators of "pure altruism," operationalized as the neural valuation of passive, private transfers to a charity versus to oneself. In young adult female participants, self-reported gratitude and altruism were associated with "neural pure altruism" in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and nucleus accumbens. Second, whether neural pure altruism can be increased through practicing gratitude. In a double-blind study, we randomly assigned participants to either a gratitude-journal or active-neutral control journal group for 3 weeks. Relative to pre-test levels, gratitude journaling increased the neural pure altruism response in the VMPFC. We posit that as a context-dependent value-sensitive cortical region, the VMPFC supports change with gratitude practice, a change that is larger for benefits to others versus oneself.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.