Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Dissertations that have an embargo placed on them will not be available to anyone until the embargo expires.
Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9601-0841
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Psychology
Year Degree Awarded
2021
Month Degree Awarded
February
First Advisor
Bernhard Leidner
Subject Categories
Social Psychology
Abstract
Intergroup helping is sometimes motivated by paternalistic narratives about recipients being incapable of making good choices. Five studies investigated whether paternalistic perceptions of recipients encouraged members of groups that provide help expect gratitude from recipients, and whether receiving gratitude and affirmation from recipients was rewarded when it was given. I first found preliminary evidence that paternalistic perceptions of recipients affects the way that members of a helper group respond to recipients’ responses to help (Study 1). I then found that believing paternalistic narratives about recipients did increase participants' expectations that recipients should show them gratitude, and that these expectations did contribute to participants' responses to critical (vs. grateful) feedback from recipients and desire to help in the future (Studies 2a and 2b). I also found that information claiming that recipients are incapable - both presented directly in the form of a fictitious aid official's opinion (Study 3) and indirectly in the form of information about the helping relationship (Study 4) - caused participants to expect more gratitude than if they were told that recipients were highly capable of managing their own affairs. Together, these findings suggest that paternalism creates a sense of entitlement in intergroup helping that influences the way that relationship is judged by members of the helper group.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/20683787
Recommended Citation
Larsen, Greg, "REALLY, YOU SHOULD BE THANKING US: PATERNALISM AND INSTRUMENTAL GRATITUDE EXPECTATIONS" (2021). Doctoral Dissertations. 2116.
https://doi.org/10.7275/20683787
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2116
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.