Gratitude and Wishes: A Developmental Approach to Gratefulness in Guatemalan Youth

Exploring gratitude through developmental and cultural lenses provides insight into the socio-emotional development of youth, yielding a better understanding of the ways in which gratitude nurtures interpersonal relationships. In a replication of Baumgarten-Tramer’s (1938) study, 144 Guatemalan children and adolescents ages 7 to 17 (M_age = 11.74, SD = 2.90, 48.2% girls) completed the Gratitude and Wishes Scale (WAGS), measures of gratitude and materialism, and the Imaginary Windfall resource allocation task. In the WAGS, participants wrote about their greatest wish and what they would do for the person who granted their wish. Those wishes ranged from self-centered desires like flying an airplane to more prosocial ones like opening a shelter for street dogs. Their expressions of gratitude to their hypothetical benefactors were also diverse from a simple verbal “Thank you” to more elaborate displays of gratefulness (e.g., promising to reciprocate the benefactor’s kindness). Correlational analyses revealed that youth who reported higher levels of gratitude would be less inclined to spend their money buying things for themselves, r(140) -.28, p = .001. Conversely, more materialistic youth were less likely to report that they would donate their money to the poor, r(140) = -.30, p < .001. Thus, it appears that higher levels of gratitude may be associated with prosocial behavior in Guatemalan children and adolescents, while materialism may work against acting prosocially. In sum, the wishes of Guatemalan youth and their expressions of gratitude to those benefactors reveal the influences of one’s developmental stage and cultural values.