Revisiting the effects of helper intentions on gratitude and indebtedness: Replication and extensions Registered...

Gratitude and indebtedness are common emotions in response to a favour, yet research suggests that they are experienced differently depending on the situation. Tsang (Tsang JA. 2006 The effects of helper intention on gratitude and indebtedness. Motiv. Emot. 30, 198-204. (doi:10.1007/s11031-006-9031-z)), found that gratitude for a favour depended on perceived helper intention, whereas indebtedness did not. Perceived benevolent helper intentions were associated with higher gratitude from beneficiaries compared to selfish ones, yet had no associations with indebtedness. In a registered report with a United States Prolific student sample (n = 759), we conducted a replication and extensions of studies 2 and 3 from Tsang, 2006. In the original studies, Tsang found support for the impact of the helper's intention on gratitude (study 2: ${\eta }_p^2$ = 0.20 [0.08, 0.32]; study 3: ${\eta }_p^2$ = 0.14 [0.03, 0.26]), but not for indebtedness (study 2: ${\eta }_p^2$ = 0.01 [0.00, 0.08]; study 3: ${\eta }_p^2$ = 0.00 [0.00, 0.03]). In our replications, we found support for the impact of helper's intention on gratitude (study 2: ${\eta }_p^2$ = 0.33 [0.28, 0.37]; study 3: ${\eta }_p^2$ = 0.16 [0.12, 0.20]), and-as expected-no support for an effect on indebtedness (study 2: ${\eta }_p^2$ = 0.00 [0.00, 0.01]; study 3: ${\eta }_p^2$ = 0.01 [0.00, 0.01]). We concluded a successful replication, that helping intent was more strongly associated with gratitude than with indebtedness. Extending the replication, we found evidence for the impact of helper intention on perceived expectations for reciprocity (d = 1.51 [1.31, 1.71]), and reciprocity inclination (d = 0.66 [0.48, 0.84]), and for opposite associations of perceived reciprocity expectations with gratitude (r = -0.28 [-0.35, -0.22]) and indebtedness (r = 0.17 [0.10, 0.24]). Materials, data and code are available on: https://osf.io/ghfy4/. This registered report has been officially endorsed by the Peer Community in Registered Reports: https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.rr.100788.