Not only do expressing gratitude promote close personal relationships, but researchers from University of California San Diego found that it can also promote better relationships and dynamics with work place colleagues, people who may not be close personally but spend a lot of time together requiring cooperation amongst each other.
When people are put under high-stakes, challenging situations that require high performance skills, people respond in physiological ways. One such way, the preferred way, is known as the challenge response where cardiac output increases, blood vessels dilates, and more oxygenated blood go into the peripheral and cerebral system, leading to enhanced performance On the other hand, the other is known as the threat response where cardiac output decreases, vasculature constricts, and overall blood flow decreases leading to worsening performance.
For this study, researchers divided 200 participants into teams to complete the nearly impossible, and stressful, goal of creating a six minute pitch of creating a bicycle and marketing campaign for students to ride on campus in front of a panel of judges, similar to the show “Shark Tank.” The reward would be $200.
“It’s essentially an impossible task,” said one of the authors, Christopher Oveis. “The experiment is designed to create a maximally stressful environment so we can gauge how gratitude shapes stress response during teamwork because most people spend a third or more of their daily lives at work.”
Some teams were assigned to express gratitude during the contest while other teams were not. To assess physiological responses, participants were tech on them that recorded electrocardiography (EKG), impedance cardiography signals (ICG), and blood pressure.
The researchers found that expressions of gratitude led to more more challenge responses compared to without gratitude, which was associated with more threat responses, in both the collaborative and presentation tasks with the gratitude group also grossly showing better performance.
The authors concluded that gratitude amongst co-workers may be a key way to reduce stress and improve performance, and ultimately play a fundamental role in creating great working relationships with work colleagues.
So, tomorrow, thank your co-workers the big and little things they do.
Y Gu et al. Gratitude expressions improve teammates’ cardiovascular stress responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
