Love, gratitude brighten lives of donors, recipients

A study out of the California says gratitude can positively impact the recovery time of organ transplant recipients

By Heather J. Smith

August 9, 2005

Gratitude helps organ donors and recipients Photo: Rubberball

Organ transplant recipients who expressed gratitude following their operations had less physical problems when recovering, said Robert Emmons, professor at University of California, Davis, and director of the study "The Gift of One's Self."

The study, conducted at the University of California, Davis and funded by The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, surveyed almost 75 recipients of transplanted hearts, livers, lungs, kidneys or pancreases. Currently they are conducting studies monitoring non-recipients' willingness to donate organs.

With a keen interest in measuring gratitude as it relates to both giving and receiving organ transplants, researchers asked questions such as: How much gratitude does an organ recipient feel? What does that gratitude look and feel like? Does gratitude motivate people to become organ donors?

"Participants who wrote that they had expressed gratitude in some way, either directly or indirectly, had less problems with physical roles -- carrying groceries, walking, exercising," Emmons said.

Many organ recipients said they felt they had received the "gift of life," said research associate Stefanie Gray Greiner, now of the Mississippi University for Women. "People who felt gratitude felt physically better and were able to function physically at a higher level than those who didn't express gratitude."

"Also, participants' rating of thankfulness as an important value to them correlated with quality of life," she said, adding that gratitude is one of the most salient emotions.

"Giving an organ may be an ultimate expression of unlimited love," said Emmons. "There is no direct benefit for the self and it can even be life-threatening for the donor."

This is the first study to suggest that gratitude could be important for physical recovery following transplantation, he said.

"Like any altruistic behavior demonstrating unlimited love, people donate because it is the human thing to do," said Emmons. "They feel obligated, they want to demonstrate their love, they feel they cannot do otherwise [or] they want to give back out of gratitude for the blessings they have received in life."

To understand this, Emmons and Greiner had recipients and nonrecipients answer questionnaires and keep "gratitude journals." The nonrecipients -- usually churchgoers and college students -- answered questions including: Would you donate your kidney to a relative? Would you let your child be an organ donor?

The journals of the nonrecipients also allowed researchers to see if their willingness to donate an organ increased. "If their willingness increases, this suggests that gratitude can motivate individuals to donate organs," said Greiner.

The researchers also learned that gratitude is related to stronger positive attitudes toward organ donation, Greiner said. In other words, the more gratitude a person has, the more likely he or she is to consider donating an organ.

Although Emmons said there is no direct link between recipients' recovery time and religious involvement and commitment, both he and Greiner said there were interesting connections between gratitude, health and spirituality or, in Emmons' terms, "spiritual transcendence," an interconnectedness of all living things.

Emmons added that spiritual transcendence -- in addition to gratitude, empathy and generativity, a belief that one is part of a larger human whole across generations -- is one of the biggest predictors that someone will donate an organ.

"We believe that studying what drives this behavior can help to understand the psychological processes that influence other selfless acts," he added.

Heather J. Smith is book editor at Science & Theology News.

Copyright © 2005 Science & Theology News.