IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0238715.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prefrontal activation while listening to a letter of gratitude read aloud by a coworker face-to-face: A NIRS study

Author

Listed:
  • Daisuke Hori
  • Shinichiro Sasahara
  • Shotaro Doki
  • Yuichi Oi
  • Ichiyo Matsuzaki

Abstract

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a non-invasive functional brain imaging technique. NIRS is suitable for monitoring brain activation during social interactions. One of the omnipresent social interactions for employees is saying thank you and being thanked. It has been demonstrated that expressing and receiving gratitude leads to employees’ well-being and performance. To date, there have been no neuroimaging studies that monitor brain activity when receiving gratitude. Thus, we designed an experiment using NIRS to monitor brain function while listening to a letter of gratitude read by a coworker. We hypothesized that listening to a letter of gratitude read aloud by a co-worker in a face-to-face setting would have different effects on PFC activity than listening to a conversation about a neutral topic. We recruited 10 pairs of healthy right-handed employees. They were asked to write a letter of gratitude to their partner 1 week before the experiment. In the experiment, each pair sat face-to-face and read their letters aloud to each other. We evaluated changes in mood state before and after the experiment. NIRS was measured in each participant while they listened to their peers in the experimental condition (gratitude letter) and control condition (talking about the weather and date). The results suggested that negative mood state decreased after the experiment. Moreover, there were interaction effects between conditions and periods. Although further studies are needed to confirm the interpretation, our findings suggested that experience of being thanked was accompanied by prefrontal cortex activation.

Suggested Citation

  • Daisuke Hori & Shinichiro Sasahara & Shotaro Doki & Yuichi Oi & Ichiyo Matsuzaki, 2020. "Prefrontal activation while listening to a letter of gratitude read aloud by a coworker face-to-face: A NIRS study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-18, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0238715
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0238715
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0238715
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0238715&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0238715?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Feng Kong & Ke Ding & Jingjing Zhao, 2015. "The Relationships Among Gratitude, Self-esteem, Social Support and Life Satisfaction Among Undergraduate Students," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 477-489, April.
    2. Steven Toepfer & Kelly Cichy & Patti Peters, 2012. "Letters of Gratitude: Further Evidence for Author Benefits," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 187-201, March.
    3. Paul T E Cusack, 2020. "The Human Brain," Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research, Biomedical Research Network+, LLC, vol. 31(3), pages 24261-24266, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Naved Iqbal & Kaiser Ahmad Dar, 2022. "Gratitude Intervention and Subjective Well-Being in Indian Adolescents: Examining the Moderating Effects of Self-Esteem," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(1), pages 263-278, February.
    2. Abigail B. Schneider & Bridget Leonard, 2022. "From anxiety to control: Mask‐wearing, perceived marketplace influence, and emotional well‐being during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 97-119, March.
    3. Odelaisy León-Triana & Julián Pérez-Beteta & David Albillo & Ana Ortiz de Mendivil & Luis Pérez-Romasanta & Elisabet González-Del Portillo & Manuel Llorente & Natalia Carballo & Estanislao Arana & Víc, 2021. "Brain Metastasis Response to Stereotactic Radio Surgery: A Mathematical Approach," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-19, March.
    4. Mirren Charnley & Saba Islam & Guneet K. Bindra & Jeremy Engwirda & Julian Ratcliffe & Jiangtao Zhou & Raffaele Mezzenga & Mark D. Hulett & Kyunghoon Han & Joshua T. Berryman & Nicholas P. Reynolds, 2022. "Neurotoxic amyloidogenic peptides in the proteome of SARS-COV2: potential implications for neurological symptoms in COVID-19," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    5. Jieun Yoo, 2020. "Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being among Koreans," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(22), pages 1-10, November.
    6. Hamed Nili & Alexander Walther & Arjen Alink & Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, 2020. "Inferring exemplar discriminability in brain representations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-28, June.
    7. Lia-Ecaterina Oltean & Andrei C. Miu & Radu Șoflău & Aurora Szentágotai-Tătar, 2022. "Tailoring Gratitude Interventions. How and for Whom Do They Work? The Potential Mediating Role of Reward Processing and the Moderating Role of Childhood Adversity and Trait Gratitude," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 3007-3030, August.
    8. Linzmajer, Marc & Hubert, Mirja & Hubert, Marco, 2021. "It’s about the process, not the result: An fMRI approach to explore the encoding of explicit and implicit price information," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    9. Natalie J Shook & Barış Sevi & Jerin Lee & Benjamin Oosterhoff & Holly N Fitzgerald, 2020. "Disease avoidance in the time of COVID-19: The behavioral immune system is associated with concern and preventative health behaviors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-15, August.
    10. Cristina Lázaro-Pérez & José Ángel Martínez-López & José Gómez-Galán, 2020. "Addictions in Spanish College Students in Confinement Times: Preventive and Social Perspective," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-21, October.
    11. Yashika Arora & Pushpinder Walia & Mitsuhiro Hayashibe & Makii Muthalib & Shubhajit Roy Chowdhury & Stephane Perrey & Anirban Dutta, 2021. "Grey-box modeling and hypothesis testing of functional near-infrared spectroscopy-based cerebrovascular reactivity to anodal high-definition tDCS in healthy humans," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(10), pages 1-38, October.
    12. Elvisa Drishti & Bresena Kopliku & Drini Imami, 2022. "Active political engagement, political patronage and local labour markets – The example of Shkoder," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 44(6), pages 1118-1142, April.
    13. Nguyen, Ha Trong & Brinkman, Sally & Le, Huong Thu & Zubrick, Stephen R. & Mitrou, Francis, 2022. "Gender differences in time allocation contribute to differences in developmental outcomes in children and adolescents," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    14. Gricelda Herrera-Franco & Néstor Montalván-Burbano & Carlos Mora-Frank & Lady Bravo-Montero, 2021. "Scientific Research in Ecuador: A Bibliometric Analysis," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-34, December.
    15. Sofie L. Valk & Ting Xu & Casey Paquola & Bo-yong Park & Richard A. I. Bethlehem & Reinder Vos de Wael & Jessica Royer & Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh & Şeyma Bayrak & Peter Kochunov & B. T. Thomas Yeo , 2022. "Genetic and phylogenetic uncoupling of structure and function in human transmodal cortex," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-17, December.
    16. Rosen Valchev & Cosmin Ilut, 2017. "Economic Agents as Imperfect Problem Solvers," 2017 Meeting Papers 1285, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Florent Meyniel, 2020. "Brain dynamics for confidence-weighted learning," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-27, June.
    18. Virgilio Pérez & Cristina Aybar & Jose M. Pavía, 2021. "COVID-19 and Changes in Social Habits. Restaurant Terraces, a Booming Space in Cities. The Case of Madrid," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(17), pages 1-18, September.
    19. Ana-Madalina Potcovaru, 2020. "The Impact Of Organizational Stress On The Human Resources From The Health System During Covid-19 Pandemic," Business Excellence and Management, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 10(5), pages 88-97, October.
    20. Erin C McCanlies & Ja Kook Gu & Michael E Andrew & John M Violanti, 2018. "The effect of social support, gratitude, resilience and satisfaction with life on depressive symptoms among police officers following Hurricane Katrina," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 64(1), pages 63-72, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0238715. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.