Safe Haven Gratitude, Relationship Quality, and Well-Being, 2024

486 participants from the United States were recruited to participate in this two-part online study through a departmental participant pool (n = 406) in exchange for course credit or via Prolific (n = 80) in exchange for $8. Ages ranged from 18 to 75 years (M = 26.34, SD = 10.70) and the majority of participants were women (73.9%). Most participants were non-Hispanic white (49.9%), followed by Hispanic/Latinx (31.7%), Asian American (11.7%), other (11.7%), Black (9.7%), Native American (1.9%), and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (0.2%). Upon providing consent, participants were taken to a Qualtrics survey in which they were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) Safe haven gratitude: write a gratitude letter to someone who made them feel cherished, protected, or accepted 2) Gift gratitude: write a gratitude letter to someone who gave them a gift 3) Control: write a detailed list of everything they did over the past week Following the experimental manipulation, participants completed a series of measures, indicating how they felt at that moment (i.e., "right now"). Measures included: Twenty Statements Test (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005), an adapted version of the Affect Adjective Scale (Diener & Emmons, 1984), UBC State Social Connection Scale (Lok & Dunn, 2022), State Meaning and Satisfaction (Steger et al., 2008), Perceived Partner Responsiveness (Reis & Carmichael, 2006), Relationship Assessment Scale (Hendrick, 1988), Inclusion of Other in Self Scale (Aron et al., 1992), Interpersonal Goals Questionnaire (Crocker & Canevello, 2008), and Humility - Trait Ratings (Gunther & Alicke, 2010). Those in the gratitude conditions completed the relationship measures about the target of their gratitude, while those in the control condition completed the relationship measures about the first person they interacted with the previous day. One week later, participants completed a follow-up survey indicating how they felt over the last week. All measures from the first survey were again administered in the follow-up, except for the Twenty Statements Test (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005) and Perceived Partner Responsiveness (Reis & Carmichael, 2006). This study was approved by the Arizona State University IRB, Protocol ID: STUDY00017708.