Underestimating Recipients' Positive Reactions Despite Gratitude Expression: The Roles of Motivational and Attentional Biases After Failed Help

When well-intentioned help causes trouble, do helpers accurately perceive recipients’ gratitude? This research employed three experiments to examine whether helpers underestimate recipients’ positive reactions, when gratitude is explicitly expressed, while uncovering the underlying mechanisms of this underestimation. Study 1, using a questionnaire method, comfirmed that helpers significantly underestimated recipients’ positive reactions, with misinterpretation of recipients’ autonomous motivation for expressing gratitude serving as a key mediating factor. Study 2, employing a query-based method, found that helpers often focus on negative outcomes of their help and overlook the gratitude; this attention bias toward negative results also acted as a significant mediator. In Study 3, manipulating these mediators showed that increasing the perceived autonomous motivation for gratitude and guiding helpers to focus on gratitude content can effectively reduce underestimation bias. Collectively, these findings reveal key psychological pathways in processing social feedback from failed help, offering insights for relationship repair and gratitude expression.