又是一年感恩節。
與家人圍坐桌前，吃著大餐，回顧這一年所得恩惠（count the blessings），感謝這一年福澤我們的上蒼，感謝這一年陪伴、支持、鼓勵的人。
這個時候，讀讀耶魯大學校長彼得•沙洛維（Peter Salovey）在2014年畢業典禮上的演講《論感恩》（On Gratitude），會讓我們更能理解我們為何要心懷感恩，並付之於行動。
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President Peter Salovey leads those on the stage and in the audience in a round of applause for the graduates' achievements. (Photo by Michael Marsland)
親愛的同事、朋友、家人和畢業生們：
歡迎你們的到來，也很榮幸在這個愉快的周末能與大家一起交流。
多年來，我一直以學校工作人員、院長、副校長這些不同的角色參加畢業典禮，而今天是第一次以校長的身份參加。我一直遵從耶魯大學的傳統，今天我願意將此延續，這一年，我們在紀念舊典禮的同時迎來了新的畢業典禮。
關於感恩，我們知之甚少
在成年後的大部分時期，我一直在研究人類情感。這是我學術生涯的基礎，也是我的愛好。儘管關於情感的學術文獻數量龐大且不斷增長，但令人們吃驚的是，有關感恩的心理學研究文獻卻相當匱乏。對感恩進行探究的實驗很少甚至沒有。就孩子們學習說「謝謝你」而進行研究被認為是古怪而又過時的。
眾所周知，我們所有人都有自己的想法。感恩意味著什麼?尤其是在這樣的一個周末，我們更應該去思考這個問題。在10年前，感恩幾乎從未出現在心理學家編制的人類情感手冊和百科全書中。忽略對感恩的認真研究並不局限於心理學中，例如，亞里斯多德就沒有把感恩納入到他那著名的人類美德列表中。
雖然心理學專家忽略了對感恩的研究，但很多哲學家，從西塞羅到塞內加、阿奎奈、斯賓諾莎、霍布斯、休姆，再到康德，都認識到表達感恩的能力不僅是社交禮貌，也是一種核心競爭力。這些哲學家擔憂社會的主流價值觀會被不懂感恩的人顛覆，這對於普通大眾來說是不公平的，因為在這樣一種氛圍下，整個社會都會走向衰敗和毀滅。
事實上，在心理學研究領域，幾乎沒有人關注感恩，我們對此都沒有給予足夠的重視。這可能是因為表達感恩的需求使我們意識到並非所有的事情都在我們的掌控之中，或是習慣於受他人恩惠或依賴他人，使我們意識到自己的命運並不完全由我們自己掌握。事實上，我們有時很脆弱。已逝的羅伯特·所羅門是我最喜歡的當代情感哲學家之一，他經常說，感恩是一種令人不安的情感，因為它總促使我們「認識到我們沒有一個人是完全獨立的，都需要他人的幫助」。感恩促使我們反思作為主體擔當者的局限性。
儘管一個人的內心可能充滿感恩，但有時表達出來後會讓人很不自在。即使向神表達感恩也會使我們感到難為情。比如，我最喜歡的一個鄉村音樂歌手在獲得葛萊美獎項時表達對上帝的無限感激之情，以及當大衛·歐提慈在棒球比賽中爆發時，將球打擊出芬威右外場後戲劇性地對著空中揮手(如果在言語和情感上冒犯了洋基隊的球迷，我在此表示歉意)。
感恩的人更幸福
然而，生活中真正的幸福快樂與社會中真正的興旺繁榮，完全有能力駁回絕對自力更生的神話謊言。美好的生活可能遙不可及，除非我們能夠培養一種開放的心態接受他人的幫助並表示感激。
在準備致詞的過程中，我欣喜地發現，經濟學家亞當·斯密首次指出了感恩的重要性，而他卻是因強調私利是驅動力的言論而聞名的。亞當·斯密清晰而又合乎邏輯地說，正是激情與情感將社會交織在一起。他認為，情感(比如感激之情)使社會變得更美好、更仁慈、更安全。哪個社會心理學家可以說得比這更好?
毫無疑問，當我們心存感恩時，就很難同時感受到妒忌、憤怒、仇恨等負面情感。事實上，那些說他們會表達感激的人——這些人積極回應調查項目，如「我有時會感恩不起眼的小事情」「我感恩很多人」——往往也會在所謂的主觀幸福即生活滿意度的心理測試上獲得高分。
為什麼感恩的人更幸福?
與表達感恩不相容的一種個人傾向是社會比較，尤其是與比我們擁有更多的人相比較的潛在傾向。心懷感恩的人很少會妒忌他人。充滿感恩的人能更好地應對生活的壓力，具有更強的抵抗力。即使在困境中，他們也能發現美好的東西，其他人也會更喜歡他們。更重要的是，人們更願意幫助那些過去一直感恩他們的人。正如21世紀偉大的哲學家賈斯汀·汀布萊克所說：「凡事皆有因果」。
感恩是社會和諧的關鍵
心理學家芭芭拉·弗雷德裡克森認為，感恩能夠拓展人的思維，換句話說，感恩能讓人們考慮更廣泛、更具創造力的可能性、選擇和替代方式。思維的開拓會產生一種個人智能和自我效能感。弗雷德裡克森認為，這些情感能培養同情心與助人為樂的精神，並促使人們嘗試一系列可能幫助別人的方法而遠非簡單的互換互惠或一報還一報。
人們觀察到，非人類靈長類動物也會做出這種形為，比如當一隻黑猩猩與另一隻黑猩猩共同分享食物時，得到食物的黑猩猩會把分享食物的黑猩猩摟在懷裡。或者，一隻猩猩持續給另一隻猩猩梳理毛髮一兩天後，被梳理毛髮的猩猩會與給他梳理毛髮的猩猩分享食物。
正如這些例子所暗示的，感恩是社會和諧的關鍵。的確如此，感恩可以增強人們的社會歸屬感，增強作為好公民的責任，使人們對善意更忠誠。當今社會需要以多種形式將感恩貫穿於各種文化中。對每個人的貢獻表達感恩，從而使社會變得更加和諧、團結。公開表達的及其他各種形式的感恩會使人們保持樂觀並有共同目標感。
現在談談即將從耶魯大學畢業的你們，今天你們可能也心存感恩。問題是，你們得到的幫助太多，不可能完全償還生命裡得到的一切。當你們有一天收到很多溫暖與祝福時，如果能夠記住這些就好了：沒有一件偉大的禮物可以被「償還」，比如受教育的機會。雖然這是你們爭取來的，但也是你們收到的禮物。既然你們現在擁有了，以後你們也要為之付出，或者你們把這個禮物以你們收到它的方式傳遞給下一代。當然，如何去做取決於你們。
美國桂冠詩人比利·柯林斯(Billy Collins)在寫給母親的一首叫做《系帶》(The Lanyard)詩中捕獲了這些情感。目前，母親節僅僅過去一周。因此，這首詩很適合在這裡讀給你們聽。
《系帶》
日前，我緩緩躍起，
從房間藍色的牆壁上，
仿佛在水底，由打字機至鋼琴，
從書架到地板上的信封，
當發現自己停留在字典的L部分時，
我把視線落在了「系帶」上。
一個法國小說家啃過的曲奇，
不可能忽然送回過去，
那時我坐在野營的工作檯，
靠近深深的阿迪朗達克湖，
學習如何編織細長的塑料條，
編成一條系帶，送給母親做禮物。
我從未見有誰用過系帶，
或者佩戴，如果可以這樣使用，
但這並沒有阻止我，
一股壓一股，一遍又一遍地編，
直到做成一個四四方方的，
紅白相間的掛繩，給我的母親。
她給我生命和乳汁，
我給她一條系帶，
難忍的病房，她悉心照料著我，
舉起湯匙，餵藥到我嘴邊，
冰涼方巾，敷我額頭，
然後，帶我走進輕而薄的光明。
教我走路，帶我遊泳，
而我，送她一條系帶。
她說，這裡有數不盡的飯菜，
這裡有衣服和優質的教育。
我回答說，這是送你的系帶。
在一位參謀的小小幫助下，我完成了它。
這裡有活著的軀體，有跳動的心，
有強壯的雙腿，強健的骨骼和堅固的牙齒，
還有可以了解世界的清澈雙眸，她低語道。
我說，這是我在營地做的絲帶。
此時此刻，我想告訴她，
這是一個小小禮物——微不足道。
你永遠無法報答你的母親，
我悲哀地承認，當她接過我手中雙色的系帶時，
我像個孩子一樣肯定無疑，
打發無聊而編織的這個無用的東西，
卻足以使我們扯平。
畢業生們，我不是要你們必須感謝母親。儘管這並不是一個壞主意，但你們至少應該為此花上些許時間。儘管這個周末很喧囂，還是請大家靜下來想想所有幫助你們走到今天的人，那些你們無法報答的人。他們可能是家人、朋友、敬愛的師長，甚至是你們從未謀面的作者。想想他們，藉此機會，輕聲說句「謝謝」。正如20世記早期耶魯大學的傑出英語教授威廉·裡昂·菲爾普斯曾經寫到的：「感恩帶來幸福，給予越多，得到的就越多」。
On Gratitude: 2014 Baccalaureate Address by President Peter Salovey
May 18, 2014
In his first Baccalaureate Address, President Peter Salovey urged the graduates to consider the benefits of gratitude. Here is the text of his speech.
Colleagues, friends, families, graduating seniors: It is a pleasure to greet you today and offer a few words on this celebratory weekend.
Over the years, I have participated in the baccalaureate service in various roles — as a member of the faculty, as a dean, as provost, and now, for the first time, as president. There is a Yale tradition that I have observed that I would like to continue today, during a year in which we have introduced new rituals while also honoring old ones:
Might I ask all of the families and friends here today to rise and recognize the outstanding — and graduating — members of the Class of 2014?
And now, might I ask the Class of 2014 to consider all those who have supported your arrival at this milestone, and to please rise and recognize them?
Thank you! I delight in this custom not merely because it is lovely in its own right, but also because my baccalaureate remarks today focus on gratitude. I talk about gratitude in part because I am so thankful for the dedicated leadership of Yale College that Dean Miller has provided since December 2008, and in part because gratitude turns out to be one of the keys to happiness.
For most of my adult life, I have been a student of human emotion. It is the basis for my academic career and one of the passions of my professional life. And although there is a large — and growing — body of scholarly literature on emotion, it might surprise you that the psychological literature on gratitude is rather meager. Laboratory experiments exploring gratitude are few and far between. Field studies of how children learn to say 「thank you」 are viewed as quaint and old-fashioned.
We all know — all of us in our own minds — what it means to be grateful, particularly on a weekend like this one. But until the last decade, gratitude almost never appeared in handbooks and encyclopedias of human emotions compiled by psychologists. And the neglect of serious consideration of gratitude is not limited to psychology: Aristotle, for example, did not include it on his famous list of human virtues.
But even if psychology and Aristotle have neglected gratitude, many philosophers — from Cicero to Seneca to Aquinas to Spinoza to Hobbs to Hume and Kant — acknowledge that the ability to express gratitude is not just socially polite but also a core human capacity. These philosophers worry that societies characterized by ungrateful people — by ingrates — might be unjust and unfair, and turn to vengeance and destruction.
The fact that there has been so little attention paid to gratitude in my field of psychology — the fact that you and I might not pay enough attention to it — could be because the need to express gratitude reminds us that we are not entirely in control; that we might be indebted or dependent; that our destiny is not entirely in our hands; indeed, that on occasion we are vulnerable. As one of my favorite contemporary philosophers of emotion, the late Robert Solomon, liked to say, gratitude is an uncomfortable emotion because it forces us to 「recognize that none of us is wholly self-sufficient and without the need of help from others.」[1] Gratitude forces us to reflect on the limits to our sense of agency.
Although one’s heart might be filled with gratitude, expressing it may sometimes feel a bit uncomfortable. Even gratitude toward a higher power can make us squirm if it seems over-the-top, as when one of my favorite country music singers thanks the Lord for providing him with a Grammy award, or even when Big Papi dramatically points toward the heavens after blasting a homer over the right-field wall in Fenway Park. (I offer my apologies to any Yankees fans out there for summoning up that image.)
And yet, true happiness in life, and true health in society, may not be possible without the capacity to reject the myth of total self-reliance. The good life may be out of reach unless we are able to cultivate an openness to accepting help from others and expressing gratitude for that help.
In the course of preparing this address, I was thrilled to discover that none other than Adam Smith, an economist known best for his focus on the importance of self-interest as a motivating force, was one of the first social scientists to point out the importance of gratitude![2] Smith clearly and cogently observed that passions and emotions are what knit a society together. Sentiments like gratitude, Smith argued, make the social world better — more benevolent and more secure. A social psychologist could not have said it better!
There is no doubt that when we experience gratitude, it is difficult to feel negative emotions like envy, anger, or hatred at the same time. In fact, people who report that they express a lot of gratitude — people who respond positively to survey items like 「I sometimes feel grateful for the smallest things,」 and 「I am grateful to a wide variety of people」 — also tend to score high on psychological measures of what is called subjective well-being, that is, satisfaction with their lives.[3]
Why might this be? Well, one human tendency that is incompatible with expressing gratitude is social comparison, especially the insidious tendency to compare ourselves with those who have more than we do. It appears that people who feel gratitude are less likely to envy others, and thus they avoid an emotion that can be quite corrosive. Moreover, grateful people seem far more able to cope with the stresses and strains of life; they are more resilient because they find the good even in difficult circumstances, and other people like them better. What’s more: people are more willing to come to the assistance of others who have expressed gratitude toward them in the past.[4] To quote that great 21st-century philosopher, Justin Timberlake: 「What goes around … comes all the way back around.」[5]
Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson argues that feelings of gratitude broaden one’s mind — that is, they allow you to consider a wider and more creative array of possibilities, options, and alternative courses of action.[6] This broadening of the mind produces a sense of personal resourcefulness and self-efficacy. Fredrickson contends that these feelings foster a desire to empathize with and help other people, and to consider a wider array of potential ways to be helpful that go far beyond simple reciprocity, or tit-for-tat.
The origins of this sort of behavior even can be observed in non-human primates like chimpanzees — when one chimp shares food with another chimp, and the chimp who received the food throws his arms around the food-sharing chimp in a warm hug. Or, when one chimp grooms another chimp and then a day or two later, the recipient of the grooming shares food with the groomer.[7]
You probably think I got all this from watching 「The Lion King,」 but as these examples suggest, gratitude might be a key to social harmony. Indeed, gratitude may strengthen one’s sense of belonging to a community, of obligations to being a good citizen, and of loyalty to the greater good. Perhaps this social reinforcement is why gratitude seems to be observed in various forms across all cultures. Communities in which gratitude is expressed publicly become knitted together through a shared sense of appreciation for everyone’s contributions. Public ceremonies and other displays of gratitude encourage a kind of optimism and a shared sense of purpose.
So, let’s get back to talking about you, soon-to-be graduates of Yale College: You are likely feeling gratitude today. The trouble is, you owe so much to others that you can never fully repay them for the great things you receive in life. And on a day when you are receiving so much, so much warmth, so many congratulations, it is always good to remember that no great gift you have been given — the opportunity for an education, which you earned but also received — (no truly great gift) can ever be 「repaid.」 Instead, it must be paid forward, and it is up to you to pass this gift on to others in the next generation in the same way you received it.
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins captures these feelings in a poem written for his mother called 「The Lanyard.」 And, because Mother’s Day was only a week ago, it seems appropriate to read it to you on this occasion:
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly —
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift — not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.*
And so seniors, my message today is not 「you need to thank your mothers」 — although that would not be such a bad idea — but rather that you should spend at least a few moments — in spite of all the hoopla this weekend — thinking about all of those individuals who helped you get to this moment in your lives, all those individuals who you can never repay. They might be family members and friends, beloved teachers and mentors, or even authors whom you have never met. But think about them, and, when the moment is right, say a quiet 「thank you.」 As William Lyon Phelps, a distinguished professor of English at Yale in the early part of the 20th century, once wrote, 「… gratitude begets happiness … the more one gives, the more one has left.」[8]
Congratulations! We are delighted to salute your accomplishments. We are overjoyed to celebrate with you. We are proud of your achievements. Remember to give thanks for all that has brought you to this day. And go forth from this place with grateful hearts, paying back the gift you have received here by paying it forward for others.
* 「The Lanyard,」 Billy Collins, from 「The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems,」 2007, Random House Trade Paperbacks. Used with permission of the author.
[1] Solomon, R.C. (2004). Foreword. In R.A. Emmons & M.E. McCullough (Eds.), 「The psychology of gratitude.」 Oxford: Oxford University Press (p. vii).
[2] Smith, A. (1790/1976). 「The theory of moral sentiments」 (6th edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
[3] McCullough, M.E., Emmons, R.A., & Tsang, J. (2002). 「The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography.」 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82,112-127.
[4] For a systematic review of this literature, see Watkins, P.C. (2004). 「Gratitude and subjective well-being.」 In R.A. Emmons & M.E. McCullough (eds.), 「The psychology of gratitude.」 Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[5] Timberlake, J., Mosley, T., & Hills, N. (2006). 「What Goes Around … Comes Around.」 Jive/Zomba Records.
[6] Fredrickson, B.L. (2004). 「Gratitude, like other emotions, broadens and builds.」 In R.A. Emmons & M.E. McCullough (eds.), 「The psychology of gratitude.」 Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[7] Behaviors of this kind have been described by Frans de Waal in many of his writings. See, for example, de Waal, F.B.M. (1997). 「The chimpanzee’s service economy: Food for grooming.」 Evolution and Human Behavior, 18, 375-386.
[8] Phelps, W.L. (1932). 「Appreciation.」 New York: E.P. Dutton, p. 23.
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