Epistemic gratitude and the provision of information

Abstract

Human society rests on communicated information, much of which is shared without an expectation of reward. We suggest that, like other forms of prosociality, this type of information provision is fueled by gratitude. To reflect the fact that information differs in some ways from other goods, we call this form of gratitude epistemic gratitude. In a first experiment (all preregisterered, with US participants), we show that participants are more grateful for information that provides more benefits, at a greater cost to the sender, that was sent intentionally, and gratuitously. Experiment 2 shows that information shared with a large audience generates less gratitude in individual audience members. Experiment 3 shows that information that can be further passed on to others elicits more gratitude. In the supplementary materials, we also report a series of inconclusive experiments testing whether gratitude increases when an initially doubted piece of information is confirmed, and whether participants think others communicate in a way that maximizes gratitude in the audience. In conclusion, we speculate on the consequences of epistemic gratitude—in particular, which type of information is more likely to elicit epistemic gratitude—for diverse cultural phenomena, from personalization in marketing to rumor diffusion.