We very rarely thank the people with whom we are most closely associated. This is the result of the research carried out by the international scientific team, the results of which were published in the Royal Society Open Science.
We thank people for their service or kindness and, in general, this is a sign of good upbringing. However, it turns out that we usually do so in public situations.
In order to learn more about how to express gratitude in social situations, the researchers obtained permission from volunteers to install microphones in their homes and in meeting places of local communities. Thanks to this, they registered 1,057 people and analyzed them, counting on how many thanks they received. The survey was conducted on five continents, among people speaking eight languages.
It turns out that we express our gratitude less often than we would expect, and the least of all we thank our family and close friends. There are also language differences. Most often, as many as 14.5% of cases were thanked by English speakers. Similarly often (13.5%) the Italians expressed their gratitude. Later it was much worse. Murrinh-patha speakers from the Australian Northern Territory thanked in 4.5% of cases, Russians in 3.1%, and Poles thanked in only 2.2% of cases. The Laotian speakers thanked in 2 out of 99 calls, the grey users thanked in 0.8%, and among the 97 conversations led by the cayapa users of northern Ecuador no thanks were heard. On average, thanks were expressed in 5.5% of calls.
Researchers suggest that this is not a matter of a lesser culture towards members of one's own family, but of basic principles of reciprocity. Simply when we ask for something from a family member, the standard answer is consent. We expect you to agree to what we ask of those who are closely associated with us. And such situations occur more often than we think. The research shows that during a standard conversation we ask for something to our interlocutor on average every... 90 seconds. They also noted that although we do not express our gratitude for the consent given, the interlocutor is not angry with this and very rarely draws attention to the lack of gratitude. It is only when the person you are asking for hears a refusal that there is a noticeable reaction. It reacts, of course, to the person who is refused. The same is true for a person who refuses. She usually feels obliged to explain why she refuses the request.