SURPRISING FINDING
DANE MARK/GETTY
A new study from the University of Helsinki found that expressions of gratitude are infrequent in many languages. Among more than 1,000 samples of conversations in eight languages from five continents, people expressed thanks for a request granted just 5.5 percent of the time. Even among the most verbal thankers—English speakers—the rate was only 14.5 percent. The absence does not mean that people aren’t thankful, say the authors, but simply that we expect to cooperate with one another. “Care should be taken,” the authors write in Royal Society Open Science, “not to conflate the emotion of gratitude with the act of expressing it.