Abstract Based on Affective Events Theory and Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Emotion, and with the daily dairy questionnaire survey and data analysis in seven consecutive working days, the excitation process, effects and boundary conditions of state gratitude have been investigated in this study. This study shows that employees’ feeling of being trusted from supervisors can stimulate employees’ state gratitude, and state gratitude further enhances employees’ work engagement. State gratitude mediates the positive effect of feeling trusted on work engagement. Reciprocal awareness and workload moderate the mediating effect of state gratitude on feeling trusted and work engagement. The study further confirms that state gratitude, different from trait gratitude, is a ubiquitous but often overlooked temporal positive emotion caused by environmental factors，events, or the individual’s attribution to such events. And the state gratitude has fluctuation characteristics over time. The results of the study contribute to the answers to the question based on the fluctuations over time that gratitude is fleeting and why gratitude isso short lived, and also make it clear for organizations that what events and circumstances can motivate employees to be more grateful and engage more in their jobs.
