Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
Ravi Iyer
May 2010
Abstract iv
Introduction 1
Method 9
Results 13
Table 1: Overall Effects of Gratitude Manipulation 16
Discussion 18
References 23
ii
List Of Figures
Figure 1: Interaction 14
iii
Abstract
Gratitude exercises can have hedonic benefits, but observed effects have differed
differences in how gratitude exercises have been operationalized and in how well-being
has been measured between studies. The present online gratitude study randomly
assigned participants to perform weekly gratitude exercises varied along one of three
versus being generally thankful), depth of writing (writing five sentences versus one
sentence), and number of things one is grateful for (five versus one). Increases in well-
being were measured using a balance of activated and deactivated emotions, derived from
Feldman-Barrett & Russell (1998). Results indicated that being more grateful (about one
or several things) generally led to greater affective rewards but only in cases where
gratitude was not directed at a person. As well, gratitude exercises may have more
iv
Introduction
intervention has become increasingly popular in the media. This practice is also
supported by empirical evidence, where studies have shown that the conscious practice of
gratitude leads to increased well-being (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Seligman, Steen,
Park, & Peterson, 2005). Oprah Winfrey devoted an entire television show to Gratitude
Stories and routinely mentions her own gratitude journal practice. Numerous news
articles are written each Thanksgiving that highlight the benefits of making gratitude a
regular part of our lives (Fountain, 2007). Emmons (2001) termed gratitude the
forgotten factor, but popular culture and academia are rediscovering gratitude. During
this resurgence, gratitude has been defined as a virtue, a moral affect, an emotion, and a
cognition (McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons & Larson, 2001) and has been
previous research on gratitude by examining its effects on affective, rather than cognitive,
If history is viewed as a cycle where ideas wax and wane in public consciousness,
the renewed emphasis on gratitude should not be surprising given that it has been a
central concept in most cultures around the world. Cicero referred to gratitude not only
as the greatest of virtues but as the parent of all the others. Judeo-Christian practices
of incorporating gratitude before meals and sleep may be more familiar, but consider this
1
Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a
little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at
least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.
been known for centuries. Gratitude may be perceived as a common and useful emotion
(McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons & Larson 2001; Sommers & Kosmitzki, 1988), but
few people seek it out consciously. As the choices available in society make our lives
busier and busier, we may not feel that we have the time to be consciously grateful. As
such, empirical evidence is essential to convince the public of the tangible benefits of a
between the conscious practice of gratitude and happiness. Like gratitude, the term
happiness has both cognitive (life satisfaction) and affective (joy or sadness) meanings.
In this study, we focused on affective balance, meaning less negative emotion and more
correlations between daily reported levels of gratitude and daily reported levels of
positive emotion but not between gratitude and reduced negative emotion. Emmons and
between gratitude and positive emotion. In the first study, some participants wrote about
up to five things they were grateful for on a weekly basis for a ten week period. These
participants reported higher appraisals of their life as a whole and increased optimism but
2
no significant difference in positive affect compared to participants who wrote about
neutral or negative events. In a second study, participants who completed daily gratitude
journals over a two-week period reported higher positive emotion than participants who
wrote about negative events. In a third study, an adult sample completed daily gratitude
exercises over a three week period and reported significantly higher positive emotion and
reduced negative emotion compared to a control group who only completed dependent
measures.
based on Emmons & McCulloughs (2003) studies and were unable to find significant
condition. Froh, Sefick and Emmons (2008) conducted a similar study based on Emmons
and McCulloughs (2003) finding using school children and found that children in the
Among experimental gratitude studies, Seligman, Steen, Park and Petersen (2005)
have reported the most robust effects on affect balance using gratitude interventions
included two activities, three good things, where participants are asked to write about
three positive things from their day and the causes of these things, and the gratitude
visit, where they would write a letter to someone they had not properly thanked and then
visit them to read it to the person. These exercises are among the most widely cited
happiness, as measured by the Steen Happiness Index (Seligman et al., 2005), but their
3
effects differed in terms of intensity and duration. The reported effect of three good
things was a gradual increase in happiness, an effect that increased after six months.
Alternatively, the reported effects of the gratitude visit were higher immediately after
affective benefits to the conscious practice of gratitude, but the magnitude of this
very difficult to compare previous studies and few studies using affect as a dependent
For example, in Emmons and McCulloughs (2003) studies, daily exercises (versus
weekly exercises) over a longer period appeared to lead to more robust effects on affect
when comparing across samples, but experimental methods could more convincingly
establish this pattern. Lyubomirsky, Tkach, and Sheldon (2004) did systematically vary
once a week or three times a week. It is unclear whether the dependent measure was
affective or cognitive (raw data referenced in Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade 2005),
but the results contradicted the pattern of Emmons and McCulloughs (2003) work in that
only participants who expressed gratitude once a week experienced increases in well-
gratitude three times a week. Our study builds upon these studies by using the once per
week paradigm, but varying the quantity and depth of expressed gratitude independently,
4
However, it bears mentioning that while we are solely focused on the benefit of
feeling increased positive emotion and decreased negative emotion; gratitude is highly
adaptive for other reasons. Gratitude elicits a tendency to help others (Froh &
Yurkewicz, 2007), which suggests that prosocial behavior can be motivated by the
gratitude one feels in response to a good deed. There is evidence that gratitude also helps
grateful people elicit social support from others (Wood, Maltby, Gillett, Linley & Joseph,
2007). In increasing positive affect, gratitude may encourage novel thought patterns,
which over time may lead to an increase in an individuals skills and resources
(Fredrickson, 2003). As well, Lyubomirsky, King and Dieners (2005) meta-analysis has
linked positive affect to success across multiple domains including marriage, friendship,
judgment (life satisfaction). Similarly, gratitude can be thought of as both an affect and a
cognition. As a cognition, the practice of gratitude leads to greater satisfaction with life
and much of the variance in life satisfaction is due to comparison to some standard (Pavot
& Diener, 2003). Manipulating gratitude necessarily makes a lower standard salient as it
forces one to consider that things could be worse. This may explain the more robust
and McCullough (2003) found effects of gratitude on life satisfaction in all three studies.
5
Wood, Joseph and Maltby (2008) found that gratitude is a unique predictor of life
especially given the complex structure of human emotion. Sheldon and Lyubomirsky
(2006) theorized that the lack of significant results found in their gratitude study was due
to measurement using the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS; Watson, Clark &
Tellegen, 1988), which may be weighted towards activated emotions (e.g. excited, joyful)
rather than deactivated emotions (e.g. serene, content). Feldman-Barrett and Russell
(1988) have confirmed the structure of emotion along two dimensions, valence and
activation. Valence concerns the experience of the emotion (pleasant versus unpleasant)
whereas activation concerns the energy or stimulation implied by the emotion (activated
consider the emotions which make up the positive deactivated quadrant of emotions,
there is considerable semantic overlap between being words like content, a word used
to describe positive deactivated affect, and satisfied, a word used in the most common
measures of cognitive happiness. Given this overlap, one might predict that gratitude
both the depth and quantity of gratitude journal entries to determine what accounted for
6
observed differences. The gratitude visit focuses on one grateful thought with a deep
focus, whereas three good things focuses on multiple grateful thoughts with only a
(quality) and the number (quantity) of items considered. The gratitude visit necessarily
involved a person to whom one was grateful, while the instructions for other activities
left it open whether one would be grateful to a person or not. As such, we independently
person. These differences form the basis for the present study.
While the body of previous gratitude research leads one to believe that there is a
link between gratitude, increased positive emotion and decreased negative emotion, the
diversity of effect sizes found leads us to believe that there may be a more complex
Feldman-Barrett and Russells (1998) two identified dimensions: valence and activation.
(greater positive emotion and less negative emotion) in conditions which promoted
closer involvement of the participant with others, have been found to activate emotional
Darley, & Cohen 2001). Therefore, personal gratitude instructions, directing emotion
towards a person, should have a greater impact than impersonal exercise instructions. As
well, based on the pronounced effects of the gratitude visit (Seligman et al. 2005) and the
7
trend of relationships across studies found by Emmons and McCullough (2003), gratitude
voluntary study, we may see more attrition among those asked to think more deeply, as
subjects may get bored with the exercise (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade 2005).
Lastly, we hypothesized that gratitude may act differently on deactivated emotions versus
activated emotions (Sheldon & Lyubomirksy 2006), given the robust relationship
between gratitude and cognitive measures of happiness found in previous studies, and the
satisfied) and words used to measure state positive deactivated emotions (e.g. content).
8
Method
Participants
Two hundred and twenty-six participants were recruited online using online
advertisements (N=38), the university subject pool (N=166), and word of mouth (N=22).
Participants were entered into a lottery for $500 and university subject pool participants
were given course credit. All participants were randomly assigned to a condition in a 3x3
design. Only the 137 participants who visited our website three or more times were
included in our analysis, in order to ensure that they meaningfully participated in the
experiment. Given the high attrition rate, additional analysis was carried out to insure
that results were not driven by differential attrition (see attrition analysis section).
Participant could begin the study at any time and could discontinue the study at
any time, as there was no explicitly defined end to the study. Participants were reminded
each week that, The end of this study is determined by when you no longer feel like it is
beneficial to you to participate. They were given a website address they could visit to
stop receiving weekly emails, and they continued to receive emails until they explicitly
after initial signup was made, in part to simulate real world conditions, so many
was statistically impractical and results are reported using the reported dependent
measures during the exercise, statistically controlling for average reported emotional
levels from the first two weeks, before they completed any manipulations.
9
Measures
gratitude research, such as the PANAS, may be biased towards activated positive
(Sheldon & Lyubomirksy 2006; Feldmann-Barrett & Russell 1998). Therefore, we used
indices for negative deactivated, negative activated, positive deactivated, and positive
activated emotion. Participants were asked initially and then on a weekly basis: To what
extent have you experienced each of these feelings during the past week using a 7-point
Likert scale (1= not at all 7= to a lot). Excited, Happy, and Joyful were used
to measure positive activated emotion. Calm and Content were used to measure
positive deactivated emotion. Sad and Tired were used to measure negative
deactivated emotion. Stressed and Upset were used to measure negative activated
emotion. Affect balance was calculated using the sum of the average level of positive
deactivated emotion and positive activated emotion reported, and then subtracting the
average level of negative deactivated emotion and negative activated emotion reported.
Procedure
completed the Gratitude Quotient-6 (McCullough, Emmons & Tsang, 2002), the
Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999), and one item measures of
10
subjective well-being (How have you felt about your life as a whole? very bad<-
>very good) and optimism (How would you rate your expectations for the coming
week? expect the worst<->expect the best). Participants were also asked to report on
their emotions for the prior week using words from Barrett and Russells (1998)
required to give their email address, to which we then sent a confirmation link, in order to
establish that visitors indeed had a valid email address to receive weekly study related
emails.
Each week, participants received an email where they were asked to click on a
link to report on our primary dependent measures and then take part in our manipulation.
comparison condition, the first sentence of instructions read, Some people are better off
than others. Think of ways that you are better off than other people. In the impersonal
gratitude condition, the first sentence read, Some people have things to be thankful for.
Think of things that you are grateful for in your life. In the personal gratitude condition,
the first sentence read, Some people have people in their lives for whom they are
(N=58), quantity (N=42), or quality (N=37). Participants were assigned to write one
sentence about one thing (short), one sentence about each of five things (quantity), or five
sentences about one thing (quality), as a test of whether depth of gratitude made a
11
given a single one line text box to write a gratitude statement in. Participants in the
quality five-sentence/one-thing condition were given a five row textbox to fill in their
five sentences. Participants in the quantity condition who wrote sentences about each
of five things were given five separate one line text boxes to fill in. Participants entered
three times as much information in the quality condition and 3.6 times as many items to
be grateful for in the quantity condition. Before pressing the submit button, participants
were asked to Please take a moment to think about what you wrote and feel it before
hitting the done button below to elicit the affective rather than cognitive aspects of
gratitude.
12
Results
balance as the dependent variable. The covariate controlled for was the initial affect
balance of the participant before engaging in the gratitude exercise. Both the content
condition (F(2,127) = 3.145, p<.05) and interaction of content condition with depth
the personal condition compared to the impersonal condition (p<.05). Participants who
were assigned to the quantity and quality depth conditions experienced reduced affect
balance when in the personal content condition. The interaction between the content and
13
Figure 1: Interaction between the Short versus Quantity/Depth Dimension and the
Personalization Condition
Given the unique pattern of results discovered within the personal content
condition, another 2x3 analysis of covariance was conducted excluding the personal
content condition. In this analysis, the depth condition was found to be a significant
predictor of affect balance (F(2, 80) = 5.552, p<.01) with pairwise analysis indicating
that both the quantity (p<.01) and quality (p<.05) conditions produced significantly
better affect balance compared to the short one sentence condition (see Figure 2). No
significant difference was found between the quantity and quality conditions.
14
Figure 2: Affect Balance excluding Personal Condition
analysis of covariance was examined for each type of affect independently. The depth
15
In addition, a one-sample t-test was conducted on change scores of all four types
of measured emotions. Only the sample mean of change in positive deactivated emotion
was significantly different from zero (see Table 1). Change scores for positive activated
emotion, negative activated emotion, and negative deactivated emotion were all in the
Overall Effects
Attrition Analysis
Among participants who met our three visit criteria for inclusion in analysis,
participants who only had to write one sentence visited (M=7.50) more times than those
who had to write five sentences about five things (M=6.49) or five sentences about one
thing (M=7.35), but these differences were not statistically significant. Still, we wanted
to make sure there was no underlying difference between these three groups due to
disposition, subjective happiness, subjective well being, optimism, and initial affect
16
balance. No significant differences were found between these groups on any of these
measures.
condition, depth condition, or the interaction of the conditions. A t-test grouping the
quantity and quality depth conditions did reveal a significant difference between the
number of visits for those in the short condition (M=5.87) and those in the
quantity/quality conditions (M=4.32). Since it was clear that the number of subjects in
the short (58), quality (42) and quantity (37) conditions differed, we also analyzed the
difference between those who dropped out before meeting our inclusion criteria and those
who did not. Among gratitude disposition, subjective happiness, subjective well being,
optimism, and initial affect balance, only gratitude disposition differed significantly
(p<.05) and only in the quality and quantity conditions. In order to be sure that this
difference in gratitude disposition was not driving results, we then reran our ANCOVA
analysis with gratitude disposition as a covariate and the results were unchanged.
17
Discussion
In general, the results converge with previous research confirming the potential
affective benefits of ritualized gratitude. While we did not specifically test our
manipulation versus a control condition, we did find that more gratitude, defined either as
being grateful for more things, or being more grateful about one thing, led to significantly
better affect balance. However, the effect sizes discovered were not large. Therefore, our
evidence appears to converge more with Sheldon and Lyubomirskys (2006) finding that
contrast with the more pronounced effects found by Seligman et al. (2005). The
in our sampling methodology. Our sample was in part motivated by a cash lottery or
course credit. In contrast, Seligmans sample was composed of people who visited
People who are actively seeking positive psychology interventions may experience
the greatest effect on the negative activated/positive deactivated axis of emotions (see
Figure 3). Collapsed across conditions, the only significant positive results of our
affect type revealed significant results of depth of gratitude on both negative activated
and positive deactivated emotion along one axis, but only for positive activated emotion
18
along the other diagonal axis. Future studies of gratitude should be sure to measure
The present study hypothesized that depth of gratitude (i.e. writing more about
one thing or about more things) would yield more positive affect and less negative affect
compared to the short (i.e. write one sentence about one thing) condition. This prediction
was supported by the data as participants in both the quality and quantity conditions
experienced better affect balance compared to the short condition, when participants were
not instructed to be grateful to a specific person. Beyond the cognitive awareness that
19
one should be grateful, some researchers have conceptualized gratitude as an affect, using
the term grateful disposition to hint at the tendency to recognize and respond with
grateful emotion (McCullough, Emmons & Tsang, 2002). Perhaps it is the emotion of
gratitude that creates positive affect balance and processing gratitude at a deeper level
We also predicted that personal gratitude instructions would have greater positive
supported, although the interaction that we found was interesting. According to our
results, participants who wrote more, experienced negative affect balance compared to
those who wrote less, when instructed to be grateful to a specific person. Our
interpretation of this result would converge with Lyubomirsky, Sousa, and Dickerhoofs
(2006) findings that students who wrote about their happiest moments, especially when
given instructions to analyze these moments, experienced reduced well being. Bartlett
and Desteno (2006) found that the effects of gratitude on prosocial behavior, was
reduced, when the cause of the emotional state was made salient. Perhaps asking
participants to write too much detail about the person that caused their gratitude
inadvertently influenced them to analyze the causes for their good fortune, and therefore
neutralized the positive activated affect associated with the event. Another possible
interpretation would be that participants asked to think too deeply about being grateful to
a person incurred feelings of obligation and debt which nullified any affective benefits of
being grateful. Future research on gratitude should examine the potential pitfalls of
causing people to overanalyze the good things in their lives and causing people to incur
20
Limitations
One limitation of the present study is that it does not consider cognitive measures
of subjective well being, only affective. Other studies have also found more robust effects
than the present study using cognitive measure of subjective well being, such as life
satisfaction, rather than affective measures. One possibility is that participants did not
take the time to feel gratitude as instructed in the study. Another possibility is that feeling
and Lyubomirsky (2006) did not find large increases in affective happiness in a similar
effort. As well, we did not include a true control condition in our study, so we cannot
make any claims about our studies effectiveness overall, but only between conditions
Another limitation of the present study is the degree of attrition and the possibility
that persistent participants are qualitatively different from those who dropped out of the
study early on based on some measure that we did not include in our study. Although
attrition analyses were presented, the present study cannot provide any constructive
application of gratitude journals for the type of person who dropped out of this study. It
may even be possible that people who are not intrinsically motivated to be grateful may
not benefit from gratitude journals. In a recent New York Times article the author states ,
Gratitude is not for everyone (Fountain, 2007). Comments from participants each
week indicated that there were people in all conditions who benefited tremendously or
found it tedious and pointless. Our study may only be generalizable to the population of
21
people who are likely to persist with gratitude exercises and future research should
Conclusion
From a broader perspective, it is clear not that one condition is optimal, but rather
that an experimental analysis across randomized conditions can point out ideas for honing
our own gratitude practices, in a way that is guided by empirical research. Perhaps those
who seek to cultivate gratitude in their lives can be made aware of the importance of
processing gratitude deeply enough to feel the grateful emotion and of the dangers of
overanalyzing good things in their lives or feeling indebted to others. Perhaps they can
be counseled to consider the increased calmness that they feel as a result rather than
looking for increased joy. And with that knowledge, perhaps they can find the optimal
22
References
Barrett, L. F., & Russell, J. A. (1998). Independence and Bipolarity in the Structure of
Current Affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 967-984.
Barrett, L. F., & Russell, J. A. (1999). The Structure of Current Affect: Controversies and
Emerging Consensus.
Bartlett, M. Y., & DeSteno, D. (2006). Gratitude and prosocial behavior: helping when it
costs you. Psychological Science, 17, 319-25.
Emmons, R.A. & Shelton, C.S. (2001). Gratitude and the science of positive
psychology. In C.R. Snyder and S.J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive
psychology (pp. 459-471). New York: Oxford University Press.
Fountain, H. (2007). Let Us Give Thanks. In Writing. New York Times November 22,
2007. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/fashion/22grateful.html?_r=1&ref=health&o
ref=slogin.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2003). The value of positive emotions. American Scientist, 91, 330-
335.
Froh, J. J., Sefick, W. J., & Emmons, R. A. (2008). Counting blessings in early
adolescents: An experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being.
Journal of School Psychology, 46, 213-233.
Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2001).
An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment (Vol. 293, pp.
2105-2108).
23
Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003). A Very Brief Measure of the
Big Five Personality Domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504-528.
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L. A., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive
affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803855.
Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The
architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111-131.
Lyubomirsky, S., Sousa, L., & Dickerhoof, R. (2006). The costs and benefits of writing,
talking, and thinking about lifes triumphs and defeats. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 90, 692-708.
Lyubomirsky, S., Tkach, C., & Sheldon, K. M. (2004). [Pursuing sustained happiness
through random acts of kindness and counting ones blessings: Tests of two six-
week interventions]. Unpublished raw data.
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.
Pavot, W., & Diener, E. (1993). Review of the Satisfaction With Life Scale.
Psychological Assessment, 5, 164-164.
Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, R. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology
progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-
421.
24
Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2006). How to increase and sustain
positive emotion: The effects of expressing gratitude and visualizing best possible
selves. Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 73-82.
Sommers, S., & Kosmitzki, C. (1988). Emotion and social context: An American-
German comparison. British Journal of Social Psychology, 27, 3549.
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief
measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063-1070.
Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., & Maltby, J. (2008). Gratitude uniquely predicts satisfaction
with life: Incremental validity above the domains and facets of the five factor
model. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 49-54.
Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Gillett, R., Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2007). The role of
gratitude in the development of social support, stress, and depression: Two
longitudinal studies. Journal of Research in Personality. 42, 854
25