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ADDING COMPLEXITY TO THE GRATITUDE-AFFECT RELATIONSHIP:

DEEPER IMPERSONAL GRATITUDE LEADS TO MORE CONTENTMENT

by

Ravi Iyer

A Thesis Presented to the


FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PSYCHOLOGY)

May 2010

Copyright 2010 Ravi Iyer


Table of Contents

List of Figures iii

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

Figure 2: Affect Balance excluding Personal Condition 15

Figure 3: Theorized Primary Direction of Effects 19

iii
Abstract

Gratitude exercises can have hedonic benefits, but observed effects have differed

in terms of intensity and duration. These differences could be due to qualitative

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

dimensions. These dimensions included personalization (being thankful to someone

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

pronounced effects on the negative activated/ positive deactivated axis of emotions.

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Introduction

Engaging in the conscious, intentional practice of gratitude as a happiness

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

operationalized in an equally diverse manner. In this study, we seek to build upon

previous research on gratitude by examining its effects on affective, rather than cognitive,

measures of well-being and by systematically varying the instructions we give

participants, in order to explore the effect of the diversity of gratitude practices.

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

quote from the Buddhist tradition:

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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.

In a sense, the modern study of gratitude is a statistical confirmation of what has

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

regular gratitude practice.

Previous Research on Gratitude and Affect

A number of previous psychological studies have focused on establishing the link

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

positive emotion, as a dependent measure. In previous research using affect as a

dependent measure, McCullough, Tsang and Emmons (2004) found significant

correlations between daily reported levels of gratitude and daily reported levels of

positive emotion but not between gratitude and reduced negative emotion. Emmons and

McCullough (2003) conducted three experimental studies exploring the relationship

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

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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.

Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) conducted a similar gratitude intervention

based on Emmons & McCulloughs (2003) studies and were unable to find significant

effects on positive or negative affect in comparing a gratitude condition to a control

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

gratitude condition experienced less negative affect compared to children in a hassles

condition, but not compared to children in a control condition.

Among experimental gratitude studies, Seligman, Steen, Park and Petersen (2005)

have reported the most robust effects on affect balance using gratitude interventions

available at their popular website, www.authentichappiness.com. These typically

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

interventions in positive psychology. Both of these exercises significantly increased

happiness, as measured by the Steen Happiness Index (Seligman et al., 2005), but their

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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

the intervention, but the effects diminished considerably over time.

In summary, there appears to be a pattern of evidence that there are indeed

affective benefits to the conscious practice of gratitude, but the magnitude of this

relationship seems less clear. Different operationalizations of gratitude exercises make it

very difficult to compare previous studies and few studies using affect as a dependent

measure have systematically varied the operationalization of gratitude within a sample.

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

the gratitude instructions within a population by asking participants to express gratitude

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-

being compared to either a control condition and or to participants who expressed

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,

with a focus on strictly affective dependent measures.

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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

reciprocators expression of gratitude. The theorized link is conscious awareness of 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,

work, and health.

Positive Emotion, Negative Emotion, and Happiness

Happiness can be operationalized as both a feeling (positive affect) and a

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

effects of gratitude on cognitive measures of happiness, such as life satisfaction. Emmons

and McCullough (2003) found effects of gratitude on life satisfaction in all three studies.

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Wood, Joseph and Maltby (2008) found that gratitude is a unique predictor of life

satisfaction, controlling for basic personality variables.

The relationship between gratitude and happiness as an emotion is less clear,

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

versus deactivated). In three studies using a variety of methods, Feldman-Barrett and

Russell (1988) confirmed the independence of these two dimensions of affect. If we

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

might have more robust effects on positive deactivated emotions.

The Present Study

Building on the work of prior gratitude interventions, specifically the

interventions created by Seligman et al. (2005), we sought to independently manipulate

both the depth and quantity of gratitude journal entries to determine what accounted for

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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

brief focus. As such, we sought to independently manipulate the depth of thought

(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

manipulated whether participants were specifically instructed to be grateful to another

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

relationship. It is possible that gratitude has a greater effect on deactivated emotions

versus activated emotions. As such, we measured four types of emotion (positive

activated, positive deactivated, negative activated, and negative deactivated) based on

Feldman-Barrett and Russells (1998) two identified dimensions: valence and activation.

We hypothesized that gratitude would have a greater impact on affect balance

(greater positive emotion and less negative emotion) in conditions which promoted

gratitude as an emotion rather than as a cognition. Personal situations, which involve

closer involvement of the participant with others, have been found to activate emotional

areas of the brain compared to impersonal situations (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom,

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

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trend of relationships across studies found by Emmons and McCullough (2003), gratitude

instructions promoting depth of thought should have a greater effect, though in a

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

conceptual overlap between words used in cognitive measures of happiness (e.g.

satisfied) and words used to measure state positive deactivated emotions (e.g. content).

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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

asked to be removed. No effort to coerce participants to participate in the experiment

after initial signup was made, in part to simulate real world conditions, so many

participants skipped several weeks. As such, true week-to-week longitudinal analysis

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.

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Measures

Some researchers have found that traditional dependent measures used in

gratitude research, such as the PANAS, may be biased towards activated positive

emotion, such as excited, versus deactivated positive emotion, such as content

(Sheldon & Lyubomirksy 2006; Feldmann-Barrett & Russell 1998). Therefore, we used

elements of Feldman-Barrett & Russells (1998) taxonomy of emotions to construct

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.

Each type of emotion was weighted equally.

Procedure

Participants visited www.meology.com and after giving informed consent, they

completed the Gratitude Quotient-6 (McCullough, Emmons & Tsang, 2002), the

Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999), and one item measures of

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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)

identified dimensions of emotion. Following standard internet protocol, participants were

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.

We randomly assigned participants to one of three content conditions: downward social

comparison (N=41), impersonal (N=46) or personal (N=50). In the downward social

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

thankful. Think of people in your life to whom you feel gratitude.

We also randomly assigned participants to one of three depth conditions: short

(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

significant difference. Participants in the short one-sentence/one-thing condition were

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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.

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Results

Affect Balance Comparison across Conditions

An initial 3x3 analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted using affect

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

condition (F(4,127) = 3.108, p<.05) were found to be significant predictors of affect

balance. Pairwise contrasts indicated a significant reduction in positive affect balance in

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

depth conditions is illustrated in Figure 1.

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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.

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Figure 2: Affect Balance excluding Personal Condition

Analysis by Type of Affect

In order to determine which types of affect were manipulated in this study,

analysis of covariance was examined for each type of affect independently. The depth

condition was a significant predictor of reduced negative activated affect (F(2,80)=5.075,

p<.01), increased positive deactivated affect (F(2,80)=4.111, p<.05), and increased

positive activated affect (F(2,80)=8.092, p<.01). No significant predictors were found

for negative deactivated affect.

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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

expected direction, but results were non-significant (see Table 1).

Table 1: Overall Effects of Gratitude Manipulation

Overall Effects

Reported Affect Type M SD T value p

Positive Activated 0.09 1.16 0.88 0.38

Positive Deactivated 0.23 1.14 2.33 .02*

Negative Activated -0.16 1.17 -1.6 0.11

Negative Deactivated -0.16 1.11 -1.68 0.1

Note: Values shown are mean, standard deviation, T-test statistics.


* p<.05

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

differential attrition, so we examined initial differences between these groups on gratitude

disposition, subjective happiness, subjective well being, optimism, and initial affect

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balance. No significant differences were found between these groups on any of these

measures.

Among all recruited participants, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) using total

number of visits as the dependent measure revealed no significant effects of content

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.

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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

experimental links between affective happiness and gratitude tended to be small in

contrast with the more pronounced effects found by Seligman et al. (2005). The

difference in results compared to Seligman et al. (2005) may be attributed to a difference

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

www.authentichappiness.com, ostensibly to engage in happiness increasing activities.

People who are actively seeking positive psychology interventions may experience

greater affective benefits from gratitude exercises.

As theorized by Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006), our gratitude manipulation had

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

intervention were found using measures of positive deactivated emotion. Analysis by

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

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along the other diagonal axis. Future studies of gratitude should be sure to measure

emotions such as calmness and contentedness.

Figure 3: Theorized Primary Direction of Effects of Gratitude on Affect Balance

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
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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

leads to such grateful emotion, rather than just grateful cognition.

We also predicted that personal gratitude instructions would have greater positive

effects compared to impersonal gratitude instructions. This hypothesis was not

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

potentially negative feelings such as obligation and indebtedness.

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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

gratitude has a reduced effect on happiness as an emotion, versus as a cognition. Sheldon

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

within our study.

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

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people who are likely to persist with gratitude exercises and future research should

examine the relationship between attrition and individual differences.

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

gratitude practice for themselves.

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