01 Dec Six New Studies That Can Help You Rediscover Gratitude
It won’t surprise anyone to read that gratitude is a crucial component of happiness.
Feeling thankful and expressing thanks are key strategies to boosting happiness and more generally, wellbeing.
We all know that appreciation is a good thing but we also all know that it’s easy to lose track of what’s good and as such, for our health and happiness to dwindle somewhat.
So, if you’re looking for more happiness via the rediscovery of gratitude then …
via the Greater Good by KIRA M. NEWMAN, HANNAH J. VILLAREAL, JILL SUTTIE, MARYAM ABDULLAH
While society at large turns its interest to gratitude in November, National Gratitude Month, some researchers spend their whole years—and careers—studying what gratitude means, its benefits, and how to practice it.
Here at Greater Good, we’ve reported on new research suggesting that gratitude at work can reduce your stress and help your team feel heard, and that gratitude journaling was a helpful tool for people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But there were a few more gratitude studies published this year that we think you’ll be interested in—studies that can help you figure out the best way to express your gratitude, navigate culture differences around saying thank you, and find the motivation to start your own gratitude practice.
Here are six more insights that researchers have learned from studying gratitude in 2022.
1. A gratitude letter might be better than a gratitude journal…
Researchers from the University of California, Riverside, aimed to figure out the best way to practice gratitude if you want to be happier in life.
To find out, they recruited 958 Australian adults to try out different practices daily for a week: writing a gratitude letter to someone (but not sending it), writing a gratitude essay about something they were thankful for (not a person), writing lists of people or things they were grateful for, or simply keeping track of their daily activities.
Before, after, and one week later, the participants filled out surveys measuring their life satisfaction, and positive and negative emotions.
Among all those practices, writing a gratitude letter to someone appeared to be the most beneficial. When compared to the people who only kept track of daily activities, those who wrote gratitude letters felt more gratitude, positive emotions, elevation, and connectedness.
More broadly, the longer writing activities—letters and essays—seemed to be more beneficial than shorter lists (the typical gratitude journal practice).
There’s one caveat: Gratitude letters made people feel a greater sense of indebtedness compared to all the other gratitude practices. The benefits were also small and short-lived, the researchers found, suggesting that we should practice gratitude regularly if we want to keep getting something out of it.
This study might inspire you to write a gratitude letter…but could there be an even better practice?
2. …but there’s no “best” way to practice gratitude
The same researchers published a second study this fall that compared gratitude letters to two other practices—practices that involved expressing gratitude directly to others rather than simply reflecting on it in solitude.
They recruited over 900 undergraduate students, mostly Asian and Latino, to try out writing gratitude letters (again, not sending them), sending a thank-you text, or expressing gratitude publicly in a social media post or tweet.
The participants tried their practice four times, expressing gratitude for four different people. Before and after the experiment, they reported on their emotions, satisfaction with life, and feelings of connectedness and support…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE