What is the Best Way to Practice Gratitude?

We all hear about the importance of practicing gratitude, particularly around this time of year. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, you are likely to go around the table and say what you are grateful for before digging in to your mashed potatoes. Beyond Thanksgiving, you may have heard the advice that you should write gratitude lists, keep a gratitude journal or write heartfelt letters of thanks to the important people in your life. All of these activities sound like a great idea in theory but, as a busy parent, you have probably wondered whether these practices are really worth the effort.

A recent study addressed this very question.

Study Details

The researchers examined the impacts of different ways of expressing gratitude, including whether expressing gratitude is more beneficial when it involves other people (such as writing a thank you letter versus a gratitude list) and when it is expressed in a short versus long format (such as a list versus a letter or essay). This study included 958 adults in Australia who were randomly assigned to one of six conditions (also see figure below):

1. Gratitude letters (social, longer format): writing gratitude letters to tell someone why you are grateful for them
2. Gratitude essays (non-social, longer format): writing essays about things you are grateful for (excluding people)
3. Social gratitude lists (social, shorter format): writing gratitude lists of people you are grateful for
4. Nonsocial gratitude lists (non-social, longer format): writing lists of things you are grateful for (excluding people)
5. General gratitude list: writing a list of things and people you are grateful for
6. Control condition: simply writing about your daily activities

The participants were asked to do one of these exercises every day for one week. The researchers then looked at the extent to which each of these exercises increased gratitude, improved mood, made participants feel more indebted or connected to someone else, and increased life satisfaction and feelings of elevation (translation: feeling uplifted). Important note: because participants were randomly assigned, we can know that the gratitude exercises actually caused these psychological benefits.

Main Findings

Here are the main takeaways from the study:

1. Doing some type of gratitude exercise is better than nothing. Completing any of these gratitude exercises resulted in greater feelings of gratitude, indebtedness, connectedness and elevation (translation: feeling uplifted) when compared with simply writing down daily activities.
2. Writing about gratitude in longer format may make you feel better. The longer writing condition (letter or essay) resulted in more gratitude, elevation, indebtedness, positive mood and life satisfaction than the shorter format of gratitude exercises (that is, gratitude lists).
3. Writing thank you letters may have the most benefits. Participants who wrote thank you letters showed more positive impacts than any other condition. Participants who wrote thank you letters reported greater feelings of elevation, positive mood, gratitude and life satisfaction than those who wrote gratitude lists of people they were grateful for. They showed greater elevation, gratitude and better mood when compared to those who wrote gratitude lists of things they were grateful for, and higher levels of elevation when compared to those who wrote gratitude lists of both things and people and those who wrote a gratitude essay about things they are grateful for. However, writing thank you letters also increased feelings of indebtedness to a greater extent than any of the other conditions.
4. Gratitude lists alone may not be enough. The researchers actually found no differences between writing gratitude lists versus writing about daily activities. Previous research has found evidence for benefits of gratitude lists though so further research is needed in order to determine whether gratitude lists are worth the effort. It could be that a week is not long enough to see the results of this intervention.
5. Gratitude exercises involving other people make you feel more indebted to them (like you owe them). People who engaged in social gratitude exercises showed more indebtedness than those who engaged in nonsocial exercises in this study.
6. You have to be consistent to see the positive impacts. The researchers had participants do these exercises every day for a week and then didn’t ask them to do anything for the following week. The researchers found very few impacts of the gratitude exercises after a week of not doing them, suggesting that you need to keep regularly practicing gratitude in order to experience the benefits.

Overall Translation

We all know that gratitude is important but how exactly do we increase real feelings of gratitude and benefit from a gratitude practice? Having some kind of gratitude practice sounds lovely but we all have limited time and it would be nice to know what provides us the biggest bang for our buck. This study found that writing thank you letters seems to be the most effective way to practice gratitude. A gratitude letter is more than simply a letter thanking another person for a gift but is a more open-ended opportunity to say why you are grateful for them as a person. You don’t even have to send the letter to the person (in most research studies, they do not ask participants to send it) and you could even write it to a loved one who has died or to God or your Higher Power. If you don’t have time for a letter, try sending a text or expressing your gratitude verbally to someone. You are likely to make both yourself and the other person feel better!

Cara Goodwin, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, a mother of four and the founder of Parenting Translator, a nonprofit newsletter that turns scientific research into information that is accurate, relevant and useful for parents.

 There are many ways to apply the benefits of expressing gratitude. Here is the research behind exactly how to increase gratitude in your life.  MindShift