A study to assess the effect gratitude has on happiness and positivity

by lekharavi (student)

University Degree Biological Sciences

Lekha Ravichandran

PID: 720020560

November 2010

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson

PSYC 62: Positive Psychology

ABSTRACT

This experiment sought to investigate the level of happiness and positive outlook on life as dependent variables by practicing the “Three Blessings” (based on Emmons’ and Seligman’s studies) gratitude intervention. This exercise involves incorporating gratitude into everyday life in order to assess the positive impact it could have on overall well-being. The study is based on a self-experiment by a 17 year old college freshman, the only participant to partake in this research. It required an individual to keep a daily journal to write down three things one is grateful for at the end of every day for two weeks. A positivity ratio test and supplementary measures to test happiness and gratitude were taken immediately afterward and compared with previous three weeks of similar baseline data (sans gratitude intervention). Based on the data results, the overall level of well-being notably increased during the two weeks experimental situation, when the gratitude intervention was introduced, relative to the three weeks of the control period. This matches up to the previously carried out research by Emmons and Seligman. Therefore, it can be concluded there is a strong correlation between integrating daily proactive gratitude practice and positive emotions.

A study to assess the effect gratitude has on happiness and positivity

Gratitude is a positive emotion that involves making a conscious effort to become more aware and more appreciative of our blessings in life, many of which we often take for granted. Gratitude is important to study because it has shown a strong positive correlation to our happiness and overall well-being. At the very least, cultivating a grateful outlook towards life certainly does not make us feel any less good. Studies have shown that by writing down three things that went right for us at the end of each day that we are grateful for, we will have a more positive approach on life and be better able to perform at our optimal psychological and social functioning. (Emmons & McCullough, 2003)

Emmons and McCullough’s study of gratitude and its impact on well being in people’s lives showed that counting one’s blessing in a daily or weekly gratitude journal increased people’s well-being as opposed to those who kept track of burdens or neutral events. They hypothesized that keeping a record of one’s gratitude will have significant positive benefits for individuals. They tested their hypothesis by conducting an empirical study on 3 different groups. Participants in study groups one and two, both consisting on undergraduate college students, were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups – which included keeping a journal of one’s hassles, gratitude, or neutral life events/social comparisons. (Emmons & McCullough, 2003) This study lasted over a period of nine weeks and during their follow-up surveys, they found the mean positive scores (on three adjectives related to gratitude – grateful, thankful, and appreciative) for the people in the gratitude experimental condition to be reliably greater than the hassles and neutral events group. They found similar results with the third study group whose participants included adults with neuromuscular disease – where the people were randomly assigned to either a gratitude condition or to a control condition. We can conclude from their research that simply writing down the things we are grateful for can have a tremendous positive impact on our emotional outlook.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Another research on the effects of gratitude was published in the American Psychologist that supports the findings by Emmons and McCullough. These researchers actually simultaneously conducted studies on various psychological interventions that could affect our well-being and personal outlook on life, which was what they were testing in their hypothesis, but I will just focus on their studies related to gratitude. (Seligman, Steen, Park, and Peterson, 2005) Gratitude was found to be one of three of the interventions that had long-lasting results for happiness and decreased negative thoughts. They also label gratitude as a “strength of the heart” since it has shown strong positive correlations with life satisfaction in comparison to other character strengths. (Seligman, Steen, Park, and Peterson, 2005) They used the internet to conduct their study, but also took note of the fact that their research may be biased but is “headed in a relevant direction”. (Seligman, Steen, Park, and Peterson, 2005)They admit their data might be bias due to the fact that the participants were people who willingly volunteered to take an online internet survey meant for assessing the effects of gratitude (and other various interventions). They also used a placebo control exercise where they asked the participants to write about their early memories at the end of each day for one week. In their internet-based gratitude building exercises, which they called “Three good things in life”, 411 of 577 voluntary participants who were asked to write down three good things that happened to them each day and an explanation at the end of their day for one week were considered for the purposes of this research. They found that people who participated in this exercise felt happier than they did pre-experimental period for up to six more months. (Seligman, Steen, Park, and Peterson, 2005) Granted the people who felt happier continued doing this exercise well past the one week research period, it shows that this gratitude building exercise had a positive effect on their overall well-being since they kept at it.

Both these empirical articles show strikingly similar results regarding gratitude. In both cases, the participants experienced long-lasting effects after keeping a gratitude journal, albeit weekly or daily, which greatly enhanced their level of happiness, psychosocial functioning (measured by the capacity to get more tasks done and social interaction), and overall well-being and positive outlook on life. Moreover, gratitude has been shown to have one of the strongest and most positive effects upon people in comparison to the other test conditions and controls. However, many questions arise when trying to make sense of the reasons why gratitude seems to have such a strong impact on the way we think in relation to positive or negative emotions. Why is that being reminded of our blessings helps to instantly elevate our moods? There are many things to be grateful for each day that many of us do not take the time to be aware of, so why does the simple, non-time consuming task of counting our blessings leave a lasting impact on us for months to follow? I would like to understand just how and why gratitude affects our mindset in order to create such a positive, long-lasting impact.

These two empirical projects’ findings discuss and describe important key components in the field of positive psychology. It also leaves open opportunities for conducting many further research on this topic in order to gain a better understand of how gratitude and positive emotions, well-being are interrelated and affect one another. I feel that more empirical studies are necessary to support the pathways by which gratitude affects our overall well-being. I would like to learn more about how our cultural and regional backgrounds, gender, age, etc. could be factors in determining the effects of gratitude. However, the research and data already gathered on gratitude can serve as a helpful aid when trying to cope with psychological disorders such as depression and eating/self-image problems. Most importantly, incorporating gratitude in our everyday lives has the potential for increasing our positive emotions and well-being– thereby making everyone happier and helping reach our optimal functioning level, which is one of the main goals of positive psychology. The goal of my research is to assess how cultivating gratitude can impact my well-being and satisfaction in life. I measured this by using data collected from daily online positivity ratio tests (a test that predicts whether you languish or flourish – with a tipping point of 3:1 ratio, meaning that for every negative emotion experienced, you must have 3 positive emotions that help you flourish) and other relevant supplementary measures (the gratitude and the happiness scale).

METHOD

DESIGN

Independent Variable: Cultivating gratitude everyday

Operational Definition: Making a conscious effort to take the time to be appreciative and thankful for the blessings that occur in life, albeit it simple or grand events, that otherwise may or may not go noticed.

Dependent Variable: Overall happiness and positive outlook towards life

Operational Definition: How good one feels on a daily basis, based on measures such as positivity ratio and other supplementary scales to gauge the amount of positive emotions experienced.

Controls: The same participant was used for both the experimental and control conditions. The average of three weeks of baseline data over a normal period was compared with the average of two weeks of data when the gratitude intervention was introduced.

PARTICIPANT

A 17-year old, Asian, female college freshman enrolled in a positive psychology class was the only participant used for both the control and experimental conditions.

PROCEDURE

For three weeks (September 28 – October 19 ), I logged onto my account on and took the positivity ratio test at the end of each day, before I went to bed, and noted it down as “preliminary data” in my gratitude journal. These three weeks served as my baseline data since I have not introduced the intervention in my life and went about my day as I generally normally would. In addition, I also measured my level of gratitude and overall contentment on a scale of 1-10 and recorded it every day along with the positivity ratios on an Excel spreadsheet.

I introduced my daily gratitude intervention on November 1, 2010 and continued with it until November 14, 2010 for two weeks. This intervention was started two weeks after collecting the three weeks of baseline data. Every night at the end of my day during the experimental period, I wrote down three things I felt really grateful for and wrote a short description for why I felt that way. Immediately after writing in my gratitude journal, I went online to take a quick positivity ratio test on . Then, I performed the same action as I did during my baseline data period – I recorded my supplementary measures of overall gratitude and happiness in a spreadsheet along with the new positivity ratios.

RESULTS

The average scores of all the measures taken were computed for both the baseline time period and gratitude intervention period. This is the data collected, shown below:

From the above mentioned results and the graph, it becomes apparent that the intervention certainly did have a positive impact on all the measures, although to different extents.DISCUSSION

These results supported the initial hypothesis. When I was presented with the gratitude intervention, I exhibited a significant increase in gratitude – and my level of happiness and positivity also increased to a lesser degree from the baseline data. These results are reflective of the results obtained by Emmons and Seligman where they noted a great increase of prosocial behavior and subjective well-being by participants who recorded what they were grateful for (Emmons & McCullough, 2004). Moreover, the fact that the negativity score during the gratitude intervention is actually slightly greater that the control condition seems to support Emmon’s findings where he stated that although grateful people tend to have higher levels of positive emotions and life satisfaction, they do not disregard the negative aspects of life (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

Some of the strengths of this study were the consistency of timing for both the experimental and control groups. Precaution was taken to make sure the positivity ratio tests, supplementary assessments, and the writing in the gratitude journal itself were all done at the end of the day, before going to bed in the same order. However, stronger results could have been obtained if conditions would have allowed for greater internal and external validity. First, the single participant used for this experiment is not representative of the entire population resulting in a sample bias and, therefore, the results are not very generalizable. Furthermore, I am college freshman enrolled in a positive psychology course and thus, may have certain expectations that could skew the data. Second, the environment was not controlled so other extraneous factors (such as noise, time, place, etc.) could have impacted the participant’s responses. Granted, the data were collected at the end of every day in the same place, but there are many confounding variables in play (like other events that occurred in the day) that affect a person’s emotions and overall contentment for the day. Last, but not least, the size of the sample for this experiment was too small, decreasing the statistical power. It is possible that if we were to do this same study again and did the exact same procedure we could get different set of data, but the gratitude level will probably always be higher due to the simple fact that it is not commonly practiced in everyday life. However, all the data on average for the experimental condition is, to a certain degree, greater than the control condition which supports the results of studies done by Emmons, Seligman, and other researchers in this area. Thus, this self-experiment has some validity.

For further research, a more representative sample could be suggested, where we could represent the population as a whole. If the issue of sample size should be addressed, the experiment could be conducted with a bigger pool of participants from different social and economic backgrounds. It is difficult avoid the possible confounding since the purpose of the “Three Blessings” experiment includes living life normally, with different events occurring everyday that could potentially alter our emotions. Furthermore, in order to get a more detailed analysis of these results, we could look into other reasons and explanations to describe our data. For example, some participants may have a pre-disposition to experiencing certain emotions that may limit the extent of positive emotions they can cultivate by practicing “Three Blessings” and other such activities. Other variations of this experiment could also be administered in order to study further into the power of grateful thinking in general.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine how cultivating a sense and awareness or gratitude by taking the time to be thankful and appreciative of the blessings in one’s life could contribute to overall sense of happiness and positive outlook. This study looked at how positivity ratio, level of life satisfaction, and amount of gratitude was affected by introducing a gratitude intervention. It was found that all the various measures test positivity or other supplementary factors had a notable increase while practicing the “Three Blessings” exercise. Gratitude, especially, had a significant increase which is important because previous studies (such as the ones by Emmons and Seligman) have found close, positively correlated connections between gratitude and happiness – which this self-experiment also reinforces. Based on this study, keeping daily records of gratitude does in fact seem to have a beneficial outcome and certainly affects a person’s level of happiness and positivity.

REFERENCE

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: Experimental studies of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 377-389

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.

Emmons, R.A., & McCullough, M.E. (Eds.). (2004). The psychology of gratitude. New York: Oxford University Press.