We often think of November as a time to be thankful because we celebrate Thanksgiving during this month. I thought that in the theme of thankfulness, I would share some peer reviewed research and findings on Gratitude.
In the paper written by Sansone and Sansone, “Gratitude and Wellbeing” they explored five experiments conducted regarding gratitude and discovered some interesting conclusions.
First, Sansone and Sansone defined what gratitude means on a broad scale. In essence, their definition is, “Gratitude is the appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself and represents a general state of thankfulness and/or appreciation” (Sansone, 2010).
The first experiment was conducted by Emmons and McCullough. They divided a group of individuals into three subgroups. Each subgroup was tasked with different requirements. “One group was asked to journal about negative events or hassles, a second group about the things for which they were grateful, and a third group about neutral life events, and were required to journal either daily or week” (Sansone, 2010).
In the second experiment by Dickerhoof, two groups of individuals either wrote “about their best possible future selves (optimism exercise) or write letters of gratitude (gratitude exercise). In contrast, in the control paradigm, participants were required to write about the events of the past week (Sansone, 2010).
In the third experiment, “Froh conducted a study in which 221 adolescents were assigned to either a gratitude exercise (i.e., counting one’s blessings), a hassles condition, or a control condition” (Sansone, 2010).
There were two more studies that contributed to the results. However, the overall conclusion determined that, “An existing body of research supports an association between gratitude and an overall sense of well being, although occasional negative findings are also evident in the literature. Research also indicates that there are a number of potential nuances in the relationship between gratitude and well being that may eventually be relevant to the effective integration of gratitude techniques into psychotherapy treatment” (Sansone, 2010).
“According to some authorities, the available techniques for enhancing gratitude and, therefore, well being are relatively simple and easy to integrate into psychotherapy practice, although the characteristics of these techniques in terms of efficacy and sustained change remain largely unknown. Only future research will clarify the many questions around assessing and enhancing gratitude” (Sansone, 2010).
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