The Compassionate Instinct

So I was surprised at how dramatically positive our results were. At the end of the ten weeks, participants who’d kept a gratitude journal felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about the future than participants in either of the other two conditions. To put it into numbers, according to the scale we used to calculate well-being, they were a full 25 percent happier than the other participants. Those in the gratitude condition reported fewer health complaints and even spent more time exercising than control participants did, and significantly more time exercising than those in the hassles condition (nearly 1.5 hours more per week). This is a massive difference. The gratitude-group participants also experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness than those in either of the other two groups.

In a second study, we asked participants to keep journals every day for two weeks. People assigned to express gratitude again showed an impressive array of benefits: On surveys we gave all study participants, people who kept a gratitude journal reported feeling more joyful, enthusiastic, interested, attentive, energetic, excited, determined, and strong than those in the hassles condition. They also reported offering others more emotional support or help with a personal problem—supporting the notion that gratitude motivates people to do good. And this was not limited to what they said about themselves. We sent surveys to people who knew them well, and these significant others rated participants in the gratitude group as more helpful than those in the other groups (these friends were not aware of which experimental condition the participants were in).

We got similar results in a study of adults with neuromuscular disorders, many of whom suffered from fatigue, slowly progressive muscle weakness, muscle and joint pain, and muscular atrophy. Little is known about factors affecting the quality of life among people with neuromuscular disorders. This study gave us a unique opportunity to determine if the gratitude intervention could help improve the well-being of these people coping with a chronic physical disease.

Participants in the gratitude condition showed significantly more positive emotions and satisfaction with life than a control group, while also showing fewer negative emotions. They also felt more optimism about the upcoming week and felt closer and more connected to others, even though many lived alone and did not increase their actual contact time with others. Remarkably, these positive emotional and psychological changes weren’t only apparent to the participants themselves: based on reports we received from the spouses of study participants, people in the gratitude condition seemed outwardly happier than people in the control group.

Participants in the gratitude condition also reported getting more hours of sleep each night, spending less time awake before falling asleep, and feeling more refreshed upon awakening. This finding is enormous, in that sleep disturbance and poor sleep quality have been identified as central indicators of poor overall well-being, as well as increased risk for physical disease and premature death. It may sound simplistic, but the evidence cannot be ignored: If you want to sleep more soundly, count blessings, not sheep.

One of the important features of all of these studies is that we randomly assigned participants to conditions. Many people who tend toward pessimism may have been placed in the gratitude group, just as optimists may have been placed in the other conditions. Plus, few studies have been able to successfully create interventions to increase happiness or well-being; we were able to do so with an exercise that required minimal effort. Other studies have corroborated our findings and further testified to gratitude’s benefits, especially for social connections. For example, additional research Mike and I conducted has shown that individuals who report habitually experiencing gratitude engage more frequently in kind or helpful behaviors than do people who experience gratitude less often.