Thanksgiving: Expressing Gratitude Enhances our Well-Being

Source: Grisson Air Reserve Base

For past Thanksgiving holidays, I've blogged about some interesting research regarding the benefits of expressing gratitude. For instance, last year, I wrote about experimental research conducted by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough that demonstrated the benefits associated with counting our blessings.   

This year, I'd like to share the findings from another important study about gratitude.  Several years ago, Sheung-Tak Cheng, Pui Ki Tsui, John Lam published a paper titled, "Improving Mental Health in Health Care Practitioners: Randomized Controlled Trial of a Gratitude Intervention."  In explaining the meaning and impact of their research, the scholars wrote, "This study revealed that an intervention involving writing gratitude events led to a reduction in perceived stress and depressive symptoms among health care practitioners. It is possible that such positive effects among these professionals can also lead to an improvement in both productivity and quality of patient services."

What precisely did these researchers do in their study?  102 physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists participated in this research project.  The health care practitioners wrote diaries about work-related events twice per week for four weeks.  The scholars directed some participants to describe events about which they were thankful.  They directed others to describe something that annoyed them.  Naturally, the scholars included a control condition in their study.   They found that the gratitude diary entries often described receiving assistance from colleagues or benefiting in some other way from a constructive relationship with a co-worker.   The scholars found that writing about gratitude reduced perceived stress and depressive symptoms among the healthcare practitioners.  In short, expressing gratitude seemed to have a positive effect on the workers' well-being.  The scholars speculate that these positive effects might actually enhance the care of patients, though they do not measure that in this particular study.  

We often hear about the importance of self-reflection.  Some leaders take a few moments at the end of each day or week to reflect upon what they have accomplished recently, as well as the mistakes that they have made.  This type of reflection can enhance learning and lead to continuous improvement.  These studies suggest that these moments of self-reflection ought to also include some time for considering those things and people for which we feel very grateful.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I'm certainly grateful to those who take the time to read this blog! 

We Underestimate the Power of a Thank You Note

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Several months ago, I drafted a blog post about a rather discouraging piece of research on gratitude. Jeremy Yip, Cindy Chan, Kelly Kiyeon Lee, and Alison Wood Brooks conducted a study regarding competitive negotiations. They discovered that "negotiators are likely to respond selfishly and opportunistically to gratitude expressed in competitive deal-making situations." 

Today I have some encouraging news about gratitude. Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley have published some interesting work in Psychological Science based on a series of experiments that they conducted. The scholars asked people to write thank you notes to people who had a positive impact on them in some way. The researchers also asked each note writer to predict how the recipient would feel upon receiving the expression of gratitude. The British Psychological Society's Research Digest recently summarized the key findings from this research. 

The senders of the thank-you letters consistently underestimated how positive the recipients felt about receiving the letters and how surprised they were by the content. The senders also overestimated how awkward the recipients felt; and they underestimated how warm, and especially how competent, the recipients perceived them to be. Age and gender made no difference to the pattern of findings.

Other experiments showed that these same misjudgments affect our willingness to write thank-you messages. For instance, participants who felt less competent about writing a message of gratitude were less willing to send one; and, logically enough, participants were least willing to send thank-you messages to recipients who they felt would benefit the least.

Kumar and Epley believe that this asymmetry between the perspective of the potential expresser of gratitude and the recipient means that we often refrain from a “powerful act of civility” that would benefit both parties.

The lesson is clear... take the time to write that thank you note, becuase it will probably have more of an impact than you believe. You might just make someone's day, and it won't take much effort on your part to do so.

When Saying Thank You Can Get You in Trouble

Jeremy Yip, Cindy Chan, Kelly Kiyeon Lee, and Alison Wood Brooks have conducted a study regarding competitive negotiations that, to some extent, is rather disheartening.  They explored whether expressions of gratitude may be detrimental during negotiations.   Specifically, they explored whether "negotiators are likely to respond selfishly and opportunistically to gratitude expressed in competitive deal-making situations."   

The scholars conducted a series of experimental studies to explore how expressions of gratitude affect a counterpart's behavior during a negotiation.   Here are their findings:

Study 1a:   In a negotation over a price of a backpack, buyers made more selfish counteroffers if the seller expressed gratitude after receiving the initial offer.  

Study 1b:  The scholars replicated their findings from Study #1 using a different context.  In this case, two parties engaged in a rental property negotiation.  

Study 2:  The scholars found that, "Grateful counterparts are more likely to infer that their counterparts are particularly forgiving, which encourages exploitative behavior."  

Study 3:  Using the rental property negotation again, scholars found that gratitude elicits selfish behvaior, but expressions of excitement do not.  

Study 4:  The researchers found that expressions of gratitude tend to induce selfish deception on the part of counterparties, i.e. they were more likely to lie in an effort to achieve a better outcome.  

The Benefits of Gratitude

We should all be thankful for the many blessings that we have received. We should express our gratitude to others more often. As leaders, saying thank you more often will help us engage our employees and enhance their satisfaction and productivity. Who could quibble with these assertions. They represent common sense to most of us. Does research back up our attitudes regarding the benefits of gratitude? An impactful series of experimental studies by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough demonstrated some of the key benefits associated with counting our blessings on a regular basis. 

The two scholars conducted several studies regarding gratitude. In each experiment, they directed some subjects to list their blessings on a regular basis. Meanwhile, they directed others to list the hassles that they had experienced. A control condition existed as well. What did they find? Counting your blessings had substantial emotional and interpersonal benefits. For instance, in one study, they found that people who counted their blessings on a weekly basis "felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic regarding their expectations for the upcoming week" relative to those who listed the hassles that had affected them during that week. The researchers also found that the people in the "blessings' condition felt better physically and exercised more often during that week. 

In a second study, they asked people to count their blessings on a daily, rather than weekly, basis. They found that people in the blessings condition experienced higher levels of positive affect. Moreover, these individuals were more likely to have helped others as compared to those in the "hassles" condition.  In a third study, the scholars found that, "The gratitude intervention also appears to have improved people’s amount of sleep and the quality of that sleep. Furthermore, the effects on well-being (positive affect and life satisfaction) were apparent to the participants’ spouse or significant other." 

In sum, counting our blessings can have real benefits for us and for those around us. We should express our gratitude on this Thanksgiving, but more importantly, we should pledge to be more grateful on a weekly, and even daily, basis moving forward.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

Count Your Blessings

Arthur Brooks' article in this weekend's New York Times pointed me to a fascinating study about giving thanks.   In 2003, Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough published a paper titled, "Counting Blessings vs. Burdens:  An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life."  The authors begin their paper by quoting Charles Dickens:  "Reflect on your present blessings, on which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."   The scholars asked some research subjects to list things for which they were grateful over a period of several weeks.  Other subjects kept lists of "hassles" - and a third control group listed neutral events.   The researchers also asked all subjects to keep records of their moods, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals during this time.  The people who kept lists of things for which they were grateful "felt better about their lives as a whole, and were optimistic regarding their expectations for the upcoming week.  They reported fewer physical complaints and reported spending significantly more time exercising."   In short, focusing on gratitude and thanksgiving can be good for you.  So, try to put aside the hassles and the worries for the next few days at least, and attempt to focus on those things for which we should be thankful.   Then let's all try to make it a routine practice to spend more time being grateful and less time being annoyed.    Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!