The Good in Gratitude
One of the first things a guest will see upon entering my home is a simple decoration that encapsulates my desire for our family life. It contains a few photos of my wife, our boys, and myself, as well as six words declaring our family values: Kindness, Respect, Honesty, Humility, Generosity, and Gratitude.
Each of these values is relational, and places the needs, dignity, and worth of the other person above oneself. As we enter this season of thanksgiving, I believe it’s worth spending a few moments considering gratitude, and what the significance of this value might be.
When was the last time you directly expressed gratitude? Were you actually feeling grateful at the time? How did you feel after you shared your appreciation? How did the other person respond? Did they receive it well? Did they play the “aw shucks, it was nothing” card? Did they just text you back with the conversation-killing “thumbs up” emoji? 
In recent years, researchers in the field of positive psychology have attempted to understand how gratitude might impact other feeling states (temporary) or personality traits (enduring) in the person who expresses gratitude, and the recipient of the gratitude. Gratitude, it turns out, has a direct relationship to joy.
Watkins et al. (2018) found that more grateful people (trait) tend to experience more joy. They also found that people who are more generally joyful (trait) tend to express more gratitude (state) and report higher subjective well-being over time. Other researchers (You et al., 2018) found that grateful people may notice more of the positive in their environments, including available social supports, as well as experience fewer emotional difficulties.
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So what does that mean for us? For everyday folks? For non-research participants? It means that we should be cultivating gratitude in ourselves. Our thoughts, our actions, our intentions, our responses to pleasurable and painful experiences, and all other elements of our lives, should be products of the gratitude in our hearts. From a Christian perspective, we should be continually grateful because the very breath we breathe is a gift from God, as well as the free will to choose whether to express gratitude with that breath. Even the painful breaths.
You may be reading this and thinking, “Why on earth would I be grateful for painful experiences!?” If you’re interested in a detailed explanation for why Christians might be grateful for painful experiences, I’ll refer you to C.S. Lewis’ book, The Problem of Pain. For the purposes of this brief post, however, I’ll just focus on the research stating that it’s healthy to be grateful, and that we miss out on a great deal of good in our lives when we choose otherwise.
To return to the good that results from feeling and expressing gratitude, is there any benefit to others when we show gratitude? I mentioned above that gratitude is, by definition, relational. Does this necessarily mean that there is a direct benefit to the recipients of our gratitude? According to Lee et al. (2018), the day after receiving gratitude, recipients tended to experience greater happiness, see themselves as having more prosocial impact, and to be more engaged at work.
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I guess a good way to conclude would be to briefly explore why we sometimes might not express gratitude even when we feel grateful. In a creative study asking participants to write a letter expressing gratitude, Kumar and Epley (2018) found that participants tended to underestimate the amount of surprise recipients would feel, overestimate the awkwardness felt upon receiving gratitude, and underestimate the resulting joy felt by recipients.
The bottom line: if you find yourself holding back a compliment, a text of thanks, or anything else that lets a person know you value them and their contributions to your life and experience, consider the good you can do in both your life and theirs. Tell them you are grateful!
Photo by Lucas Lenzi on Unsplash
As we head into this season of thanksgiving, let’s not treat gratitude like a New Year’s resolution. Gratitude is not something that should be focused on once a year and then forgotten. Rather, it is something that should be lived and practiced daily, throughout our lives, in every moment. For your sake, and for the sake of others, let your gratitude show!
References
Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2018). Undervaluing gratitude: Expressers misunderstand the consequences of showing appreciation. Psychological Science, 29(9), 1423–1435. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618772506
Lee, H. W., Bradburn, J., Johnson, R. E., Lin, S.-H. (Joanna), & Chang, C.-H. (Daisy). (2018). The benefits of receiving gratitude for helpers: A daily investigation of proactive and reactive helping at work. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000346
Watkins, P. L., Emmons, R. A., Greaves, M. R., & Bell, J. (2018). Joy is a distinct positive emotion: Assessment of joy and relationship to gratitude and well-being. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(5), 522-539.
You, S., Lee, J., Lee, Y., & Kim, E. (2018). Gratitude and life satisfaction in early adolescence: The mediating role of social support and emotional difficulties. Personality and Individual Differences, 130, 122–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.04.005
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Robert Pate, Psy.D.
Director of Clinical Training, Doctor of Psychology Program
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
esmith says: So interesting. It’s interesting to think about what holds us back in expressing gratitude. For me, it’s often the size of the thing (e.g., do I need to express gratitude for even small things?). Now that I have kids….yes. I really try to. Partly because it helps me maintain my perspective, but also because I want to model to my children the importance of recognizing how so much of our lives have been given to us. We are responsible for what we do with that life/those opportunities, but we aren’t necessarily responsible for those opportunities being there in the first place. Thanks for sharing, Dr. Pate!
-Dr. Smith
Jacqueline Gustafson says: Dr. Pate – thank you for this timely and important contribution. I am thankful to work alongside of you and our other colleagues in the College of Behavioral Sciences. May you be blessed this Thanksgiving holiday!
Marisol Serrato says: Greetings Dr. Robert Pate,
I want to thank you for the beautiful insight you have offered on the concept of Gratitude. I find the questions you brought forth very significant in our lives such as, ” when was the last time we directly expressed gratitude and if it was an actual heartfelt gratitude?” We usually tend to forget such an important exercise in our spiritual lives. And i encourage all research that further discover the importance of the feeling. If we could all remember to be grateful for something every day it would really make the difference!
Blessings.
Brittany Burgos says: Hello Dr. Pate, I really loved your post and how you’ve identified the importance of gratitude. I truly agree that being grateful is a sure way of finding true happiness. In fact, just the other night I could not sleep for the life of me. I just had really delve deep into the past of all the times my best and closest friend has been there for me and has provided so much love and support that I took for granted. As I thought about all of these past experiences I’ve realized just how much they’ve truly cared for me even when I was hurtful to them. I got teary eyed as I realized just how selfless and supportive they were of me and I never sincerely expressed my gratitude to them. I went ahead and talked to them about it and expressed just how grateful I was to have someone who’s so loving and forgiving as my best friend. I felt that doing so really strengthened our relationship. While reading this post I also just remembered all the things my sister has done that I have yet to thank her for. I guess I owe a lot of my loved ones my sincere gratitude. I feel a strong sense of relief and peace when I let others know how grateful I am for them.
Andrea Laliena says: Truly enjoyed reading this post. I have recently been engaging in some “happiness increasing” activities from the book ‘The how of happiness’ by Sonja Lyubomirsky and one of them includes writing gratitude letters. I think sometimes we might want to say thank you but do not quite know how to express that gratitude without making it too “awkward”. But I guess we tend to overestimate this factor as well… And like you mentioned, it is not enough to simply show gratitude once a year, or for a month only, like one of my college swim coaches says, “you have to have an ‘attitude of gratitude'” always!
Gabriella Galbraith says: Dr. Pate,
I really enjoyed reading your blog post and I especially loved seeing your sign that is up in your house. When I read about your sign it reminded me of home and how my mom has our family values displayed all throughout our house. The last paragraph of your post spoke wonders to me because it seems like we as humans don’t show enough gratitude to the ones who are closest to us unless it is around Thanksgiving. Thank you for such an insightful post!
Gabriella Galbraith
Joshua Allan Hood says: “The Good in Gratitude” allowed me to think about how often I let others know how much I appreciate them. Sometimes I believe I express too much gratitude; other times gratitude is the last thing on my mind. I appreciate that this blog points out a direct correlation between gratitude and joy.
This terminology must be appreciated by people in statistics classes, because we know that direct correlations represents very strong and significant relationships. It is ironic that professionals in the field of Positive Psychology have identified a “direct positive correlation” between these two variables (joy and gratitude). I am going to look into the book mentioned here “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis, it seems like a great read.
I understand why not just Christians, but people in general should be grateful for painful experiences. Experiences in general develop certain levels of understanding and maturity within us, which is another reason we should openly express gratitude. The bottom line here seems to be that we should always let other people know we value them, and that we value their contributions to our personal life experience.
Yes, Lewis’ The Problem of Pain is a great read, especially for Christians struggling with common questions such as “If God is good, then why did He let _(fill in anything unpleasant or unwanted here)_ happen?” Thank you for your comment!
Caleb Winfrey says: This is definitely interesting that we hold back our gratitude to someone and I like how you show your family and the values they end up representing to show what they mean to you and how you bring up thanksgiving but I feel what this blog is trying to tell us is how to express ourselves which such an amazing thing we should do.
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