by F. Bolsover, R. Bell, Z. Clark, M. Saggu, F. Enock,
L. Fraser, A. Grant, E. Wallmen, A. Kossurok
“Let us be grateful to people who
make us happy; they are the
charming gardeners who make our
souls blossom.” Marcel Proust
“Gratitude is not only the
greatest of the virtues but the
parent of all others.” Cicero
Content
1. Introduction
2. Paper 1:
Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental
Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in
Daily Life (Emmons and McCullough, 2003)
3. Paper 2:
Gratitude predicts psychological well-being above the Big
Five facets (Wood, Joseph and Maltby, 2009)
4. Conclusion
5. Q & A
Introduction
What is Gratitude?
 A positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgement of
a benefit that one has received or will receive.
Gratitude + Psychology = ?
 Focused on understanding:
 State gratitude
 Trait gratitude
 Relationship between state and trait gratitude aspects.
How to measure individual
differences in gratitude?
Gratitude Questionnaire – 6 (GQ-6)
 Measures frequency and intensity of gratitude of an individual
The Appreciation Scale
 Measure 8 different aspects of gratitude:
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Appreciation of people
Possessions
Present moment
Rituals
Feeling of awe
Social comparisons
Existential concerns
Behaviour which expresses gratitude
How to measure individual
differences in gratitude?
Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test (GRAT)
 Assesses gratitude towards other people, gratitude
towards the world in general, and a lack of resentment
for what you don’t have.
Each scale has been shown to be measuring the same
approach to life – suggesting that individual differences
in gratitude include all of these components (Wood et
al., 2008)
What can gratitude do for you?
Experiment on satisfaction of customers of a jewellery store.
 Customers who were called and thanked showed a 70%
increase in purchases
 Customers who were thanked and told about a sale showed
only a 30% increase in purchases
 Customers who were not called at all did not show an
increase.
 In another study, it was found that regular
customers of a restaurant gave bigger tips
when waiters wrote “Thank you” on their bills.
Fun Facts
Fun Fact #1:
 The white bell flower is the flower
that symbolises gratitude.
Fun Fact #2:
 Gratitude is one of the few social
psychology concepts that has a
related national holiday – GUESS
WHICH ONE!
THANKSGIVING
Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An
Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and
Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389.
Gratitude and Happiness
 Claims that grateful responses to life can lead to
happiness, physical health, well-being and overall
positive functioning are intuitively compelling …
 But, are largely speculative and scientifically
untested.
Purpose of this study
 To experimentally investigate the effects of a
‘grateful outlook’ on psychological and physical
well-being.
 Does ‘counting one’s blessings’ lead to enhanced
psychological and physical functioning?
Hypothesis
 Exercises designed to induce a state of gratitude 
heightened well-being over time
 relative to a focus on:
 hassles
 downward social comparisons
 neutral life events
 Those in the gratitude-focused group will show
enhanced psychosocial functioning relative to persons
in the other groups.
Method
 Studies 1 and 2 - undergraduate student participants
randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions:
 gratitude listing
 hassles
 neutral life events/social comparisons
 Study 3 – persons with neuromuscular disease
randomly assigned to either the gratitude condition or
a control condition.
Results - Participants in
the gratitude condition:
Study 1:
 felt better about their lives
 more optimistic
 fewer physical complaints
 spent more time exercising
Study 2:
 higher levels of positive affect
 more helpful and emotionally supportive to others
Study 3:
 improved subjective life appraisals
 increased positive affect
 reduced negative affect
 effects on well-being apparent to participants’ partner
Results
 Analyses showed that gratitude was uniquely
responsible for the effect of the intervention on
positive affect.
 The intervention did have a general effect on positive
affect.
 However; analyses revealed that the effects of the
intervention on gratitude were specifically as a result
of the gratitude induction.
 There do appear to exist benefits to regularly focusing
on one’s blessings.
Discussion
 There are many influences on well-being: including
personality factors, genetic influences and life events.
 Thus, one factor by itself would not be expected to be
particularly potent.
 Although gratefulness was not instilled in participants
as a result of this brief manipulation:
 an intentional grateful focus could have the ability to
impact long-term levels of well-being.
Implications for future research
 This study has treated gratitude as a malleable
characteristic. Yet it may also possess trait-like
qualities …
 To what degree would dispositional gratefulness
interact with a gratitude manipulation to either
strengthen or weaken the effect?
Gratitude Predicts Psychological well-being above
the Big Five facets. Personality and Individual
Differences, 46, 443-447.
Introduction
 How important is gratitude for our psychological well-
being (PWB)?
 This study aims to find whether gratitude is linked to
psychological well-being after removing the effects of
the facets of the Big Five.
Previous Research
 Previous studies have found that grateful people feel more
frequent and intense grateful affect have more positive
views of their social environments, utilise productive
coping strategies, have more positive traits, better sleep
and continually focus on the positive in their environment
with a greater appreciation of their life and their
possessions.
 With one exception, research has focussed on subjective
well-being (SWB – i.e., hedonistic momentary pleasure)
and has ignored a potential relationship between gratitude
and psychological well-being (PWB – i.e., personal positive
relationships with self and others).
Method
 201 participants (128 female), all undergraduate
students.
 PWB measured with the 18 items scales of PWB
 Items assessed included self acceptance, positive
relationships with others, personal growth, purpose in
life, environmental mastery and autonomy and were
rated on a scale from 1 to 7.
 The domains and facets of the Big Five were measured
with the NEO-PI-R
Results
 Overall, gratitude was positively correlated with certain
facets form the extraversion, openness agreeableness, and
conscientiousness domains and negatively correlated with
certain neuroticism facets.
 The Big Five facets strongly correlated with PWB,
highlighting the importance of covarying the facets when
examining the relationship between gratitude and PWB.
 Gratitude improved the prediction of personal growth,
positive relationships with others, purpose in life and selfacceptance
 However, gratitude did not uniquely predict autonomy or
environmental mastery.
Discussion
 Gratitude is related to a life that is meaningful
rather than hedonistically pleasant.
 The relationship between gratitude and several
PWB variables was independent of the effects of
the 30 facets of the Five Factor model, suggesting
that gratitude may be uniquely important to PWB.
 The question of whether gratitude is a predictor of
well-being or actually a fundamental aspect of
well-being itself remains unanswered.
Limitations and Implications
 Reliance on self-report measures
 The methodology can only show incremental validity with
regard to the particular variables included in the study.
 Future research should develop a theory as to which other
variables should be studied along side gratitude, to see
whether gratitude has a direct, confounded, or mediated
relationship with PWB and other variables.
 Future research should also concentrate ion the direction
of the relationship between gratitude and PWB, the
conditions under which both constructs develop and how
gratitude and PWB operate in diverse life contexts.
How can we relate this to everyday life?
Grateful people tend to…
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Be happier
Be less depressed
Be less stressed
Be more satisfied with their life and social
relationships
Have stronger social bonds and friendships
Have more positive ways of coping with difficulties
Are more likely to seek support from others and also
help others
Sleep better
Have an increased long-term happiness
How to increase well-being
through gratitude
• Thinking about a living person for whom you are grateful
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(Watkins et al)
Thank everyone for everything practice (Michael Frisch)
Gratitude Visit (Martin Seligman)
Gratitude Journals (Martin Seligman)
The Gratitude Prayer (Catherine Pratt)
The Gratitude Challenge
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxlXLDMG0Q
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
“In our daily lives we must see that it is not
happiness that makes us grateful but the
gratefulness that makes us happy.” Albert Clarke
Further Reading
 Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An
Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389.
 McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., & Tsang, J. (2002). The Grateful Disposition: A
Conceptual and Empirical Topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
82(1), 112-127.
 Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Stewart, N., & Joseph, S. (2008). Conceptualizing gratitude and
appreciation as a unitary personality trait. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 619630.
 Wood, A. M., Joseph, S. & Maltby, J. (2009). Gratitude predicts psychological well-being
above the Big Five facets. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 655-660.
 Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Gillett, R., Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2008). The role of
gratitude in the development of social support, stress, and depression: Two longitudinal
studies. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 854-871.
 McWilliams, N & Lependorf, S. (1990) Narcissistic pathology of everyday life: The denial
of remorse and gratitude. Contemporary Psychology, 26, 430-451.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxlXLDMG0Q
Are there any questions?