gratitude - happiness alliance · the care packages (as opposed to a gratitude letter, which is...

EDUCATINGFOR A MEANINGFUL LIFE


Research OverviewGratitude is the appreciation experienced by individuals when somebody does something kind or helpful for them. It has been defined more specifically as “a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift be a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty” (Emmons, 2004, p. 554). Gratitude has been conceptualized as an emotional trait, mood, or emotion (McCullough et al., 2002). Trait gratitude, or the disposition toward gratitude, is a “life orientation toward noticing and appreciating the positive in the world” (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, in press, p. 2). Gratitude is encouraged by religions and cultures throughout the world (Emmons & Crumpler, 2000) and is widely deemed as central to happiness; over 90% of American teens and adults indicated that expressing gratitude made them “extremely happy” or “somewhat happy” (Gallup, 1998). Considered an important virtue for psychological and social functioning, gratitude is an emotion that instills a sense of meaning and connection to other people, communities, nature, or God (Emmons, 2004). Research with adults has shown that, compared with less grateful people, grateful people report experiencing greater happiness, hope, pride (Overwalle, Mervielde, & DeSchuyter, 1995), positive mood, optimism, satisfaction with life, vitality, religiousness and spirituality; and they also tend to report less depression and envy (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002). Furthermore, the relationship between gratitude and happiness appears to be causal; participants who completed a gratitude-increasing

intervention (keeping a gratitude journal) reported both psychological benefits (increased satisfaction with life, greater optimism, increased altruism and feelings of connectedness to others) and physical benefits (improved sleep quality, greater propensity to exercise) (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

Class ActivityActivity 1: In-Class Gratitude Induction

Concept: The goal of this exercise is to demonstrate gratitude promotion through contemplating negative events.Instructions: Students are asked to rate how grateful they are in the moment on a scale of 1-10 with higher numbers indicating more grateful. They are then instructed to close their eyes and imagine someone or something in their lives that they value, care for, and maybe even love. Using a person as an example, ask them to ponder what makes that person so special. Maybe it is how thoughtful they are? Maybe it is how they demonstrate their affection? Maybe it is how they know what to say and when to say it? Maybe it is how they encourage you to pursue you goals? Regardless of what it is, imagine the person doing the things you love so much. After the students do this for about 30 seconds, tell them to imagine that person is no longer in their lives. For some reason, their special someone vanished. Ask them to consider what life would be like without them. After the students do this for about 30 seconds, tell them to imagine that the person is now back in their lives. After the students do this for about 10-15 seconds, ask them to rate how grateful they are in the moment on a scale of 1-10 again with higher numbers indicating more grateful.

Materials: Paper, Writing Implements, Watch.

Discussion: Dr. Robert Emmons, arguably the world’s foremost authority on gratitude, maintains that while gratitude should be used when times are good (e.g., landing your dream job, marrying your soul mate) it is equally important—if not more important—to use it when times are bad (e.g., unemployment, divorce) (Emmons, 2007). For example, a 16-year old female wrote in her gratitude essay about her experience with her mother being treated for stage IV lung cancer. After talking about her mother’s pain during treatment and acknowledging that the doctor gave her mother only a few more months to live she stated, “… I continue to be thankful for the wonderful childhood I had and for my mother who did an incredible job raising me…. It truly is a beautiful thing when you can be thankful, even when the woman you

GRATITUDEFroh and Parks


came from is rapidly dying, and there’s nothing at all you can do to stop it” (Froh, 2007). While we did not examine this student’s self-report data, research suggests that her ability to cultivate gratitude in this trying time would likely protect her from the negative effects of losing a parent to cancer (Fredrickson, 2001; Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005; Fredrickson, Mancuso, & Branigan, 2000).

Setting up explicit contrasts in our mind promotes gratitude for several reasons. First, research suggests that bad is stronger than good. There is a general bias to give more weight to negative entities (e.g., emotions and personal traits) compared with positive entities. Generally, negative events and information seem to command more attention over positive ones (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001). At the same time, however, feelings associated with unpleasant events tend to fade faster compared to feelings associated with positive events. So we might want to reconcile with a former friend because the memories of being treated poorly have faded. But to be grateful for a current friendship, it would be helpful to remember just how badly hurt you were by your former friend (Emmons, 2007).

Second, emotions are elicited not so much by the presence of favorable or unfavorable conditions but by actual or expected changes in favorable or unfavorable conditions. According to Hume, change causes the elicitation of emotions—change with respect to expectations or current adaptation level. The greater the change, the stronger the subsequent emotions. For example, pleasure after suspense is considerably stronger than what the same event would produce without prior uncertainty (Frijda, 2007). Thus, imagining a cherished person back in one’s life after having imagined them being removed from one’s life will likely produce more gratitude than simply thinking about how grateful one should be for that relationship.

Current research supports the idea that focusing on the negative increases gratitude. In one experiment undergraduate students were randomly assigned to a death reflection condition, a traditional mortality salience condition, or to a control condition. Students in the death reflection and the mortality salience conditions showed enhanced gratitude compared to controls, supporting the theory that becoming aware of one’s mortal limitations enhances gratitude for the life that what one has (Frias, Watkins, Webber, & Froh, 2010).

Writing Component: Ask students to write a one-page paper examining their reactions to the experience. They could address the following topics: a) What might it have been like to focus on the other option (i.e., something instead of someone vs. someone instead of something? b) What psychological mechanisms might explain the link between focusing on the bad and experiencing more gratitude? c) When might this strategy be best used for gratitude enhancement? d) What types of people (e.g., male, female) or personality traits (e.g., extraversion, neuroticism) might benefit the most from this strategy and why?

Activity 2: Anonymous Gratitude

Concept: The goal of this exercise is to give the class a shared experience of gratitude.

Instructions: Students will each compose a letter of gratitude to an anonymous soldier. There are several variations on this activity depending on the time available and the budget (if any) for your course. For example, students can do a craft project in class and include with their letter a hand-made item for their soldier. They can also create care packages with non-perishable food items. The main idea is to create the contents of the care package (be it a letter or something more elaborate) in class, as a group, so that you can then discuss the experience.*There are several online resources for delivering letters to soldiers (see “online resources”).

Materials: Paper, Writing Implements, Envelopes, Boxes, Items for care packages, Craft supplies (optional)

Discussion: This activity can benefit from a pre-discussion in which the class brainstorms reasons to be grateful for soldiers, and reasons why soldiers might benefit from being the recipient of gratitude. This can help students generate ideas for what to say in their letters. There are several videos available online that provide helpful background: http://www.opgratitude.com/videos.php

After the care packages are complete, ask for a few students to volunteer to read their letters (we do not recommend requiring every student to share, as some may find this embarrassing or invasive). Then, go around the room and ask students to reflect on the experience of writing the letter (without going into detail on their letter’s contents).Writing Component: In addition to the process of writing the letter itself, you can ask students to write a journal entry or short paper reflecting on their experience working together as a group to make the care packages (as opposed to a gratitude letter, which is completed by oneself). If you have asked your students to write a gratitude letter (see below) as part of the course, yoTu can ask them to compare their experiences writing a letter of gratitude to someone they know, whose reaction they will be able to witness, with the experience of writing a letter to someone anonymous, who may never reply.

Essential QuestionsWhat is the evolutionary function of gratitude?- Simmel (1950) maintains that no laws exist making people return good deeds. Thus, he refers to gratitude as the “moral memory of


mankind” because gratitude’s function is to act as a benefit detector and signal when one has been the beneficiary of a kind act. Gratitude, thus, promotes beneficial social exchanges between and among people helping society thrive and progress. To what extent does gratitude affect our social functioning?- Gratitude helps promote and sustain reciprocal altruism and cooperation in human society (Trivers, 1971).- Wood, Maltby, Gillet, Linley, and Joseph (2008) found in two longitudinal studies that gratitude directly fosters social support. No support was found for the reverse model whereby social support directly fostered gratitude.- Algoe, Haidt, and Gable (2008) examined gratitude in the context of an actual gift-giving event among sororities. These researchers found that beneficiaries (new sisters) were most grateful when they felt understood, valued and cared for by a benefactor (veteran sisters) and that this predicted later increases in both parties’ sense of connection to each other as well as beneficiaries’ sense of connection to the sorority overall.

To what extent does gratitude affect our physical health, and why might it do so?- Broaden-and-Build theory can explain some of the physical benefits of gratitude – particularly the “undoing effect,” wherein positive emotions dampen the stress response (Fredrickson, Mancuso, Branigan, & Tugade, 2000). Because chronic stress typically results in a variety of detrimental physiological consequences (see Sapolsky, 2004 for an overview), and positive emotions can quicken recovery from the physiological sequelae of stressors, regularly experiencing gratitude during times of psychological stress should, theoretically, ameliorate some of the negative results caused by stressors. It is unclear, however, whether the benefits of gratitude in this regard would be the same as any other positive emotion, or if there would be other benefits unique to gratitude as well. Broaden-and-Build theory only accounts for the former, so if the latter is true, one would need a separate theory to account for it.- Almost no studies have been conducted into gratitude and physical health, and this remains a key understudied area of research. There is, however, an early indication that gratitude may be related to health. First, Krause (2006) related gratitude to various self reported health symptoms, and subjective stress. Second, gratitude was also correlated with stress by Deutsch (1984), and gratitude has shown to lead to decreasing levels of stress over time (Wood, et al., 2008).

What role does reciprocity play in experiencing gratitude?- Recent experiments manipulating gratitude and using behavioral measures of helping show that experiencing gratitude causes people to engage in direct reciprocity, whereby they behave prosocially in response to a benefactor (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006; Grant & Gino, 2010; Tsang, 2006, 2007). Furthermore, gratitude causes people to engage in upstream reciprocity, whereby they behave prosocially toward other people (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006). This, reciprocity seems to be a common consequence of gratitude.

- Although gratitude often leads to reciprocation that does not

necessarily mean that gratitude makes individuals feel indebted or required to reciprocate. In fact, there is evidence that gratitude and indebtedness are inversely correlated, and that the more indebtedness is experienced by an individual, the less likely they are to reciprocate (Watkins et al., 2006).Why might someone experience resentment instead of gratitude?- If the recipient feels that reciprocation is expected by the benefactor, or that the kind act is performed for an ulterior motive, individuals are more likely to feel indebted (Tsang, 2006).- If the cost of the kind act to the benefactor (as perceived by the recipient) is too high, the recipient may feel indebted, and resentful for being indebted (Emmons & McCullough, 2006).

What makes gratitude a moral emotion?- McCullough et al. (2001) proposed that gratitude serves 3 moral functions. It serves as a moral barometer for beneficiaries by signaling to them the value of the relationship with the benefactor for the gift bestowed upon them; as a moral reinforcer by increasing the probability that the benefactor will bestow gifts again in the future; and as a moral motive by spurring beneficiaries to respond prosocially toward the benefactor or toward others. Is gratitude an innate personality trait or a set of behaviors that can be shaped?- Gratitude does appear to be a trait-like dimension on which individuals vary widely, and those individuals who are higher in gratitude experience a variety of benefits.- There are, however, reliable methods of inducing gratitude, and inducing gratitude leads to many of the benefits experienced by people high in trait gratitude.

Contentious Issues1. Does gratitude need to be expressed in order to be beneficial? Are there separate benefits to the internal process of being grateful vs. the more “external” process of expressing gratitude?2. Does gratitude need to have a target? In other words, what is the relation between benefit-triggered gratitude and generalized/ transpersonal gratitude? 3. How are gratitude and religion related? Are they inextricably connected, or distinct?


4. What roles does gender play in the experience and expression of gratitude?5. What is the developmental trajectory of gratitude? At what age does gratitude develop?

Discussion of How Your Area Relates to Others Within Positive PsychologyIn some ways, the benefits of gratitude are similar to the benefits of all positive emotions, in line with the Broaden-and-Build model (Fredrickson, 2001). Gratitude has been linked causally with positive affect (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Froh et al., 2009). Positive affect, in terms of happiness, is related to superior life outcomes across a wide variety of domains (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). The regular experience of positive emotions can make people healthier and more resilient, fueling an upward spiral of optimal functioning, well-being, and development (Fredrickson, 2001; Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002). Gratitude, like other positive emotions, broadens problem-solving strategies (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005) and can undo the aftereffects of negative emotions (Fredrickson, Mancuso, Branigan, & Tugade, 2000). Indeed, one reason resilient people bounce back from negative life events better is that they experience positive emotions such as gratitude regularly in response to stressful situations (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). Given its relationship to positive affect, gratitude may be used to engage this upward spiral (Fredrickson, 2004). For example, after compassion, gratitude was the second most common emotion experienced following the September 11 attacks in 2001. Such effects may occur with youth, too; in an archival study of newspaper accounts of things children were thankful for, themes of gratitude for basic human needs (e.g., family, friends, and teachers) were found to increase after 9/11 (Gordon et al., 2004). Thus, gratitude appears to be a powerful resilience factor that may help people to cope with disaster, and it confers benefits in this regard above and beyond those brought about by positive emotions in general (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, & Larkin, 2003).

The study of gratitude is also directly relevant to research on social connections and close relationships. Self-reports of grateful people indicate they have greater levels of empathy, prosocial behavior, forgiveness, religiousness, spirituality, and readiness to be supportive of others (McCullough et al., 2002). Many studies indicate that gratitude attunes people to the valuable relationships in their life, reinforces the kindness of benefactors, and motivates beneficiaries to reciprocate or extend kindness to others (for a review, see Emmons & McCullough, 2004). Recent experiments manipulating gratitude and using behavioral measures of helping show that experiencing gratitude causes people to engage in direct reciprocity, whereby they behave prosocially in response to a benefactor (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006; Tsang, 2006, 2007), and it causes people to engage in upstream reciprocity, whereby they behave prosocially toward other people (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006). In fact, by and large, gratitude serves to increase trust in social relationships (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005).

Applied Homework Assignments – * denotes a new activity created by the authors for this chapter.Gratitude Letter: Students think of a person to whom they are grateful, but who they have never properly thanked. They then compose a letter detailing their gratitude as specifically as possible. This exercise can be done with (Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2005) or without delivering the letter (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006) to the person about whom it is written (ideally, if it is to be delivered, however, it should be read aloud by the author to the recipient in person). There is evidence that both are helpful in different ways, and if you have half the class do one and half do the other, you can ask your students to compare.

Instructor notes:- It is often helpful to pair this exercise with a holiday like Thanksgiving, when most students go home and will have a chance to interact with the target of their letter.- Please note that students often feel trepidation about reading their letters out loud; it may be worthwhile to highlight that this is not an uncommon reaction, but that anxiety is not a reliable indication that the exercise will not be a rewarding experience (e.g., most people feel anxious about doing it, but find it to be beneficial regardless).- In some cultures and family dynamics, being the recipient of gratitude is not necessarily a positive experience. For example, I (APS) have observed that in some families, parents respond to overt gratitude by being insulted, as thanking them implies that they might have chosen to do differently (this is most often reported by Asian students, in my experience). In other family dynamics, gratitude can be met with suspicion. I had one student whose father was convinced she was trying to get something from him, otherwise she would not be taking the time to express her gratitude. Lastly, some families operate under a policy wherein speaking about one’s gratitude is “taking the lazy way out.” The expectation, rather, is that one expresses gratitude through reciprocation, not words. You may want to encourage students to consider these factors when choosing the target of their letter.

Gratitude Journal: Keep a regular record of the things in life for which you are grateful.


*Ideally, students do this over an extended period of time in order to receive the full benefit. There are two variations of this exercise:

- If the journal focuses on large-scale gratitude (“my family,” “my nice apartment,” “my health”, etc.), complete it 1 time per week for 6 weeks (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005).- If the journal focuses on being grateful for good events that happened recently (e.g. “I gave a good presentation,” “My sister cheered me up,” etc.) keep the journal nightly for 2 weeks (Emmons & McCullough, 2003, Study 2; Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2003).

*This version of the exercise can include an optional “gratitude note” once per week in which you write a brief thank-you note to someone featured in your nightly gratitude journal for that week.

*Thinking Gratefully: For the next week every time you receive a benefit, however small, process the experience with the cognitions of intent, cost, and benefit. For example, if a friend surprises you with a cup of coffee recognize and appreciate that your friend did this on purpose (intent), they lost time and money in doing so (cost), and you gained something from their kind act (benefit). Keep a log of your experiences noting specifically the schematic help appraisals for intent, cost, and benefit (Froh et al., 2010).

*Gratitude Report: Select a friend, family member, or significant other of your choice with whom you regularly interact. Keep an ongoing log of things that person does for which you are grateful, and at the end of each week, provide them with a “gratitude report.” You may do this in person, or via phone/email.

Ask Yourself Three Questions: This exercise is based on a Buddhist meditation technique called Naikan (“looking inside”). Here you reflect on three questions: What have I received from _________?, What have I given to ___________?, and What troubles and difficulties have I caused ___________? This helps people appreciate the reciprocal nature of relationships and provides a structure for self-reflection. These questions can focus on work situations, social interactions, or toward developing oneself (Emmons, 2007). Students should be encouraged to apply these questions to several areas of life.


List of Seminal Papers

Review Articles (Can substitute for a textbook)McCullough, M. E., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Emmons, R. A., & Larson, D. B. (2001). Is gratitude a moral affect? Psychological Bulletin, 127, 249-266.

Wood, A. M, Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. (in press). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical Integration [Special Issue]. Clinical Psychology Review.

Seminal Empirical ArticlesEmmons, 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, 377-389. McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., & Tsang, J. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 112-127.

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.

Watkins, P. C., Scheer, J., Ovnicek, M., & Kolts, R. (2006). The debt of gratitude: Dissociating gratitude and indebtedness. Cognition and Emotion, 20, 217-241.

The Role of CultureLittle research has explored gratitude cross-culturally. Some maintain that while people around the world experience and express gratitude in diverse ways (Streng, 1989), they usually feel thankful, appreciative, and have developed ways to express it that reflect linguistic and cultural conventions (Emmons, 2004). Americans talk about gratitude relatively infrequently, yet this emotion is central to social interactions in many other cultures (Solomon, 1995). For instance, some maintain that gratitude and the reciprocity of good is expected more from people from collectivistic cultures (e.g., Taiwanese) compared to individualistic cultures (e.g., American) (Kee, Tsai, & Chen, 2008).

Chapter References

Algoe, S.B., Haidt, J., & Gable, S. L. (2008). Beyond reciprocity: Gratitude and relationships in everyday life. Emotion, 8, 425-429.

Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K.D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323-370.

Bartlett, M. Y., & DeSteno, D. (2006). Gratitude and prosocial behavior: Helping when it costs you. Psychological Science, 17, 319-325.

Deutsch, C. J. (1984). Self-reported sources of stress among psychotherapists. Professional Psychology-Research and Practice, 15, 833−845.

Emmons, R.A. (2004). Gratitude. In M.E.P. Seligman & C. Peterson (Eds.), Character strengths and virtues (pp. 553-568). New York: Oxford University Press.

Emmons, R. A. (2007). Thanks! How the new science of gratitude can make you happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Emmons, R. A., & Crumpler, C. A. (2000). Gratitude as a human strength: Appraising the evidence. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 56-69.

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, 377-389.

Fredrickson, B.L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). Gratitude, like other positive emotions, broadens and builds. I Emmons, R. A. & M. E. McCullough (Eds.) The psychology of gratitude. (pp. 145-166). New York: Oxford University Press.

Fredrickson, B.L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires. Cognition and Emotion, 19, 313-332.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Joiner, T. (2002). Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being. Psychological Science, 13, 172-175.

Fredrickson, B.L., Mancuso, R.A., Branigan, C., & Tugade, M.M. (2000). The undoing effect of positive emotions. Motivation and Emotion, 24, 237-258.

Fredrickson, B.L., Tugade, M.M., Waugh, C.E., & Larkin, G. (2003). What good are positive emotions in crises?: A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 365-376.

Frias, A., Watkins, P. C., Webber, A. C., & Froh, J. J. (2010). Death and gratitude: Death reflection enhances gratitude. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Frijda, N. H. (2007). The laws of emotion. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Froh, J. J. (2007). [student gratitude essays]. Unpublished raw data.

Froh, J. J., Bono, G., Emmons, R. A., Wood, A., Henderson, K., Fan, J. et al. (2010). An educational intervention to increase gratitude in children through changing schematic help appraisals. Manuscript submitted for publication.


Froh, J. J., Kashdan, T. B., Ozimkowski, K. M., & Miller, N. (2009). Who benefits the most from a gratitude intervention in children and adolescents? Examining positive affect as a moderator. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 408-422.

Gallup, G. (1998). Gallup survey results on “gratitude,” adults and teenagers. Emerging Trends, 20 (4-5), 9.

Gordon, A.K., Musher-Eizenman, D.R., Holub, S.C., & Dalrymple, J. (2004). What are children thankful for? An archival analysis of gratitude before and after the attacks of September 11. Applied Developmental Psychology, 25, 541-553.

Grant A. M., & Gino, F. (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 946-955.

Kee, Y. H., Tsai, Y. M., & Chen, L. H. (2008). Relationships between being traditional and sense of gratitude among Tawainese high school athletes. Psychological Reports, 102, 920-926.

Krause, N. (2006). Gratitude toward God, stress, and health in late life. Research on Aging, 28, 163−183.

Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803-855.

Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111-131.

McCullough, M.E., Emmons, R.A., & Tsang, J. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 112-127.

McCullough, M. E., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Emmons, R. A., & Larson, D. B. (2001). Is gratitude a moral affect? Psychological Bulletin, 127, 249-266.

Niemiec, R. M., & Wedding, D. (2008). Positive psychology at the movies: Using films to build virtues and character strengths. Hogrefe: Cambridge, MA.Overwalle, F.V., Mervielde, I., & DeSchuyter, J. (1995). Structural modeling of the relationships between attributional dimensions, emotions, and performance of college freshmen. Cognition and Emotion, 9, 59-85.

Sapolsky, R.M. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers: An updated guide to stress, stress related diseases, and coping, (2nd ed.). New York: W.H. Freeman.

Seligman, M. E P, Steen, T., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.

Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2006). How to increase and sustain positive emotion: The effects of expressing gratitude and visualizing best possible selves. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 73-82.

Simmel, G. (1950). The sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. (Original work published in 1908).

Solomon, R.C. (1995). The cross-cultural comparison of emotion. In J. Marks & R.T. Ames (Eds.), Emotions in Asian Thought (pp. 253-294). Albany: SUNY Press.

Streng, F.J. (1989). Introduction: Thanksgiving as a worldwide response to life. In J.B. Carman & F.J. Streng (Eds.), Spoken and unspoken thanks: Some comparative soundings (pp. 1–9). Dallas, TX: Center for World Thanksgiving.

Thomas, M., & Watkins, P. (2003, April). Measuring the grateful trait: Development of the revised GRAT. Poster session presented at the Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association, Vancouver, BC.

Trivers, R. L. (1971) The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35 -57.

Tsang, J. (2006). The effects of helper intention on gratitude and indebtedness. Motivation and Emotion, 30, 198-204.

Tsang, J. (2006). Gratitude and prosocial behavior: An experimental test of gratitude. Cognition and Emotion, 20, 138-148.

Tsang, J. (2007). Gratitude for small and large favors: A behavioral test. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2, 157-167.

Tugade, M. M. & Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). Resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce back from negative emotional experiences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Watkins, P. C., Scheer, J., Ovnicek, M., & Kolts, R. (2006). The debt of gratitude: Dissociating gratitude and indebtedness. Cognition and Emotion, 20, 217-241.wWood, A. M, Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. (in press). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration [Special Issue]. Clinical Psychology Review.

Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Stewart, N., Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2008). A social-cognitive model of trait and state levels of gratitude. Emotion, 8, 281-290.


Acacia Parks is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Hiram College. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked under Martin Seligman at the Positive Psychology Center. Her research focuses on the efficacy of positive interventions, and the psychological and behavioral characteristics of individuals who use them. She serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Positive Psychology, where she is guest editing a special issue on Positive Psychology in Higher Education, due out in early 2012. She is also co-editor of a forthcoming positive psychology teaching activities book, published through APA Press, and a sole editor of a volume with Wiley-Blackwell entitled “The Handbook of Positive Psychological Interventions.” Dr. Parks is an active teacher of both positive psychology and critical writing.

Jeffrey Froh, Psy.D., is a school psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at Hofstra University. He received his B.A. from St. Joseph’s College and his Psy.D. from St. John’s University. He is recognized as the foremost authority on gratitude in children and adolescents. He lives in Greenlawn, New York with his wife and two children.

gratitude - happiness alliance · the care packages (as opposed to a gratitude letter, which is...

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