How Having a Gratitude Attitude Actually Works

It sounds so silly, but there is science happening here.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Marcus Tullius Cicero said,

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.” 

You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. People call it a gratitude attitude.

I’m just going to out myself here and say that whenever I heard people talk about having a gratitude attitude, I shuddered. And, the same thing happened when I saw #soblessed. It seemed trite, a cliché, and not just any cliché, but a rhyming one. Life couldn’t be and isn’t that simple.

I would click off social media, walk away from the computer and go “ugh.”

I know! I know! What a butthead move. Sometimes, I am a butthead.

To be fair, I never judged the people saying it. I still loved them and still do love them. But something about those phrases just hit me the wrong way.

They didn’t seem real.

The thing is that back in 2003 researchers from the University of Miami and University of California at Davis actually measured the effect of a gratitude attitude.

To be fair again, they didn’t call it that.

They found some cool things.

Robert Emmons, PH.D., and Michael E. McCullough took a group of students and told them to think about what they were grateful for. One group did that once a week. Another group didn’t do it at all.

And the group that did it the most? They slept better. They self-reported that they had a lot of wellbeing.

Emmons writes,

“A related benefit was observed in the realm of personal goal attainment: Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.”

According to Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, “The act of reflecting on one's blessings actually produces feelings of joy, happiness, and well-being.”

The “smiling happy people holding hands” of the early 1990s song by R.E.M.? They exist. And according to positive psychologists a lot of us can be one of them.