Wellness Evidence for Gratitude

A large body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being.

1. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships.

2. Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance.

3. Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpreted and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem.

4. Grateful people also have less negative coping strategies, being less likely to try and avoid the problem, deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use.

5. Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.

Whilst many emotions and personality traits are important to well-being, there is evidence that gratitude may be uniquely important. First, a longitudinal study showed that people who were more grateful coped better with a life transition. Specifically, people who were more grateful before the transition were less stressed, less depressed, and more satisfied with their relationships three months later. Second, two recent studies have suggested that gratitude may have a unique relationship with well-being, and can explain aspects of well-being that other personality traits cannot.