Gratitude Research: Explore the Benefits of Gratitude

Contemporary science is catching up with ancient wisdom. Gratitude research increasingly confirms that gratefulness is good for our physical, mental, spiritual, and social well-being. Dr. Robert Emmons sums up a quarter-century of groundbreaking gratitude research with this catchy acronym: ARC. He reports that dozens of studies have come to the same three conclusions: Gratitude AMPLIFIES the good, RESCUES us from negativity bias, and CONNECTS us to one another, mending the social fabric. Discover these benefits and more, summarized below, as you begin living your grateful life.

Practicing Gratitude Rewires Your Brain

According to Dr. Christina Karns at the University of Oregon, gratitude changes the neural pathways in our brains. By using MfRI to study patients, she and her team saw that gratitude increases our enjoyment of giving to others. Over time, practicing gratitude led to the reward centers of the brain responding more actively to giving rather than receiving.

Source: Giving Thanks May Make Your Brain More Altruistic

Gratitude Increases Longevity

Less salt and fewer cookies for a long life? How about more gratitude. A gratitude research study at Harvard published in 2024 revealed that gratitude has the potential to increase longevity in older adults. The study focused on 49,000 women with an average age of 79. Over a period of four years, the women who scored highest on their gratitude measurement had a 9% lower mortality rate. Their conclusion: “Gratitude appeared protective against every specific cause of mortality studied, most significantly against cardiovascular disease.”

Source: Experiencing Gratitude Associated with Greater Longevity among Older Adults

Being Grateful Increases Care for the Collective

Drs. David DeSteno and Shanyu Kates at Northeastern University have shown that gratitude as an emotional state increases care for the collective good over the individual. They constructed a game that looked at how much people would take for themselves compared to how much they would leave for others. Those who experienced gratitude as an emotional state, not just a one-off or momentary experience, were more focused on the collective good than those who were either emotionally neutral and even emotionally happy. They took less and left more for others.

Source: One Key to Combatting the Tragedy of the Commons: Gratitude

Grateful People Are Less Lonely

Researchers James B. Hittner and Calvin D. Widholm at the College of Charleston recently completed a comprehensive review of twenty-six studies of gratitude and loneliness involving nearly 10,000 adults from around the world. As Kira Newman reports in the November 2024 Greater Good Magazine, the results of Hittner’s and Widholm’s research “suggest that grateful people tend to be less lonely — no matter their age, their gender, or whether they live in the U.S. or elsewhere. If someone was above average in gratitude, they had a 62% chance of being below average in loneliness.”

Source: Can We Ease Loneliness With a Little Gratitude?

Gratitude Improves Sleep

In their groundbreaking 2009 study, Wood, Joseph, Lloyd, & Atkins demonstrated that trait gratitude (the disposition of gratitude vs. a momentary feeling) was directly linked to the ability to fall asleep and to better overall subjective sleep quality. Their research highlights the importance of developing a consistent gratefulness practice that moves us from gratitude to living gratefully.

Source: Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., Lloyd, J., & Atkins, S. (2009). Gratitude influences sleep through the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 66(1), 43–48.

Being Grateful Measurably Decreases Stress

We all experience stress, but it turns out that having a grateful orientation to life increases our capacity to navigate psychological stress. In research by Brian Leavy, Brenda O’Connell, and Deirdre O’Shea, those with higher trait gratitude maintained lower blood pressure throughout all phases of their stress study. The researchers concluded that “state gratitude has a unique stress-buffering effect on both reactions to and recovery from acute psychological stress.”

Source: Gratitude, affect balance, and stress buffering: A growth curve examination of cardiovascular responses to a laboratory stress task