Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being

In this chapter we review the good of gratitude and recommend various methods for cultivating this human strength. First, we show how gratitude is indeed good. We show how gratitude is important to flourishing and happiness. Gratitude is strongly correlated with various measures of well-being, and experimental studies suggest that gratitude actually causes increases in happiness. If gratitude is good, then it behooves us to investigate how the disposition of gratitude can be enhanced. We suggest that grateful responding can be enhanced by training in noticing the good in one's life, and by encouraging interpretations and appraisals that have been found to promote gratitude. We then present a discussion of unresolved issues in the science of gratitude. This is followed by a discussion of who might benefit most from gratitude. We conclude with a summary of the cultivation of gratitude. Research strongly supports the idea that the cultivation of gratitude should result in a harvest of happiness, but cultivating gratitude is not likely to be an easy process.