August
31, 2018
Research
has shown time and time again that being grateful is good for your health, mood
and general well-being. In fact, it’s one of the easiest things you can do
to increase your mental health.
But if you can’t remember the last time you sent a real thank-you note, a
recent study may explain why.
The research, published
recently in Psychological Science, says people chronically
underestimate the power of expressing gratitude and overestimate how awkward it
will be, which may keep them from engaging in the simple but impactful
practice.
“Saying
thanks can improve somebody’s own happiness, and it can improve the well-being
of another person as well — even more than we anticipate, in fact,” says study
co-author Amit Kumar, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of
Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. “If both parties are benefitting
from this, I think that’s the type of action we should be pursuing more often
in our everyday lives.”
Kumar’s
research involved a series of experiments. Each one differed slightly, but the
general concept remained the same: People were asked to send a letter to
someone in their life, expressing gratitude. Before sending the letters, the
writers were asked about how they expected the recipient to react. Then, the
researchers polled the recipients about their actual reactions.
They
found that writers consistently misjudged how their letters would land,
overestimating awkwardness and underestimating the recipients’ reported mood
and surprise at receiving the note. Kumar says that imbalance points to
different priorities and concerns from writers and recipients.
“[Writers]
think about things like, ‘Am I going to get the words just right and am I going
to be articulate?’ That might be a barrier to actually sitting down and writing
the thing,” he says. “But when you’re the recipient of something like a
gratitude letter, you tend to evaluate things on the basis of warmth and
prosocial intent. As long as somebody’s expression is sincere and warm and
friendly, recipients are often going to have a very positive reaction to that.”
(For what it’s worth, the study also found that recipients tended to view the
letters as warmer and more articulate than the writers thought they would.)
The
researchers also surveyed writers before and after they composed their notes,
and found that writing the gratitude letters consistently put them in more
positive spirits — a finding in keeping with plenty of existing research on the mood-enhancing effects of gratitude.
The
new study didn’t look at whether other forms of expressing gratitude — like
sending a quick text message, or thanking someone in person — would have
different effects. But Kumar says the broader takeaway is that we shouldn’t let
our own self-consciousness stand in the way of giving genuine thanks. To make
it easier to follow through, he suggests keeping cards on hand, so you can
compose a note whenever the mood strikes.
“Writing
gratitude letters seems to come at little or no real cost. People were
composing these really thoughtful messages in just a matter of minutes,” Kumar
says. “The broader message is that people should express gratitude more often,
and precisely how you go about doing that might not matter that much.”
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