Gratitude lists, well-being interventions in which participants list things that they are grateful for, have recently grown in popularity. However, being tasked with generating longer gratitude lists might backfire and be associated with less felt gratitude. Furthermore, the content of these gratitude lists is rarely examined. In three studies of 3,936 participants, people assigned to shorter length conditions (three items) were relatively comparable in gratitude and life satisfaction to those assigned to longer list conditions (six and 12 items), although an exploratory analysis revealed that failure to list enough gratitude items for a given condition was associated with lower well-being. These results provided evidence that ease-of-retrieval effects may not play a strong role in the efficacy of gratitude lists. Those who listed particular content items (e.g., close relationships and health) were higher in post-intervention gratitude and well-being than those who did not.
AartsH.DijksterhuisA. (1999). How often did I do it? Experienced ease of retrieval and frequency estimates of past behavior. Acta Psychologica, 103, 77–89.
2.
AlgoeS. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6, 455–469.
3.
AlgoeS. B.GableS. L.MaiselN. C. (2010). It’s the little things: Everyday gratitude as a booster shot for romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 17, 217–233.
4.
AlgoeS. B.HaidtJ. (2009). Witnessing excellence in action: The “other-praising” emotions of elevation, gratitude, and admiration. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 105–127.
5.
AlgoeS. B.HaidtJ.GableS. L. (2008). Beyond reciprocity: Gratitude and relationships in everyday life. Emotion, 8, 425–429.
6.
BonnieK. E.de WaalF. B. (2004). Primate social reciprocity and the origin of gratitude. In EmmonsR. A.McCulloughM. E. (Eds.), The psychology of gratitude (pp. 213–229). Oxford University Press.
7.
CarstensenL. L.IsaacowitzD. M.CharlesS. T. (1999). Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity. American Psychologist, 54, 165–181.
8.
ChopikW. J.NewtonN. J.RyanL. H.KashdanT. B.JardenA. J. (2019). Gratitude across the life span: Age differences and links to subjective well-being. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 14, 292–302.
9.
ChopikW. J.WeidmannR.OhJ.PurolM. F. (2022). Grateful expectations: Cultural differences in the curvilinear association between age and gratitude. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(10), 3001–3014.
10.
CunhaL. F.PellandaL. C.ReppoldC. T. (2019). Positive psychology and gratitude interventions: A randomized clinical trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 584.
11.
DavisD. E.ChoeE.MeyersJ.WadeN.VarjasK.GiffordA.. . . GriffinB. J. (2016). Thankful for the little things: A meta-analysis of gratitude interventions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(1), 20–31.
12.
DickensL. R. (2017). Using gratitude to promote positive change: A series of meta-analyses investigating the effectiveness of gratitude interventions. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 39, 193–208.
13.
DienerE.EmmonsR. A.LarsenR. J.GriffinS. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71–75.
14.
DienerE.SandvikE.SeidlitzL.DienerM. (1993). The relationship between income and subjective well-being: Relative or absolute?Social Indicators Research, 28, 195–223.
15.
EmmonsR. A. (2007). Thanks! How the new science of gratitude can make you happier. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
16.
GarssenB.VisserA.PoolG. (2020). Does spirituality or religion positively affect mental health? Meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 31(1), 1–17.
17.
GouveiaV. V.VioneK. C.MilfontT. L.FischerR. (2015). Patterns of value change during the life span: Some evidence from a functional approach to values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 1276–1290.
18.
GuevarraD. A.HowellR. T. (2015). To have in order to do: Exploring the effects of consuming experiential products on well-being. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 28–41.
HarbaughC. N.VaseyM. W. (2014). When do people benefit from gratitude practice?The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9, 535–546.
21.
HudsonN. W.LucasR. E.DonnellanM. B. (2019). Healthier and happier? A 3-year longitudinal investigation of the prospective associations and concurrent changes in health and experiential well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45, 1635–1650.
22.
KelleyC. M.LindsayD. S. (1993). Remembering mistaken for knowing: Ease of retrieval as a basis for confidence in answers to general knowledge questions. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 1–24.
23.
McCulloughM. E.EmmonsR. A.TsangJ.-A. (2001). The gratitude questionnaire-six item form (GQ-6).
24.
McCulloughM. E.EmmonsR. A.TsangJ.-A. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 112–127.
25.
NezlekJ. B.KrejtzI.RusanowskaM.HolasP. (2019). Within-person relationships among daily gratitude, well-being, stress, and positive experiences. Journal of Happiness Studies, 20, 883–898.
26.
NezlekJ. B.NewmanD. B.ThrashT. M. (2017). A daily diary study of relationships between feelings of gratitude and well-being. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12, 323–332.
27.
NowakM. A.RochS. (2007). Upstream reciprocity and the evolution of gratitude. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 274, 605–610.
28.
Padilla-WalkerL. M.NelsonL. J.CarrollJ. S. (2012). Affording emerging adulthood: Parental financial assistance of their college-aged children. Journal of Adult Development, 19, 50–58.
29.
ParkN.PetersonC.SeligmanM. E. (2004). Strengths of character and well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23, 603–619.
30.
RashJ. A.MatsubaM. K.PrkachinK. M. (2011). Gratitude and well-being: Who benefits the most from a gratitude intervention?Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 3, 350–369.
31.
SacksO. (2015). Gratitude. Knopf Canada.
32.
SansoneR. A.SansoneL. A. (2010). Gratitude and well being: The benefits of appreciation. Psychiatry (Edgmont), 7, 18–22.
33.
SchwarzN.BlessH.StrackF.KlumppG.Rittenauer-SchatkaH.SimonsA. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 195–202.
34.
TayL.DienerE. (2011). Needs and subjective well-being around the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 354–365.
35.
TormalaZ. L.FalcesC.BrinolP.PettyR. E. (2007). Ease of retrieval effects in social judgment: The role of unrequested cognitions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 143–157.
36.
TsangJ.-A.CarpenterT. P.RobertsJ. A.FrischM. B.CarlisleR. D. (2014). Why are materialists less happy? The role of gratitude and need satisfaction in the relationship between materialism and life satisfaction. Personality and Individual Differences, 64, 62–66.
37.
VanderWeeleT. J. (2017). Religious communities and human flourishing. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26, 476–481.
38.
WalkerJ.KumarA.GilovichT. (2016). Cultivating gratitude and giving through experiential consumption. Emotion, 16, 1126–1136.
39.
WatkinsP. C.WoodwardK.StoneT.KoltsR. L. (2003). Gratitude and happiness: Development of a measure of gratitude, and relationships with subjective well-being. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 31, 431–451.
40.
WeingartenE.HutchinsonJ. (2018). Does ease mediate the ease-of-retrieval effect? A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 144, 227–283.
41.
WinkielmanP.SchwarzN.BelliR. F. (1998). The role of ease of retrieval and attribution in memory judgments: Judging your memory as worse despite recalling more events. Psychological Science, 9, 124–126.
42.
WoodA. M.FrohJ. J.GeraghtyA. W. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30, 890–905.
43.
WoodA. M.JosephS.MaltbyJ. (2008). Gratitude uniquely predicts satisfaction with life: Incremental validity above the domains and facets of the five factor model. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 49–54.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
