The Power of Gratitude (compliments of the Harvard Business Review)
I read an interesting article today from the Harvard Business Review Blog linking gratitude to willpower. Oftentimes we don't seem to have enough willpower to delay gratification in our lives. What will we sacrifice now for a brighter future? I'll summarize...
David DeSteno and colleagues created a small study where they asked people 27 different questions that pitted a desire for immediate cash against a willingness to wait for larger amounts of money at various times in the future. Before the subjects made their decisions, all participants were randomly assigned to different groups and asked to write about an event from their past that made them feel 1) grateful, 2) happy, or 3) neutral.
What the researchers found was that those who wrote about happy or neutral experiences demonstrated a higher likelihood to ask for the instant payout of cash. The people who wrote about experiences that made them feel grateful were more likely to delay instant cash and accept a larger amount in the future. In other words, those who recalled experiences making them feel more grateful were in turn more patient. Furthermore, the degree of patience the subjects displayed in questioning was directly related to the amount of gratitude they reported feeling.
It's important to realize that positive feelings weren't enough to enhance patience…it was the amount of gratitude that had a reliable effect. Happy subjects were just as likely to ask for the money now. The broader implication is that fostering feelings of gratitude in your own life may enhance your ability to think more long-term. Willpower will fail us all from time to time, but having an alternative source of patience in our lives, such as experiencing gratefulness, has the ability to improve our decision-making and our lives.
This of course is not different than the belief that your inner person reflects the world. Hence, if you are a grateful person, the world is full of wonder…and should you chose to be a miserable person, the world is quite a miserable place.
David DeSteno and colleagues created a small study where they asked people 27 different questions that pitted a desire for immediate cash against a willingness to wait for larger amounts of money at various times in the future. Before the subjects made their decisions, all participants were randomly assigned to different groups and asked to write about an event from their past that made them feel 1) grateful, 2) happy, or 3) neutral.
What the researchers found was that those who wrote about happy or neutral experiences demonstrated a higher likelihood to ask for the instant payout of cash. The people who wrote about experiences that made them feel grateful were more likely to delay instant cash and accept a larger amount in the future. In other words, those who recalled experiences making them feel more grateful were in turn more patient. Furthermore, the degree of patience the subjects displayed in questioning was directly related to the amount of gratitude they reported feeling.
It's important to realize that positive feelings weren't enough to enhance patience…it was the amount of gratitude that had a reliable effect. Happy subjects were just as likely to ask for the money now. The broader implication is that fostering feelings of gratitude in your own life may enhance your ability to think more long-term. Willpower will fail us all from time to time, but having an alternative source of patience in our lives, such as experiencing gratefulness, has the ability to improve our decision-making and our lives.
This of course is not different than the belief that your inner person reflects the world. Hence, if you are a grateful person, the world is full of wonder…and should you chose to be a miserable person, the world is quite a miserable place.
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