**4. The consequences of gratitude: how does gratitude enhance happiness?**

We have seen that gratitude—particularly the grateful disposition—is a critical component of the good life. People flourish when they have a grateful orientation to life, which we have defined as seeing all of life as a gift [3, 10]. Given that gratitude supports SWB, researchers have now turned to an important question: How does gratitude enhance happiness? Understanding the mechanisms of the gratitude/happiness relationship is important in several ways. First, understanding why gratitude enhances happiness helps further our understanding of both gratitude and happiness. Through understanding the mechanisms of the gratitude and happiness relationship we will better understand gratitude by seeing its beneficial consequences, and we will better understand happiness because we will see more clearly the specific causes of happiness. Secondly, increasing our understanding of how gratitude increases happiness should help us improve gratitude interventions. If, for example, gratitude enhances happiness because it causes people to value what is good in their life, gratitude interventions could be improved by more specifically instructing participants on how they might psychologically value/appreciate those blessings they might be recounting (e.g., [31]). Thus, we submit that identifying *how* gratitude enhances happiness is vital for the science of gratitude.

Before exploring theories that speak to how gratitude enhances SWB, we discuss some interesting treatment outcome results that we believe provide important hints about the mechanisms of the gratitude/happiness relationship. Although many studies investigating gratitude exercises have been randomized controlled trials (RCTs), only a few have used clear placebo control treatments that have shown placebo effects (i.e., they resulted in increased happiness over the treatment period). Studies that use placebos are important because they allow us to separate the effects of gratitude from

### *Gratitude and Happiness: The Causes and Consequences of Gratitude DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106297*

the nonspecific effects of treatment (hope, expectation, etc.). Two of these studies used grateful recounting where participants listed three recent blessings and wrote about them in some way [7, 8]. Participants were instructed to engage in this grateful recounting every day for a week. What was notable about the outcome of both studies is that although the increase in happiness across the 1-week treatment period was similar to the placebo condition, the happiness of those in the placebo condition went back to baseline after the treatment phase (as would be expected), but the SWB of those in the grateful recounting treatment kept increasing well past the treatment phase. Indeed, in both studies, the trajectory of happiness was still increasing at the last follow-up assessment. In the case of the Seligman et al. study [7], this was fully 6 months after the treatment phase. This pattern of results is not uncommon in positive psychology interventions (e.g., [32]) but is generally unheard of in clinical psychology outcome studies, where the typical pattern is improved well-being across the treatment phase, with emotional well-being progressively decreasing after treatment.

Why did happiness continue to increase after the one-week gratitude treatment? It did not appear to be due to participants continuing to count their blessings on their own, because participants in the Watkins et al. study [8] reported that they stopped the grateful recounting exercise immediately at the close of the one-week treatment phase. Thus, daily counting blessings for 1 week must have changed some psychological processes that continued to enhance SWB well after treatment. One more aspect of the Watkins et al. study should be highlighted [8]. They compared the grateful recounting intervention with two comparison groups: placebo and pride 3-blessings treatment. The pride 3-blessings treatment was exactly like the gratitude 3-blessings treatment in that participants recalled 3 "good things" that had happened to them in the last 48 hours, whereas in the gratitude 3-blessing treatment they wrote about how each thing made them feel more grateful, in the pride 3-blessings treatment they wrote about how each "good thing" made them "feel better than others or better than average." The authors included this condition to isolate grateful processing. In previous counting blessings studies, it was not possible to determine if the effect of counting blessings on SWB was because it was activating grateful processing, or it was merely that recalling good things in one's life improved one's happiness. Watkins and associates found that the gratitude 3-blessings treatment outperformed both the placebo and the pride 3-blessings treatment in improving happiness. Thus, it appears that grateful processing is a critical mechanism for improving one's happiness. In short, these findings suggest that a one-week daily practice of grateful recounting changes people in a way that results in increasing happiness. What changed? Clearly, it was a change related to grateful processing, and we believe that it trained individuals to notice and appreciate the good in their life [33]. We now turn to theories that have attempted to explain how gratitude enhances emotional well-being.

Three theories attempt to explain how gratitude might improve SWB: Fredrickson's broaden and build theory [34], Algoe's find, remind, and bind theory [35], and our amplification theory of gratitude [10, 36]. We find these theories complimentary rather than competitive, and together, should help us understand the gratitude and SWB relationship.

Fredrickson's broaden and build theory of positive emotion provides a good explanation of how gratitude supports SWB. Her theory was an attempt to explain why we experience positive emotions, and how they help us adapt [34]. According to Fredrickson, positive emotions broaden one's momentary thought/action repertoire and build personal resources for future well-being. Whereas negative emotions are focused, positive emotions broaden one's scope of attention, cognition, and action.

For example, whereas indebtedness (a negative emotion) might motivate us to a sort of tit-for-tat response to a benefit (e.g., "I will have you over for dinner because you had me for dinner"), gratitude for a benefit would lead one to creatively consider many ways of responding to one's benefactor [37]. Indeed, research supports her theory as it applies to gratitude: whereas gratitude is correlated with more thought/ action tendencies, indebtedness is not [38]. Being more creative when one is returning a favor is likely to result in a more enjoyable experience with one's benefactor, and hence should improve one's SWB.

Not only do positive emotions broaden in the moment, but according to Fredrickson they also build personal resources for the future. Fredrickson proposes that positive emotions like gratitude build personal resources in at least three ways: they build physical, intellectual, and social resources. It is easy to see how gratitude might build one's social resources. People like grateful people [2] and expressions of gratitude result in many social benefits. Perceived social support is one of the most robust correlates of happiness [39], thus, as gratitude builds social resources, so it should build one's happiness.

Building on the foundation of broaden and build theory, Algoe developed her find, remind, and bind theory of gratitude [35]. She argues that gratitude enhances well-being through building one's social resources. Gratitude helps one *find* new relationships that support SWB, it *reminds* one of those relationships that are important to flourishing, and it helps *bind* relationships to support long-term happiness. We see this as a very effective theory for explaining how gratitude enhances happiness. Algoe's research has garnered considerable support for her model [40–42], and it has added the approach of relationship science to the study of gratitude. As gratitude is essentially an "other-focused" emotion, we see this as a necessary perspective.

We have attempted to integrate these theories by proposing that gratitude enhances SWB because it psychologically amplifies the good in one's life [10, 36]. Psychologically, gratitude serves to amplify the signal strength of blessings. Just as an amplifier augments the sound going into a microphone, so too gratitude amplifies the good in one's life. Just as a magnifying glass enlarges the text it is focused on, so too gratitude magnifies blessing. The amplification theory of gratitude proposes that gratitude enhances the signal strength of who and what is beneficial in one's life. When one is keenly aware of what is beneficial for them, they will spend more of their personal resources seeking these things, which should enhance SWB. This is important for one's happiness because psychologically speaking, "Bad is stronger than good" [43]. Research has shown that bad emotions, bad feedback, bad memories, and bad interactions tend to take precedence over the good. Thus, even though most people experience far more pleasant than unpleasant events in their life, it is easy to let the bad drown out the good. Gratitude, however, helps overcome this psychological bias by amplifying the good.

How does gratitude amplify the good in life? Gratitude amplifies blessings in that people enjoy benefits more when they experience them with gratitude [44]. Second, gratitude amplifies the good in one's past. Several studies have shown that grateful people recall more blessings from their past, and when these memories do come to mind, they enjoy them more than less grateful people [8, 26]. Moreover, one experiment showed that gratitude can even amplify the good one sees in unpleasant memories [32]. Third, research supports the idea that gratitude amplifies the good in one's relationships. Indeed, Algoe's research provides robust support for this aspect of amplification theory [35]. Moreover, research by DeSteno and Bartlett has shown that inducing gratitude produces significant prosocial behavior, both toward the

### *Gratitude and Happiness: The Causes and Consequences of Gratitude DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106297*

benefactor and strangers [45–47]. Indeed, gratitude encourages prosocial behavior even when it costs the beneficiary to provide the help. Thus, gratitude appears to amplify one's desire to do good to others. Clearly, this should improve one's relationships, which is one of the most important causes of SWB [39]. In sum, we propose that gratitude enhances happiness because it amplifies the good in one's life. Gratitude amplifies the good from one's past, it amplifies the good in how one experiences blessings in the present, and it amplifies the good in one's future by increasing hope [6]. Finally, gratitude amplifies the good in life by amplifying our desire to do good to others, thus enhancing our relationships and subsequently our SWB.
