Before gratitude lists were a thing, a scientist who put gratitude on the map started his journey in Maine. Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., UC Davis psychologist and a leading gratitude expert, earned his degree at the University of Southern Maine. He recently shared with us what gratitude is—and how to live it.
In our Q&A, Emmons brings gratitude from the Hallmark aisle to the lab and back to kitchen table. He defines it as “affirming the good and recognizing its sources beyond ourselves,” distinguishes feeling thankful from becoming a grateful person, and offers simple practices. He links gratitude with resilience and community—and reminds us it’s a way of seeing, being, and giving back.
How do you define gratitude?
Gratitude is an affirmation of the goodness in one’s life and the recognition that the sources of this goodness lie at least partially outside the self. It emerges from affirming and recognizing. Gratitude is the recognition that life owes me nothing and all the good I have is a gift. Living with a grateful perspective is living in a posture of saying yes to life.
What drew you to study gratitude?
I was invited to a scientific conference, “The Classical Sources of Human Strength.” The focus was love, hope, wisdom, forgiveness, humility, self-control, and gratitude. Experts chose a topic to report what had been learned through scientific inquiry. Nobody wanted gratitude, and I got it by default. The problem was, there wasn’t any science about it. In the human sciences, gratitude was forgotten. I seized the opportunity and began conducting research right away.
That’s what got me in. More important is what keeps me. My life is better than I could’ve ever imagined or deserved, and the only logical response is gratefulness. When you study a virtue like thankfulness, you subject your ego to constant bruising. It’s one thing to know about gratitude; it’s another to know gratitude. I’d like to say I always practice what I preach, but I can’t. On bad days, I complain, criticize, feel entitled, take things for granted. Having a regular gratitude practice isn’t easy.
What’s the difference between feeling grateful in the moment and becoming a grateful person?
There are many layers and levels of gratitude, from being thankful for receiving a benefit to having the trait of gratefulness to developing gratitude as a way of life. The first is a momentary response, the second marks a person who frequently feels or expresses gratitude, and the third constitutes an enduring disposition. It’s not too hard to move from the first to the second, but the jump requires lived experience and maturity, as well as struggle and suffering. In its most developed form, gratitude is more than an emotion, attitude, or action. It’s literally who we are.
Gratitude shapes identity. Seeing our life as an immense gift or full of gifts enables us to organize our experience. Gratitude becomes an enduring life orientation. From this view, we freely give back the good we’ve received. By thinking of oneself as a recipient of gifts, gratitude confers a unique perspective on life. This identity stretches through our experiences, past, present, and future, creating a tapestry of accumulated kindnesses that form the story of who we are. Gratitude not only restores us but also re-stories us. Gratitude constitutes our existence — the being and essence of who we are.
You’ve said gratitude has the power to heal, energize, and transform lives. Can you share an example?
Let me tell you about Clara Morabito. Years ago, she wrote to me after learning about my research. Clara had experienced three prolonged emotional downturns in her life, each triggered by a physical illness. After she read my book, Thanks!, she understood why gratitude worked, and that it’s a choice. She swore the practice of gratitude, in combination with medication, transformed her life. Clara reported feeling truly happy and grateful every day. At 91, she was a living testimony to the power of gratitude and a highly sought-after speaker giving lectures such as “Prolongation of Life Via Gratitude.”
What are three gratitude practices people could start now?
There are countless, and one size doesn’t fit all. But any practice that amplifies the kindness and benevolence of others in our mind paves the road to gratefulness. A caveat: I don’t think you can always get gratitude directly. Because when we try to get it, the focus is often misplaced on ourselves. Gratitude is other-focused; it’s about what other people do for us. Gratitude as a self-improvement project can be counterproductive.
That said, here are three strategies:
- Remember the bad: Think about your worst moments – your sorrows, losses, etc., then remember you’re here. You got through the worst day, trauma, trial, temptation. You made your way out of the dark and survived. When we remember how difficult life was and how far we’ve come, we set up an explicit contrast in our mind, and that’s fertile ground for gratefulness.
- Practice addition by subtraction: Contemplate not having a valued person, circumstance, or blessing in your life. Known as the George Bailey effect, this works every time. Most gratitude interventions, like the vaunted journaling practice, only direct a person to list good things. This practice asks us to imagine what life would be like if we didn’t have a particular good relationship, opportunity, job, or whatever in our lives. This especially works when we take these things for granted.
- Watch your language: Be careful about your thoughts, interior languages, and what you say. Words create reality. Grateful people have a linguistic style that uses the language of gifts, blessings, fortune, and abundance. Less grateful people are preoccupied with burdens, curses, deprivations, entitlements, and complaints. Focus on what life is offering you. For example, replace “I have to do this” with “What a gift this is.” This has a profound effect. Instead of taking life for granted, we take it as granted.
What’s the most powerful truth you’ve discovered in your research?
The tight connection between gratitude and suffering. We think gratitude is all about the good: Seeing, receiving, and giving back the good. The stark reality: Life is suffering. Pain is unavoidable, and everybody hurts. Yet, opportunities for gratefulness abound. Gratitude isn’t a switch we turn on when life is going well; it also shines in darkness.
Evidence shows grateful people are more resilient to stress, from everyday hassles to personal upheavals. There’s a myth gratitude ignores suffering, pain, and the harshness of life. That’s toxic positivity and doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. In fact, studies show gratitude is deepened and strengthened in trying times. People use gratitude more than any other positive emotion to cope, lending empirical support to the philosophical claim, “Gratitude is not only the best answer to the tragedies of life. It is the best approach to life itself.”
How do you see gratitude, joy, and grace connected? What happens when these three qualities meet in our lives?
That is an ideal occurrence, but we can’t force it. We can only do the preparatory work to make this confluence more likely. There’s a magnetic, almost magical appeal to gratitude. It clearly speaks to a need entrenched in the human condition — the need to give thanks. We’re hungry for a life of value, significance, meaning, and joy, and we recognize it’s impossible to achieve these without gratitude. Gratitude is the foundation for joy. Joy is deep happiness not based on happenings. Grace is the ability to receive unbidden good — that comes to us freely and uncoerced. Gratitude is the affirmation and recognition of the good and the decision to give it back.
You spent time at the University of Southern Maine early on. How did your experience in Maine shape you, and how might gratitude help strengthen communities like ours?
Let me answer with a story. Earlier in life, I wasn’t very grateful and believed my good fortune was a result of my own efforts. I was chronically dissatisfied, always looking for something bigger, better, and brighter, including when it came to college. I thought the University of Southern Maine was too small, reputationally challenged, and intellectually underwhelming. I envied friends at bigger or more prestigious schools. Years later, I realized I’d received a great education from highly dedicated professors at USM. One, Dr. William Gayton, mentored and believed in me. He supervised the first research I conducted. We lost touch, but reconnected 18 years later. I had begun studying gratitude, and returned to campus to thank him. He invited me to teach at the Psychology Summer Institutes he founded, which I did several times over 15 years.
He passed away in 2017, and the psychology department took up a collection to install a memorial bench in his honor. I was grateful to contribute. This is a tangible example of giving back the good.
What role can gratitude play in shaping communities—especially in a place like Maine, where connection and resilience are so important?
I’m glad you brought up connection and resilience. Gratitude is all about connection—to others, ourselves, the environment/nature, God, and the transcendent. It’s the relationship-strengthening emotion and reminds us of everyone who has done things for us that we couldn’t have done for ourselves. In this context of relationships, the effects of gratitude are most potently and practically experienced. Gratitude drives generosity, compassion, volunteering, and philanthropy. Can you imagine society without gratitude? Exchanges would be based on contracts. Without the moral glue of gratitude, families, organizations, and society would crumble. We’d be in relational ruin. Gratitude is the fuel that keeps us going and prevents our relationships from unraveling and conking out.
There’s no resilience without gratitude. Gratitude leads to resilience because we know any event or life experience contributes to the totality of life. If the bad is muted, so is the joy. This is the difference between gratitude as a feeling and as an attitude. One can choose a grateful outlook on life as a fundamentally enduring orientation that says, amidst the rancor of daily life, underlying goodness exists, and therefore, I will be grateful. I call this “defiant gratitude.” This prevailing attitude endures despite gains and losses.
Years ago, I was invited to Burbank, CA. Their goal was to become America’s most grateful city. A resident had published a book about gratitude among Hollywood celebrities, and they wanted to use it as a springboard for community-wide focus. They created a series of events, talks, etc., including creating the world’s longest gratitude list. It spanned several blocks and generated lots of buzz and enthusiasm. This is an admirable goal for any community. So, yes, Maine can benefit.
One thing I’ve learned is that people are hungry for scientific data on gratitude. They don’t want motherly advice on being thankful or pastors exhorting them to count their blessings. There are skeptics, and the best way to reach them and effect a sea change is through the latest cutting-edge science.
Critics contend that excessive focus on gratitude inadvertently discourages people from pursuing necessary change in their lives or society – that it fosters acceptance of harmful situations. To me, these are independent. I can be grateful for my life and the world without being complacent. The thought that grateful equals lethargy is a myth. Science demonstrates that being grateful inspires purpose, goal striving, and behaviors like generosity, compassion, and civic responsibility.
Looking ahead, you’ve described gratitude as part of a global renaissance. What excites you most about the future?
We’ve made progress, but work remains. Here’s a fundamental question: Is gratitude a human universal strength? Does it contribute to flourishing all over the world and throughout human history? Charting the global map of gratitude is exciting. My colleague Mike McCullough has been mapping gratitude across the world. His research strongly supports that gratitude runs as an undercurrent throughout human experience in all places and times. It’s part of who we are, have been, and will be. Gratitude is “the universal currency that we can spend freely without fear of bankruptcy.”
Critics argue the “gratitude industry” risks promoting a superficial, commodified practice, especially on social media. They’re right. It’s easy to oversell and cheapen gratitude, and to see it as a panacea for everything that ails us or society. But that’s not its job. Gratitude reminds us we’re dependent on the kindness of others to flourish. It directs us toward people and agents doing things for us that we can’t do for ourselves. Gratitude’s primary function is to remind us we’re not alone. That’s its job description. Perhaps that’s enough.
“My life is better than I could’ve ever imagined or deserved, and the only logical response is gratefulness.”
“Gratitude is the affirmation and recognition of the good and the decision to give it back.”
“Gratitude is the fuel that keeps us going and prevents our relationships from unraveling and conking out.”