Last week’s newsletter introduced gratitude as a practice with deep spiritual roots. There are examples a-plenty in Christianity, Islam and Judaism – but there’s something about the Buddhist ones that sing.
“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learnt a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.” - Gautama Buddha
One way of practising gratitude is by writing something something daily that you’re grateful for, from a smile from a stranger to winning the lottery to someone cooking for you – it can be anything.
Having something to be thankful for is associated with making people happier and more content, but how? This week, two studies that attempt to answer that.
The first, based at the US University of Oregon, examined whether gratitude was related to “pure altruism” – doing something without expecting the warm and fuzzies in return, what the paper’s authors call “impure motivations”.
The 2017 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience also predicted that practising gratitude would increase the “neural pure altruism” response. Basically, people would become more focused on bringing benefits to others than to themselves.
Prior neuroscience studies into gratitude have produced, they write, “somewhat disparate conclusions” on its precise underpinnings.
For their three-week trial, they recruited psychology undergraduates age 18 to 35 and with no history of neurological or psychiatric conditions, splitting them into a gratitude group of 18 and a control group of 17.
All subjects were female, because “gender differences in gratitude, giving behaviour and neural responses” to stimuli could “increase variability”. (Hmmm.)
The active group completed multiple runs of a task that involved them donating money on a screen to a local food bank. They began with $20, were shown suggested donations of between nothing and $15, and were then told whether the gifts were voluntary or compulsory.
The researchers also measured the brain pre and post test for activity in “reward centres”, including the multi-talented ventro-medial prefrontal cortex, which made an appearance last week.
They measured seven regions of interest, with the results below.
They reckon that self-reported levels of gratitude are associated with a greater response in regions associated with pure altruism, though if you’re looking in seven regions you’ll probably find something.
And the below shows, they say, that writing things down to be grateful for – even for a period as short as three weeks – produces changes in brain regions associated with pure altruism.
Being grateful may make you more likely to help others – and it can be trained.
And because I can’t go past a picture of a brain scan … the solid blocks, mostly in positive change territory, are for the group practising gratitude.
The second study, published in NeuroImage in 2016, recruited 43 psychotherapy clients seeking clinical counselling. Maybe all the chilled psych students were busy on other trials?
That in itself makes comparing the two fraught, but onwards: the study authors’ desire was first to uncover the basic neural correlates of gratitude expression (in the specific form of money). And second, to investigate the long-term effects of written gratitude expression.
fMRI measurements were taken during a controlled test, again conducted on a screen. Subjects received between $1 and $20 from a mysterious “benefactor”, whose picture was displayed (the amount was, in fact, selected by a computer). A potential beneficiary was displayed, with the subjects told to pass on what they’d received if they were grateful for it.
The active group of 22 spent 20 minutes writing letters to someone expressing gratitude, three times a week for three weeks. Everyone had another fMRI a few months down the line.
The 43 formed part of a larger cohort of several hundred people. Those expressing gratitude had “significantly better” self-reported mental health both four and 16 weeks after writing the final letter. They also used fewer “negative words” compared to another group who wrote about their most stressful episodes, again associated with better mental health.
They paid forward an average of 60 per cent (from 18 to 91 per cent), with gratitude, guilt and a desire to help all being motivating factors, which sounds about right.
The brain scans revealed “greater loading” in one region (see below) compared to the control group, the perogenual alterior cingulate cortex (try saying that after a few glasses of red).
However, because they didn’t take scans before the trial, the researchers can’t rule out a pre-existing group difference.
Still. What will you be grateful for today?
Bonus clip
Next week: meditation 8.