1. An abstract is a brief overview of the article. Read the abstract. Based upon what you read, what would you tell someone the article is about?
This article researched on the neural bases of gratitude expression and its long-term effects on brain activity. They recruited two participating groups who were entering psychotherapy for depression and anxiety. One group (experimental group) was in a gratitude writing intervention which required them to write letters of gratitude and the other group (control group) remained constant by attending the usual therapy session without any writing intervention in the course of three months. After three months, both groups perform a “Pay It Forward” task which is basically when they pass on a monetary gift towards a charitable cause to the extent they feel grateful for the gift. Using monetary gifts allowed them to quantify the gratitude expression for analysis. In order to analyze, they measured their brain activity and found that a simple gratitude writing intervention was associated with greater neural sensitivity to gratitude. The experimental group showed behavioral increases in gratitude and significant neural modulation by gratitude three months after the experiment.
2. Give a brief summary of the methods used to gather the data.
Prior to the contents of the research, they required test subjects as well as an approval, so they recruited subjects who were from a population of psychotherapy clients for depression and anxiety. All subjects were provided with a written informed consent, and procedures were approved by Indiana University, which allowed them to continue the project. Initially, the subjects were randomized to two experimental groups who are going to participate in a gratitude writing intervention or an expressive writing intervention, and one control group that will have psychotherapy only. Before the experiment, the subjects completed a six-item Gratitude Questionnaire as well as the three-item gratitude adjectives scale to assess self-reports of how grateful they feel in daily life in addition to a mental health assessment called the BHM-20 scale to reflect their mental health status. Those in the experimental group for gratitude writing intervention were required to spend 20 minutes to write a letter to someone expressing gratitude and choose whether or not to send the letter to the recipient during the three consecutive sessions on the first through third week of counseling. In contrast, the other experimental group in expressive writing intervention were asked to write about their most stressful episodes in life. By the end of the three months after counseling, both experimental groups were recruited to participate in the fMRI tasks. During the fMRI task, money was operationally used to measure their expression of gratitude similar to tipping a server and to separate the feeling of guilt from gratitude, a trust game was modified to make it a “Pay It Forward” (PIF) task. The PFI task gives the subjects a sum of money ranging from $1 and $20 and the subjects were shown a potential third party beneficiary with whom they can share any portion of the money they were given. The person that gave them the money (benefactor) wanted them to pass on the received amount of money if they wanted to express gratitude for the endowment. The subjects were placed under the fMRI scanner and performed the PIF task and once the subject selected a donation amount, they rated their gratitude motivation, their desire to help the particular beneficiary, and their guilt motivation.
3. According to the Results section, what was determined?
With the subjects who participated in the present fMRI study, there were no significant differences in the clinical outcomes of those in the gratitude experimental group vs. the psychotherapy-only control group. Comparing the difference in BHM-20 scores a week after the writing sessions, the gratitude subjects showed greater improvements relative to the control group, but it wasn’t significant (Gratitude group increase = .036, Control group increase = 0.17). However, the gratitude group did show an increase in gratitude scores one week after the writing sessions, which suggests that the gratitude writing intervention was effective at increasing gratitude in the fMRI subjects. In terms of the PIF tasks, the average guilt rating was significantly greater than the minimum possible and the average desire to help rating was also significantly greater than the minimum possible. This also suggests that the subjects experienced emotions such as gratitude, guilt, and desire to help as significant factors in their decisions.
4. According to the Discussion section, what were the limitations of the study?
The first limitation was that with the self-report approach, they were not sure whether the regions showing a correlation with gratitude would not also show some correlation with the desire to help and vice versa, so in future studies, they might need to decorrelate the two factors in the experimental design. Another limitation is that the subjects they recruited were people who seeked counseling for anxiety and depression because the experiment only heightened more anxiety and depression than the normal healthy population. Results for this experiment may potentially be different if the recruited subjects were from a normal healthy population.
5. Compare the findings of this scholarly article with Brother David Steindl-Rast's Want to Be Happy - Be Grateful Ted Talk. Consider the topic of each and how they might intersect.
In the beginning of David Steindl-Rast’s Ted Talk, he discusses the connection between happiness and gratefulness and whether happiness is truly what makes us grateful. In his speech, he determined that it is not happiness that makes us grateful but gratefulness makes us happy because even those in misfortune can still radiate happiness compared to those who have everything but want something else. This can intersect with the results of the study that basically tells us that the gratitude group has shown great improvements in gratitude score, which ultimately shows that practicing gratitude in the duration of the experiment has made them become more grateful. Further into the Ted talk, David talks about how the gift of gratitude is really the opportunity that is in the present. A moment that wasn’t earned by a moment that was given. In the experiment, the PIF task was an example of this gift that David talks about where the subjects (Trustee) were given a sum of money by a benefactor and they were given the opportunity to share any portion of the endowment given by the benefactor to the beneficiary ( potential third party). The PFI task was an experiment that tested the quantitative emotions of gratitude, guilt, and desire to help and this task was given to them multiple times, which supports David’s explanation on how if you miss the opportunity of the moment, another is given despite the terrible difficulty. We can rise to the occasion and respond to the opportunity that was given. The repetitive process of whether the subject wanted to give a portion of the money or not was a repetitive opportunity to give what they received. Furthermore, during the study they measured that there was an increase in gratefulness as a result of the writing gratitude intervention and expressive gratitude intervention and for David, a grateful world is a world of joyful people.
1. Discuss the top research-based reasons for practicing gratitude that the article discusses. Make sure to discuss each one. (10 points per each; 100 total)
Gratitude brings us happiness
According to research, practicing gratitude has increased happiness and life satisfaction because positive emotions and feelings such as optimism, joy, and enthusiasm become a feeling often experienced by a grateful person.
Gratitude reduces anxiety and depression
Practicing gratitude can be a form of therapy because it will help reduce anxiety and depression by reminding ourselves of the good things in our life instead of focusing on the bad aspects that make us feel down.
Gratitude is good for our bodies
Studies suggest that gratitude strengthens one's immune system, lowers blood pressure, reduces symptoms of illness, and makes us feel less bothered by aches and pains. In a way, gratitude is an exercise that encourages us to take better care of ourselves and our health.
Grateful people sleep better
Grateful people sleep better because they don’t spend their time staying up plotting revenge or absorbing negative emotion. Instead, they get more hours of sleep each night and feel refreshed in the morning because they go to bed grateful for what they have and wake up grateful.
Gratitude makes us more resilient
It has been found that people recover from traumatic events and experiences through the practice of gratitude and being grateful.
Gratitude strengthens relationships
Gratitude strengthens relationships because it helps us feel closer to our friends and partners by letting them know our commitment to the already established connection. Expressing gratitude can increase relationship satisfaction for both parties because of the reassurance that it brings as well as the emotional intimacy it fosters. Through gratitude, people are encouraged to be on equal footings.
Gratitude promotes forgiveness
Gratitude promotes forgiveness even between two people who hate each other because they learn to appreciate all the good things that they had, and it is important to remind ourselves of how grateful we are of the progress we made having them in our lives. To forgive the past and be grateful for the growth is one of the reasons why gratitude is important.
Gratitude makes us “pay it forward”
Practicing gratitude and being a grateful person generally make you become more helpful, appreciative, and compassionate to other people because you can make connections through learning how to acknowledge the accomplishments of other people and recognize them for their worth.
Gratitude is good for kids
Practicing gratitude is good for kids because you teach them how to be generous and benevolent to others. By being grateful, you raise grateful adolescents who can also be just as resilient when they grow older. It is reported that they achieve greater life satisfactions and more positive emotion because they feel more connected to their community, which is all a part of the results gratitude will give you: better relationships, closer connections, happiness, and an even greater life satisfaction.
Gratitude is good for schools
Studies suggest that practicing gratitude makes students feel better about their school because while teachers feel more satisfied and accomplished with their work from the gratitude students show them, that gratitude becomes the very motivation that encourages teachers to keep going and prevent teacher burnout.
2. If you had to explain to a friend what you learned from this article, what would you tell them? What do they need to know? (20 points)
This article basically talks about the multiple reasons why we should practice gratitude with scientific research and studies as backup. It lists 10 reasons why practicing gratitude can be so beneficial in your life, but for the most part,it emphasizes a lot on how gratitude can increase happiness and life satisfaction in many different ways. Practicing gratitude has been proven to have a lot of positive effects on your health and emotions. By being a grateful person, you acknowledge the growth and achievements you’ve made together and the progress you made with them being there. By expressing gratitude for another person, you can foster closer and more intimate relationships, and by acknowledging others, they acknowledge you. As a result, you become more satisfied with your relationships and friendships. Being grateful, you are bound to be a very generous, resilient, and helpful person. It is especially evident that gratitude goes a long way when it comes to children, because they develop the behaviors you model for them and by practicing gratitude, they also foster the resilience and generosity you have. Overall, practicing gratitude has proven to make you feel more connected to other people, which reduces anxiety, depression, and becomes more happy and optimistic while potentially recovering from traumatic experiences. Learning how to practice gratitude in day to day life can be extremely beneficial to the body by reducing stress, encouraging us to take better care of our health, and allow us to sleep better. Gratitude will make us happy and scientific research can provide evidence of that.
3. At the end of the article, you will see:
For more: Read Emmons’ essay about “Why Gratitude is Good” and Giacomo Bono’s essay on “What We Still Don’t Know about Gratitude and Youth.” Pick one of the essay's to read and then in your response, discuss what you learned from the article that you chose. Make sure to include the title of the essay that you chose to read in your response. (20 points)
In the essay “Why Gratitude is Good”, it explores the multiple aspects of gratitude that can be good and aspects that can be challenging. The essay lists 4 reasons why gratitude can be good in your life. First, it talks about how gratitude can allow us to celebrate the present because it puts value on a variety of things small or big. By placing value on something, we learn to appreciate its significance and recognize the many reasons why or how the value article has contributed to happiness and how it benefits us. Instead of taking it granted, gratitude allows us to celebrate the goodness in everything by spending time noticing the positives instead of magnifying the negatives. We become more pleasured through the celebration of gratitude. Furthermore, gratitude blocks toxic and negative emotions because it reduces the frequency of depression. Emotions like envy aren't compatible with being grateful because being grateful prevents you from feeling resentment towards someone or something. According to Michael McCullough and Jo-Ann Tsang, “people who have high levels of gratitude have low levels of resentment and envy”. While gratitude can reduce depression, it can also reduce stress by developing resistance to it. Stress becomes a temporary anxiety when you learn how to have a grateful disposition. Gratitude allows people to take negative events into perspective and interpret them in a way that protects them from lasting anxiety and negativity. Last but most importantly, being grateful makes you become more aware of self-worth. When you are being grateful, you are placing yourself in the present moment where reality is and by being grateful, you can recognize that beyond your flaws is a person who has done great things. You start to notice a network of relationships in a wide scope, both from the past and the present, and notice who is responsible for helping you progress to the person you become. Gratitude increases self-worth because you make yourself aware of the people around you that have contributed to your life and the value they see within you. Gratitude can ultimately transform the way you see yourself and the world around you.
4. How does the information in this article connect to the novel The Blue Zones? Be sure to have a detailed answer, which includes at least two examples. (20 points)
I think that in a way, this lesson about gratitude can contribute to the lesson about ikigai for example. Ikigai means the reason why you wake up in the morning, and I believe that gratitude can relate to that concept in a way that both recognizes the positives in the world and there are aspects of everyday life that people appreciate, which makes them live a long happy life. The one important thing about The Blue Zones is that it articulates the many reasons why happiness is an important factor to longevity, ikigai being one of them, and gratitude can lead to that same happiness because the practice of being grateful for what you have makes you put more value on the things that have helped you on the way. While Ikigai explains the reason why people wake up every morning, gratitude explains the reason why you keep going. Both concepts emphasize on the importance of seeing the good in life instead of limiting our perspectives and focusing on the negatives. Ikigai encourages us to find what we love and are passionate about and gratitude contributes to ikigai in a way that we appreciate and acknowledge the reason why we love what we love and for good reason. Similarly, in the novel The Blue Zones, the story of Sayoko is interconnected to the concept of gratitude because Ushi allowed her to recognize what is really important in her life. The essay “Why Gratitude is Good” explains how the reason why grateful people have a higher sense of self-worth is because they recognize the contributions that other people have made in their life and have provided for their well-being. I believe that Sayoko is a good example of how gratitude can truly affect you and make a significant transformation in the way you see yourself because Sayoko used to work in a very respectable job but she left it after recognizing how the simplicity of Ushi’s life is what she wanted for herself. Sayoko could have made it very far in society with the accomplishments she’s made in her own company, but she decided to leave the “fortunate life” to pursue simplicity which consists of the small things like cooking meals for her family and taking care of her husband and children. In the novel, Sayoko said:
“I take time each night to think about the people around me, and think about what I eat, and what is important to me. I also do this during dinner. I take time to reflect. I’m not chasing the carrot anymore”
This in itself represents her gratitude and here, she is saying that every night before she sleeps, she practices gratitude. In the article “Why Practice It?”One of the top research-based reasons for why you should practice gratitude included how grateful people sleep better and explained how grateful people sleep better because they count blessings each night. Sayoko counts blessings each night, and she is basically proof that gratitude can truly lead to happiness and a more satisfying life.
Directions: Write a paragraph about a Week of Gratitude Event you attended (in-person, or virtually). To earn full points provide a thoughtful response with details and examples. If you attend more than 1 event, you can submit an extra credit assignment (last assignment in module).
1. Participate in the activities in the recorded video. Then, provide a summary of your learning for the entire workshop.
I attended a virtual event for the Week of Gratitude called “Myrlin Workshop”, and despite it being virtual, I thought it was fun. It was worth the participation because the workshop was actually inspiring me to let go of hesitation and let the words flow from my mind to my body, from my body to my hands, from my hands and to my paper. The instructor did this by making us do multiple activities that in a way incites our minds to think but not stress. He first started the event by introducing us with a word chain, which all we had to do was think of a word and list down random words that were associated with the initial word. For example, we started out with the word dolphin, and we came up with things that make sense together. We associated the word dolphin with ocean, from ocean we came up with water, motion, car, etc., and the list goes on from there. What I thought was very interesting about this activity was how differently we can all think and perceive things because we all started out with the same word and throughout the activity, some people came up with different results. For example, the other activity he got us to do was to come up with two random words but one is our “location” and the other is our “destination”, and he told us to come up with a way to connect words that helps us reach to the last word (“destination”). An example of this is the word “cat” as our starting point, and we have to come up with words that connect us to “books”. As he made up his own list, he went from cats to fur, fluffy, pillow, sleep, dream, clouds, white, pages, and then connected pages to books. He showed us that there are no wrong or right answers because he demonstrated the different ways we could’ve gone about that example by erasing the last two words and replacing them with new connections that lead us to the word books. Throughout the majority of the session, we were coming up with word chains with time limits in between, and I thought it was really fun to come up with and do, so I thoroughly enjoyed that part of the activity. Halfway into the session, he talked about gratitude and asked that we list “things”, “people”, and “places” that we are grateful for and to write a poem about one of the people we listed (if any). Primarily, he was engaging us to think on our own volition, free of stress and anxiety that the school expectations put on us.
2. What did you learn about writing in the workshop?
I’d like to think that the purpose of this workshop was to engage your thinking but in a way that doesn’t stress you out like school does. He encourages you to think freely, which is all the more reason why a part of his workshop was to be yourself because the way we think won’t be the same as everyone else. That’s a takeaway I received from his workshop. Poetry in Greek means to make, and everything starts with the poets; we are poets, so we shouldn’t be restricting ourselves of creativity to reach unrealistic expectations we set for ourselves.
3. What resonated with you the most in this workshop?
What really resonated with me during this workshop was that he made sure we were ourselves in our writing, and he kept repeating that we shouldn’t be worrying about sounding a certain way to sound good or worry about the rights or wrongs, just be you and he really encouraged that for everybody. I think we often struggle to be ourselves when it comes to writing because we have been trained to be academically sound when it’s not true to who we are, so I really appreciated that he didn’t require us to put any additions to the poems we wrote because what mattered was truly from the heart, not the mind. When I write poems at home taken with inspiration from other poems, I always try to sound “poetic”, but I realize there isn’t really a defined way to be that unless I write what truly comes from my emotions.
4. How will you apply what you learned in the writer's workshop in your own life?
I really like poems so perhaps this workshop made me realize that I should write my loved ones a poem to show my appreciation when I have the time. This workshop made me realize that people rarely get poems, so it would be a good idea to write a poem that comes from the heart and give it to the person I am forever grateful for. As he said, there is no outward pressure when it comes to writing and a poem should be written from the heart, and that is exactly what I plan on doing. To write a poem from the heart to a person I am grateful for.
5. How did your writing/learning relate to gratitude?
He asked us to list the things, people, and places that we are grateful for as well as write a poem for a specific person we want to write about. I’d like to think both activities were related to gratitude in a way that we are reflecting on the what’s and why’s of our gratitude, and that is shown through both the list and the poem. The poem exercises our brains to think and look back on the memories that were shared and the lessons that were learned and connect our emotions and writing abilities to create a poem about the person we are grateful for.
6. Copy and paste the original writing that you did in the workshop as evidence of your participation.
Activity 1: Word Chain
Word: Engineer
Robots
Computers
Iphones
Squares
Geometry
Math
Multiplication
Infinity
Stars
Universe
Planets
Earth
Nature
Activity 2:
Fly airplane transportation vehicle car school bus School
Activity 3:
Cat White furry cute small ants insect nature leaves = 9
Turtle slow animal snail slimy disgusting trash raccoons thief
Basketball circle round bouncy fast cheetah
Things, People, Places
Life
Experiences
Lessons
Mindset
Money
Food
Water
Shelter
Beef stew
My boyfriend
Dylan
Samir
Harden
Ayden
Georgie
Gym
Home
Texas
Philippines
Europe
Paris
Spain
Netherlands
Remember,
When it was the cold winter of November.
You and I, walking around an unfamiliar route
Talking endlessly like
You and I were the only ones existing in this universe.
The hot chocolate was as warm as your smile.
How I miss that winter day.
If only you stayed…
That was two years ago,
When you and I were drowning in love
And yearning to discover
Who was behind such a mysterious face.
It never stopped until one gloomy day
Changed everything.
We’ve talked about staying together,
Forever. To become a part of
Each other’s lives and never let go of each other,
Like unofficial wedding vows we awaited for the day.
Now you’re no longer a part of this crazy story called,
“My Life”.
I will never forget the memories you left
From our first date to
The very last time I laid eyes on you during graduation.
Time flies and I’ve only become a stranger,
Watching you grow from a distance,
Just as it was in the beginning.
You have taught me more about myself,
And I hope I have done the same for you.
Farewell sunshine,
From midnight rain.