Benefits of Gratitude Journaling and Their Limits

The benefits of gratitude journaling are real but modest: in controlled studies, people who regularly wrote down what they were grateful for felt better about their lives, had more positive emotions and, in some studies, slept a little longer. Reviews that pool many studies find a small effect, no larger than that of other positive exercises. Below is what six studies found, what they didn’t find and how to write so you get the most out of it.

What are the benefits of gratitude journaling?

Across the studies linked in this article, writing down what you’re grateful for was linked to these changes:

• Feeling better about your life as a whole. This showed up in the first and third studies by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough.
• More positive emotions and fewer negative ones. Emmons and McCullough called the effect on positive emotions their most robust finding.
• More optimism about the week ahead.
• Feeling more connected to other people, in a study of adults with a chronic illness.
• More sleep, in the same study, by about half an hour a night.
• Fewer depressive symptoms, for up to six months after a one-week exercise tested by Martin Seligman and colleagues.

None of these changes appeared in every study. The sections below explain where each one comes from.

What Emmons and McCullough found in their gratitude journal studies

In 2003, Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough published three experiments on gratitude journals.

In the first study, 192 students wrote down up to five things they were grateful for once a week, for ten weeks. Other groups wrote about hassles or about ordinary events. The gratitude group felt better about their lives as a whole and was more optimistic about the coming week. They also reported fewer physical symptoms and spent nearly an hour and a half more per week exercising than the hassles group.

In the second study, students wrote every day for two weeks. The gratitude group had more positive emotions and was more likely to say they’d offered emotional support to someone. This time there was no difference in physical symptoms, exercise or sleep.

The third study included 65 adults with neuromuscular disease who wrote every evening for three weeks. Compared with a control group, they were more satisfied with their lives, felt more connected to others and slept about half an hour more per night. Their spouses or partners also rated them as more satisfied with life.

How long the benefits of gratitude journaling last

In a 2005 study by Martin Seligman and colleagues, people did one exercise online for one week. In the “three good things” exercise, they wrote down three things that went well each day and why each one happened. They reported more happiness and fewer depressive symptoms one month, three months and six months later.

Another exercise in the same study, the gratitude visit, asked people to write a thank-you letter and deliver it in person. It gave the biggest boost at first, but the effect was gone three months later.

How often to write in a gratitude journal

More often isn’t always better. In a study by Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues, people who listed what they were grateful for once a week became happier, while people who did it three times a week didn’t. The authors suggest that the second group may have gotten bored with the exercise.

This doesn’t mean daily entries don’t work. In the second and third Emmons and McCullough studies, people wrote every day. It suggests that a gratitude journal works better when each entry feels fresh than when you write it on autopilot.

What gratitude journaling doesn’t do

Gratitude journaling won’t change your life by itself, and studies don’t support claims that say it will. Two meta-analyses, which pool the results of many studies, give a more careful picture:

• A 2016 meta-analysis led by Don Davis found that gratitude exercises improved psychological well-being a little more than neutral activities. They didn’t work better than comparison exercises that were also designed to help, and they had no clear effect on anxiety.
• A 2017 meta-analysis of 38 studies by Leah Dickens found improvements in several outcomes, including happiness, but not in others. Dickens concluded that the unique benefits of gratitude may be overstated in the research.

There’s no evidence that a gratitude journal can replace therapy. In a 2018 trial by Joel Wong and colleagues, 293 adults in counseling who also wrote gratitude letters reported better mental health a few weeks later than people who only had counseling. In this trial, the letters were added to counseling. Nobody tested them as a replacement. If you’re dealing with depression or anxiety, talk to your doctor or a mental health professional.

How to write a gratitude journal that helps

Some of these steps come from the methods in the studies above. The rest are our own suggestions.

1. Write one to five things. That’s the range from the Emmons and McCullough studies. One specific entry is enough on a busy day.
2. Add why it happened. The “three good things” exercise asked people to explain each good thing. “I caught the bus” becomes “I caught the bus because I left five minutes early.”
3. Choose a rhythm you can keep fresh. Once a week worked in one study. If you write daily, keep entries short and change them often.
4. Make each entry specific. “My friends” is easy to write on autopilot. “Dana called to ask how my interview went” isn’t.
5. Write on hard days too, but keep it small. One true sentence is enough.

If you’re not sure where to begin, our guide on how to start a gratitude journal walks through the first week. For ideas, try our gratitude journal prompts or the list of things to be grateful for.

We built Graceup for short entries like these: one good thing a day, written in about 30 seconds. The app asks a different question each day, so your entries don’t turn into the same list, and at the end of the month you open a jar with everything you wrote.

Photo: Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash