Thankful for the little things: A meta analysis of gratitude interventions.
A recent qualitative review by Wood, Froh, and Geraghty (2010) cast doubt on the efficacy of gratitude interventions, suggesting the need to carefully attend to the quality of comparison groups. Accordingly, in a series of meta analyses, we evaluate the efficacy of gratitude interventions (ks 4 18; Ns 395 1,755) relative to a measurement only control or an alternative activity condition across 3 outcomes (i.e. gratitude, anxiety, psychological well being) Gratitude interventions outperformed a measurement only control on measures of psychological well being (d .31, 95% confidence interval [CI .04, .58] k 5) but not gratitude (d .20; 95% CI .04, .44] k 4) Gratitude interventions outperformed an alternative activity condition on measures of gratitude (d .46, 95% CI .27, .64] k 15) and psychological well being (d .17, 95% CI .09, .24] k 20) but not anxiety (d .11, 95% CI .08, .31] k 5) More detailed subdivision was possible on studies with outcomes assessing psychological well being. Among these, gratitude interventions outperformed an activity matched comparison (d .14; 95% CI .01, .27] k 18) Gratitude interventions performed as well as, but not better than, a psychologically active comparison (d .03, 95% CI .13, .07] k 9) On the basis of these findings, we summarize the current state of the literature and make suggestions for future applied research on gratitude. (PsycINFO Database Record
Journal of counseling psychology