While practising gratitude is now well-established as a powerful way to enhance happiness, its links to decision-making are much less clear.
Many people feel that emotions tend to get in the way of decision-making: that we should be 'cold' and 'calculating' to make the right choices.
For example, when we're faced with a tempting choice to spend (or waste) a whole load of money, we usually call on our powers of self-control to resist temptation.
The new research, though, finds that the emotions can also be harnessed to rein in desire.
In the study, conducted by Northeastern University's David DeSteno and colleagues, 75 participants were given a classic test of their financial self-control (DeSteno et al., 2014).
They were told they could have $54 right now or $80 in 30 days.
Before they made their decision, though, they were put into one of three emotional states:
- Grateful.
- Happy.
- Neutral.
This is the usual situation: most people don't want to wait.
The people in the gratitude condition, though, showed much more restraint and were willing to wait for a larger gain.
And, the more gratitude they felt, the greater their patience for the larger reward.
One of the study's authors, Professor Ye Li, said:
"Showing that emotion can foster self-control and discovering a way to reduce impatience with a simple gratitude exercise opens up tremendous possibilities for reducing a wide range of societal ills from impulse buying and insufficient saving to obesity and smoking."We don't know exactly why gratitude has this effect, but it may be because it makes us feel more social, co-operative and altruistic.
In other words: gratitude may make us feel less selfish, which gives us more patience.
Here's a 2 minute gratitude exercise, if you'd like to try it.
Not a fair test. Put a zero on those figures and get a real response. Like it or not, neither 54, nor 80 dollars buys much these days but a quick trip to the bar for a few bears with your buddies, so ask the students, which I assume these college tests situations always are, if they prefer 540 now or 800 at the end of the month. Make it a little more real.