Gratitude Enhanced by Focusing on End of Pleasurable Experience
One of the greatest challenges to achieving happiness through gratitude is routine, familiarity and habit. We behave as if the things we enjoy now - health, job, family and friends - will continue forever, despite knowing it's impossible. Usually only a change of some kind really captures our attention.
Attacking this complacency is at the heart of a new study which can be used to enhance the power of gratitude. Dr Jaime L. Kurtz, reporting her research in Psychological Science, hypothesises that one way to increase people's subjective well-being is to focus on when pleasurable experiences will end (Kurtz, 2008; PDF).
Six weeks isn't long
In her study Dr Kurtz recruited participants who were about six weeks from finishing college and graduating. They were asked to write about their experiences at college in one of three conditions:
- Encouraged to view 6 weeks as a long time.
- Encouraged to view 6 weeks as not very long.
- Just told to write about what they had done on a typical day (control group).
Then, over the next two weeks participants were asked to complete four surveys. Participants in the first two conditions were encouraged to think about what they were grateful for: things like friends, clubs and activities, but with their remaining time at college framed either as very short or relatively long. Participants in the final control condition continued describing their typical day.
As Dr Kurtz predicted it was those in the second group who were happier after the intervention; the other two groups showed no significant improvement. It seemed that just being encouraged to think grateful thoughts was not enough to increase happiness. What made the grateful thoughts beneficial was focusing on the imminent end of this pleasurable experience.
On top of being happier, students encouraged to think how little of college remained were more likely to take advantage of the time they had left. They displayed greater motivation by taking part in more college-related activities. Dr Kurtz suggests thinking about the end of their experience at college put them in a 'now or never' frame of mind.
Life is short
It is hard to admit to ourselves that life is finite: elderly parents won't be around forever, close friends will move far away and we will eventually grow old and die. Naturally we consider these sad facts of life depressing and guess that no good can come of their contemplation.
But what this study suggests is that thinking about endpoints as a way of stimulating gratitude can be beneficial. Finite ends seem to inspire people to think carefully about what it is they have, because soon enough, and usually sooner than we would like to think, it will be gone.
[Image credit: alfarman]
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To extrapolate about thinking about death, particularly for someone who is already anxious or depressed, based on a study done on college students looking at a six-week timeframe is ridiculous. I don't need to, want to, or benefit from contemplating when the things for which I am grateful will end. I do benefit by recognizing the everyday things I take for granted and appreciating them. And sometimes I do this by thinking of people on the street or third world countries, but I don't dwell on those negative things I can't fix.
Candy, I mention some more dramatic examples above, but the technique can just as easily be applied to eating an ice cream or enjoying a Sunday afternoon walk. The idea is that thinking about how an experience is time-limited helps one be more grateful for the experience.
As you rightly point out though, this is the first study of its type and so we have to be careful about extrapolating, especially to specific populations such as the depressed or anxious.
Somewhat tangentially I must agree that the savoring of short-term experiences can be very beneficial. I'm enjoying my biscotti more now that I only eat one instead of four. Another amazing benefit of portion control.
Thanks for sharing this study! My New Year's "anti-resolution" was to just be. One of the things I want to be is grateful. It's great to see that cultivating gratitude really makes a difference for people.
Well the study certainly fits in with my own experiences. For the past few years I had been rather miserable and I know I was taking a lot of important things for granted, assuming life would always be that way. Some major upheavals happened and since then I've re-evaluated pretty much everything in my life. The realisation that most situations are transient encourages you to feel gratitude for what you have when you have it and this in turn has had a huge effect on my state of mind. I'm much happier despite having lost a great deal, it's an amazing turn around and I've been observing it happening to myself with no small amount of fascination.
I've been focusing on gratitude for the past couple of years now, and I tend to disagree that focusing on the end of gratitude is a good idea. It certainly can make one think more deeply about the given situation, based on the idea that if it's going to be gone soon, it's best to gorge oneself as much as possible. However, if you're thinking that there's only so much time, then i feel that it's liable to distract one from what is going on "in the now".
Interesting study..thanks for sharing it with us. It made me think how this has been true in my life. I think part of the issue is that in our society, we're taught from a young age to be goal oriented and focus on the finish line. But it's also important to stop and think about the journey and give gratitude to the people and environment that is helping us get to the finish line.
Oh I agree 100% with that.
Being grateful is a large part of happiness.
It is very important to be grateful even to manifest more happiness in your life. You get what you think about and if you think about all the things you are grateful for you attract more of those things that make you happy into your life :)
Interesting study by the way.
http://www.masteringthemonkey.com
Interesting step beyond the idea of just being grateful, and listing gratitude. The idea of expecting change and being grateful for things which are bound to be ephemeral is a good balance to our tendency to avoid unpleasant thoughts, or the contemplation of death, ending etc.