Book reviews

In December 2005, I did what many academics do in the winter: write submissions for the American Psychological Association conference. I hoped to create a competitive panel for a symposium entitled, Gratitude and mindfulness: Interventions for personal and interpersonal well-being. Gratitude being central to the symposium, I thought Robert Emmons, the world’s leading expert on gratitude, would be the perfect Discussant. ‘‘But why would he agree’’, I thought. ‘‘I’m sure he’s swamped, and I’m a fledgling researcher’’. I took a risk. I sent the E-mail. Within several hours, he responded, ‘‘Sure, this sounds like a great panel. Thanks for asking’’. Although our symposium was rejected, I was (and continue to be) grateful to Emmons for agreeing to collaborate with a stranger, but why? In his latest book, Thanks! How the new science of gratitude can make you happier, Emmons answers this question, and many more, about the experience and expression of gratitude. Thanks! is the first book I know of about the science of gratitude that is geared for public consumption. The other book, The psychology of gratitude (2004), is an authoritative text edited by Emmons and Michael McCullough. Unlike Thanks! , however, the target audience is largely academics and other scientists. Thanks! made the science of gratitude public. That’s good. Psychologists should, in my view, give the science away. Emmons unequivocally achieved, and surpassed, this goal. On this criterion alone, I applaud him. Thanks! is divided into seven chapters. Distilling the data on gratitude and making it digestible is daunting. Emmons made it seem easy. Aside from Chapter 1, all chapters are about equal length. Each chapter, in my view, could stand alone, similar to a handbook chapter. Like a handbook, each chapter is loaded with the theory guiding and empirical data supporting gratitude. The chapters flow in a logical sequence, yet one could review a single chapter, learn a lot, and feel like a complete story’s been told. For instance, I’ve read Chapters 4 (Thanks be to God: Gratitude and the human spirit) and 7 (Practicing gratitude) more times than I can remember. They’re my favorites. And each time I’ve read one of them, I feel like I’ve participated in an organized and coherent lecture. Thanks! is a welcomed addition to books dedicated to teaching us how to live the good life. While gratitude has a long history among philosophers and theologians, it wasn’t until the turn of the twenty-first century that psychology finally began to give gratitude its deserved empirical homage. A PsycINFO search for gratitude between the years 1887 and 1998 (when positive psychology was popularized by Martin Seligman) yielded 218 citations. The same search between the years 1999 and 2007 yielded 369 citations. This suggests that psychology has a vested interest in furthering the science of gratitude. The individual largely responsible for the scientific advancement of gratitude, and for packaging it in a book for laypeople, is Emmons. Why does gratitude matter? Emmons convincingly argues that, ‘‘. if we overlook gratitude, it will be at our own emotional and psychological peril’’ (p. 16). The empirical data presented in Thanks! lead me to draw a firm conclusion: the benefits of gratitude extend well beyond those associated with being polite. Grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism; furthermore, actively cultivating gratitude in one’s life buffers people from the deleterious consequences of envy, resentment, greed, bitterness, and materialism. Grateful people are also better at coping with stress, both everyday stress and trauma-induced stress, and may recover more quickly from illness and enjoy greater physical health. Concerning the latter, people instructed to count blessings slept more, exercised more, and reported more energy. Gratitude is psychologically and physically beneficial. Gratitude is an interpersonal emotion and is linked with stronger social relationships and communal ties. Emmons reported that an unexpected finding in his groundbreaking research on gratitude was that those who kept gratitude journals reported feeling closer to others, were more likely to be prosocial, and were viewed as altruistic by intimate others. Furthermore, people high on dispositional gratitude have better relationships, put more energy into preserving these relationships, and are more securely attached and less lonely.