Is Gratitude an Attitude, or just a Platitude?
In my work as a neuroeducator, I come across stories about our miraculous mind that fire my curiosity. Every week, I share my thoughts about how to work smart to amplify your organic potential, develop a growth mindset, and foster your brain health. I hope you enjoy them! (scroll down to read more)
If this is your first time reading this blog, welcome! If you enjoy it please subscribe to the Agile Intellect email list to get it directly to your inbox and share with others who may enjoy it!
Is the Attitude of Gratitude just a platitude?
A cliché? Or something risque?
Is it really worth my time?
When in doubt, my strategy is always to search it out!
Scientific studies suggest that gratitude can improve your sleep, enhance your romantic relationships, protect you from illness, and boost your happiness, among many other benefits.
As a neuro sleuth, I needed to understand why. I zeroed in on the neurobiology of gratitude with a more specific question in mind:
Can our brain activity reveal anything about how gratitude achieves its significant benefits?
Lo and behold, I found a groundshaking study that touched my heart. Glenn Fox, Ph.D., conducted a study that monitored brain activity while the subject was feeling gratitude (Fox is the head of program design, strategy, and outreach at USC Performance Science Institute).
He began by watching hundreds of hours of videotape housed at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History, the world’s largest repository of videotaped Holocaust survivor testimonies—many of which, perhaps surprisingly, are filled with breathtaking acts of selflessness and generosity.
He assembled a collection of these stories and transformed them into short scenarios that he shared with the participants. Each scenario was rephrased into the second-person (e.g., “You are on a wintertime death march and a fellow prisoner gives you a warm coat”) and presented to our study’s participants.
We asked them to imagine themselves in the scenario and feel, as much as possible, how they would feel if they were in the same situation. While participants reflected on these gifts, we measured their brain activity using modern brain imaging techniques (in the form of functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI).
For each of these scenarios, his team asked participants how much gratitude they felt, and correlated this rating with their brain activity at that moment. While such an approach will not elicit exactly the same feelings as actually living through such situations, participants overwhelmingly reported strong feelings of gratitude, deep engagement in the task, and, perhaps even more importantly, an increased empathy for and understanding of the Holocaust as a result of participating in the study.
What’s more, the results revealed that when participants reported those grateful feelings, their brains showed activity in a set of regions associated with understanding other people’s perspectives, empathy, and feelings of relief.
This is also an area of the brain that is massively connected to the systems in the body and brain that regulate emotion and support the process of stress relief.
More reasons to be grateful
Numerous studies give us a glimpse into how gratitude activates neural networks associated with emotional intelligence.
The regions associated with gratitude are also part of the neural networks that light up when we socialize and experience pleasure. These regions are heavily connected to the parts of the brain that control basic emotional regulation, such as heart rate and arousal levels, and are associated with stress relief and thus pain reduction. They are also closely linked to the brain’s “mu opioid” networks, which are activated during close interpersonal touch and relief from pain—and may have evolved out of the need for grooming one another for parasites. (Yuck, right? But now I understand the magic of a good massage!)
In other words, gratitude activates the brain networks associated with social bonding and stress relief, and may explain in part how grateful feelings lead to health benefits over time.
Feeling grateful and recognizing help from others creates a more relaxed body state and allows the subsequent benefits of lowered stress to wash over us. (Dr. Fox recently published a scientific paper elaborating on these ideas.)
Perhaps even more encouraging, researcher Prathik Kini and colleagues at Indiana University performed a study examining how practicing gratitude can alter brain function in depressed individuals. They found evidence that gratitude may induce structural changes in the very same parts of the brain that were found active in the Fox experiment.
What! Gratitude physically changes the structure of the brain?
Such a result tells a story of how the mental practice of gratitude may change and rewire the brain. (For more on Kini’s research, read this Greater Good article by his co-authors Joel Wong and Joshua Brown.)
Based on research so far, gratitude’s capacity to ameliorate suffering in these circumstances does not stem from our ability to “think happy thoughts” or deny reality. Instead, its benefits likely stem from the same functions that it serves in other aspects of our lives: It brings us together, raises awareness of what we have, and impels us to consider how we can recognize and spread human goodness.
Count your blessings
Research findings clearly encourage us to consider counting your blessings. Regardless of whether you like turkey, or Uncle Fred’s audacious tie, Thanksgiving is a perfect time to begin a regular practice of seeing silver linings even in the worst of possible circumstances. In my darkest times, I have found that choosing this perspective has generated resilience and the ability to see beauty despite the darkness that threatens to shroud it. Embracing the full spectrum of emotions does not exclude either, but opens our eyes to the entire picture.
We focus so much attention on what we “lack.” We pursue those things with the majority of our energy. Imagine how allowing our attention to encompass and appreciate the people and positives in our lives could shift our perspective on life and juice our happiness quotient.
If you still don’t agree, read this again and follow the links to the original research. It is undeniable that prioritizing gratitude is clearly time well spent.
Life is short and it is also as good as we choose to see it.
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.” John F. Kennedy
Learn more at www.agileintellectneuro.com to book a brain boosting master class for your company or organization, or simply ask for a free discovery session for any questions you may have. Individual coaching is also available for those who need help with an easy-to-implement Brain Boss lifestyle.
Explore how creating a neurological feedback loop with proven habit forming techniques can uplevel your mental performance without time-consuming demands. Get the simple basics of how to easily incorporate healthy brain strategies into your daily routine and combat the impact of aging of your mind.