What if the most popular gratitude exercise is actually the least effective? A massive new study involving more than 10,000 people across 34 countries suggests that simply listing five things you're thankful for may not be the best way to boost your mood and strengthen your connections with others.
The research, published in the journal PNAS, tested six different ways to induce gratitude. The surprising winner: writing and sending a thank-you message to someone you appreciate. This simple act of reaching out to another person had the strongest positive effect on participants' well-being.
Conversely, the exercise that asked people to make a list of five things they were grateful for — the method most commonly promoted in self-help books and wellness apps — showed the weakest results of all six interventions tested.
"The greatest effect occurred when social connection explicitly came into play," said Paulo Sérgio Boggio, a psychologist and professor at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in Brazil, who co-authored the study. "For an intervention to be more effective, it must be more than just thinking about something good."
Brazil played a significant role in the research. Nearly 600 Brazilian volunteers participated, responding to intervention prompts through an online tool. Boggio and his former graduate student, Beatriz Bezerra de Souza, represented Brazil among 36 researchers from around the world who worked on the project, which was coordinated by Nicholas Coles at the University of Florida.
The benefits appeared quickly. Participants showed immediate improvements in mood, including increased positive feelings, greater life satisfaction, and reduced negative emotions like envy. The study also measured something called social reciprocity — essentially, the desire to help others in return. Gratitude practices boosted this feeling across nearly all countries tested.
But the impact varied dramatically depending on where people lived. Mexico showed the strongest positive effects, while Norway saw almost no change. Brazil landed in the middle of the scale. Researchers believe cultural factors like how flexible a society is, the gap between different social classes, and levels of religiosity may explain these differences.
From an evolutionary perspective, gratitude makes sense as a social tool. "Feeling grateful increases the likelihood that you will help others — and not necessarily the person who helped you," Boggio explained. "This creates a spiral of helping among people, not necessarily because there's an expectation of direct gain."
The researchers are now investigating whether tailoring gratitude practices to specific cultural norms could make them even more effective worldwide.