The efficacy of seven gratitude interventions for promoting subjective well-being

Positive psychologists regularly use gratitude interventions to study and improve subjective well-being. However, most studies have examined the efficacy of only one or two interventions at a time. Furthermore, existing studies have used disparate dependent measures and control conditions, thwarting efforts to compare the interventions meaningfully. We addressed these concerns with two experiments: an unregistered study with nine conditions and a preregistered study with eleven conditions. The gratitude interventions included intrapersonal interventions (e.g. gratitude lists), interpersonal interventions (e.g. gratitude texts and letters), and gratitude-to-God interventions (e.g. God-focused gratitude lists and letters). Relative to four control conditions, the interventions were broadly effective (albeit some more than others) at increasing positive emotion and reducing negative emotion, though less consistently effective at increasing life satisfaction. Dosage analyses indicated that the interventions' efficacy at promoting positive affect and reducing negative affect was strongly associated with their efficacy at promoting gratitude.