Gratitude: Have it, Show it, Glow in it!

Gratitude, thankfulness, or appreciation is a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. The experience of gratitude has historically been a focus of several world religions, Emmons, R. A., & Crumpler, C. A. (2000). Gratitude as a human strength: Appraising the evidence. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 56-69 and has been considered extensively by moral philosophers such as Adam Smith.Smith, A. (1790/1976). The Theory of Moral Sentiments (6th ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics. (Original work published 1790). The systematic study of gratitude within psychology only began around the year 2000, possibly because psychology has traditionally been focused more on understanding distress rather than understanding positive emotions. However, with the advent of the positive psychology movement, Linley, P. A., Joseph, S., Harrington, S., & Wood, A. M. (2006). Positive psychology: Past, present, and (possible) future.The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 3-16. gratitude has become a mainstream focus of psychological research. Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., & Linley, P. A. (2007). Gratitude: The parent of all virtues. The Psychologist, 20, 18-21 The study of gratitude within psychology has focused on the understanding of the short term experience of the emotion of gratitude (state gratitude), individual differences in how frequently people feel gratitude (trait gratitude), and the relationship between these two aspects. Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Stewart, N., Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2008). A social-cognitive model of trait and state levels of gratitude.Emotion, 8, 281-290.McCullough, M. E., Tsang, J. & Emmons, R. A. (2004). Gratitude in intermediate affective terrain: Links of grateful moods to individual differences and daily emotional experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86,295-309. (electronic copy)