Gratitude Intervention EMA/I

Indianapolis, IN

Various studies have found that gratitude positively correlates with life satisfaction, optimism, happiness, and hope, including areas of personality, well-being, social reationships, and physical health.; and negatively correlates with anxiety and depression (McCullough et al., 2002; Wood, Froh, and Geraghty 2010). The purpose of this study was to use qualitative data gathered using an ecological momentary assessment/intervention (EMA/I) focused on gratitude to characterize what people are grateful for, and to determine whether what people are grateful for shifts as they practice gratitude. Participants (N=53) from a Midwestern Christian liberal arts university with iPhones were instructed to download, and use, a smartphone app-based gratitude EMA/I that randomly administered "in-the-moment" prompts throughout the day and an "end-of-day" prompt over a 14-day period. Participants were asked to list one or two things that happened over the last hour for which they were grateful. Gratitude responses were categorized narrowly then broadly, before being qualitatively analyzed to determine the major areas in which individuals express gratitude. These categories included friends, parents, food, sleep, and nature. To our knowledge this is the first study to use EMA to monitor what individuals are grateful for throughout a gratitude intervention. As a result, this study provides novel insights regarding what people are grateful for and how this may change over the course of a gratitude intervention. Future work will involve examining whether (i) what an individual is grateful for, and/or (ii) how this changes over the course of intervention, are predictors for intervention efficacy.