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Surprising connections between our well-being and giving, getting, and gratitude
Society for Personality and Social Psychology | January 21, 2013 | Social / 0
We all know that getting a good night’s sleep is good for our general health and well-being. But new research is highlighting a more surprising benefit of good sleep: more feelings of gratitude for relationships.
“A plethora ofresearch highlights the importance of getting a good night’s sleep for physical and psychological well-being, yet in our society, people still seem to take pride in needing, and getting, little sleep,” says Amie Gordon of the University of California, Berkeley. “And in the past, research has shown that gratitude promotes good sleep, but our research looks at the link in the other direction and, to ourknowledge, is the first to show that everyday experiences of poor sleep are negatively associated with gratitude toward others – an important emotion that helps form and maintain close social bonds.”
Social psychologists are increasingly finding that “prosocial” behavior – including expressing gratitude and giving to others – is key to our psychological well-being. Even how we choose to spend ourmoney on purchases affects our health and happiness. And children develop specific ways to help others from a very young age. Gordon and other researchers will be presenting some of these latest findings at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) annual meeting today in New Orleans.
Sleeping to feel grateful
A large body of research has documented that people who experiencegratitude are happier and healthier. In three new studies, Gordon and Serena Chen, also of the the University of California, Berkeley, explored how poor sleep affects people’s feelings of gratitude.
In the first study, people who experienced a poor night’s sleep were less grateful after listing five things in life for which they were appreciative than were people who had slept well the nightbefore. The researchers adapted the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, which measures sleep quality and number of hours slept, among other variables, to evaluate the previous night’s sleep.
In the second study, participants recorded their sleep from the previous night for two weeks and their feelings of gratitude. The researchers found a decline in gratitude associated with poor sleep, and thoseparticipants reported feeling more selfish those days.
The final study looked at heterosexual couples and found that people tend to feel less grateful toward their romantic partners if either they or their partners generally sleep poorly. “In line with this finding, people reported feeling less appreciated by their partners if they or their partner tends to sleep poorly, suggesting that the lack ofgratitude is transmitted to the partner,” Gordon says.
“Poor sleep is not just experienced in isolation,” Gordon says. “Instead, it influences our interactions with others, such as our ability to be grateful, a vital social emotion.”

Giving away money to feel wealthy
Just as expressing gratitude confers benefits, so too does giving to others. New research shows that people all around the world– from Canada to Uganda, from South Africa to India – derive more happiness from spending money on others than they do on themselves.
“For the first time, we show that giving away money or spending it on others confers the ironic psychological benefit of increasing the giver’s sense of wealth,” says Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and co-author with Elizabeth Dunn of the University ofBritish Columbia of the upcoming book Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending. In a suite of new, not-yet published, studies, Norton and colleagues showed that charitable giving makes people feel wealthier.
This research follows on other recent work published in Psychological Science by Norton and colleagues that shows that giving time to others – from helping with homework to shoveling a...