Abstract
How does gratitude promote well-being? In this chapter I explore the first “how” of gratitude. Does gratitude support subjective well-being by enhancing one’s experience of the present? I submit that gratitude enhances experience in the present in two ways: by increasing the frequency of pleasant experiences, and by enhancing the enjoyment of positive events. Gratitude might increase the frequency of positive affect because grateful people are more likely to notice benefits, gratitude might lower the threshold for the appreciation of simple pleasures, and gratitude focuses one on the benefits they have and away from goods that they lack. Furthermore, grateful cognition and behavior has been shown to produce increased positive affect, thus increasing the frequency of positive emotional experiences. Gratitude might enhance the enjoyment of pleasant events because people tend to enjoy gifts more than mere goods, and gratitude might counteract adaptation to benefits. Because the experience of positive affect is one of the most important components of happiness, gratitude might increase well-being by amplifying the good in one’s experience of the present.
Gratitude is a second pleasure, one that prolongs the pleasure that precedes and occasions it, like a joyful echo of the joy we feel, a further happiness for the happiness we have been given. Gratitude: the pleasure of receiving, the joy of being joyful.
–Comte-Sponville (2002, p. 132)
True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.
–G. K. Chesterton
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Watkins, P.C. (2014). Does Gratitude Enhance Experience of the Present?. In: Gratitude and the Good Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7253-3_6
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