Creating Gratitude-based Apps for Youth

At some point in time, we’ve all experienced that moment when things seem to be going wrong and someone says, “Well, look on the bright side.” They then proceed to run down a list of silver linings we could be focused on instead.  If it were really that easy to reframe our perspective, why do so many of us have trouble doing so? The answer may lie in the way our brains are wired. Researchers have discovered that our brains possess a negativity bias; that is, we tend to have stronger emotional responses to negative news than to positive news. For example, we are more upset about losing $10 than we are happy about finding $10 (a phenomenon known as Loss Aversion). Though this negativity bias was once a useful survival tool for our primate ancestors, is can have detrimental effects on our well-being now, and it can increase the likelihood of developing mental illnesses such as depression.

There’s good news though: researchers have discovered that practicing gratitude can counteract our default negativity bias. When we practice gratitude, we are mindfully and intentionally focusing on the positive, which actively rewires the way our brains function. Expressing gratitude brings our awareness to the small, often overlooked, wonderful things happening around us. Psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough conducted the study in which they asked people to keep a daily gratitude journal. Participants were instructed to write down five things, each day, that they appreciated and were grateful for. The study concluded that keeping a gratitude journal increased overall well-being and positive emotions, reduced stress, improved sleep, increased physical health and even boost the immune system!

Gratitude for all ages

Best of all, gratitude can be developed at any age. This means that with a little guidance and support from teachers, parents and/or mentors, children and adolescents can begin dismantling their negativity bias long before they reach adulthood. Dr. Giacomo Bono, a professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, suggests that adolescents can cultivate gratitude by journaling; meanwhile younger children might benefit from drawing pictures of things or people they are grateful for. Furthermore, Dr. Bono has also recommended an activity in which students are instructed to identify their top five strengths and then create “Strength Posters” that are hung on the walls of their classroom. The posters serve as powerful reminders of each student’s unique and inherent gifts. Finally, teachers reinforce positive thinking and gratitude by encouraging students to leave a thank-you note on others’ posters.

Using Technology to Facilitate Gratitude

Dr. Bono believes that apps and other educational technologies could help facilitate the expression of gratitude. He suggests that a platform that enables users to create and send digital thank you notes could be a powerful resource to promote and support mental health. Imagine the benefits of a social network based completely on expressing gratitude to loved ones in a streamlined, effortless way; imagine the feeling of receiving a random digital thank you from someone you mentor, and imagine a generation of kids and adolescents who have no trouble expressing their feelings of gratitude! App developers and EdTech can help make this possible, and may even initiate a ripple effect of gratitude.

Dr. Bono is currently working on ways to convert gratitude from an action into a personality trait. He is utilizing a two-pronged approach: first he instills the value of gratitude in students by teaching them about the science of gratitude. Second, he provides students with safe ways to begin practicing gratitude. It’s important to note that children and adolescents may not want to practice gratitude socially because they are not comfortable showing emotions and disclosing personal matters to others. This is why Dr. Bono uses a web-based app called GiveThx, in which students can practice give and receive expressions of thanks.

The more often children and adolescents experience the emotional and neurological rewards of gratitude, the more likely they are to continue engaging in thanks giving actions.Eventually, the actions become an automatic function and turn become an integrated personality trait.

Gratitude is more than saying kind words that make us feel good in the moment, it is a powerful practice that activates the brain’s reward center, combats our default negativity bias, and builds meaning. In youth, gratitude has the power to facilitate meaningful conversations and build social capital; it encourages personal growth, bigger goal setting, and can create a sense of purpose. Young people especially need to know that they matter and they need to feel as though they can make an actual difference in the world. Apps that activate gratitude may be a huge step forward in supporting purpose-driven attitudes in the next generation of young influencers.

Suggestions for developing apps and media that promote gratitude:

• Create apps or games that allow people to list the things they are grateful for

• Find ways to use technology to express appreciation to others

• Focus on strengths and positive emotions versus what has gone wrong

• Encourage people to think about their meaning and purpose in life

• Use images and video clips that inspire people to contribute to society

H. Wenwen Ni, PhD Candidate, UCLA

Wenwen Ni is a PhD candidate in Social Psychology at UCLA. She is passionate about using psychological research to improve well-being.

https://huolab.psych.ucla.edu/people/

This blog was originally created to support Baylor University in hosting its Technology Innovation Request for Proposal: Improving Character Strengths of Adolescents through Technology Innovation.

Cultivating Gratitude for a Fulfilling Life

Gratitude is one of the first things children learn, as parents constantly urge them to say “thank you” to others who hand out candy on Halloween, share toys in the classroom, or say something sweet. Some even argue that gratitude acts as a “social glue”, strengthening relationships and providing meaning in life. It’s no secret why kids are taught about gratitude as soon as they can talk – research has shown that it improves behavior, increases grades, increases happiness, and decreases risky behaviors. Scientists have been working tirelessly to understand this virtue and new research can provide insights in creating media for young children that cultivates gratitude for a happy and fulfilling life.

Increasing gratitude during childhood is important because this is a key period in development when children have more social relationships than ever before, and it is vital that these relationships are supportive, happy, and healthy.

Psychological Research on Gratitude

A group of scientists from multiple universities teamed up to examine a new intervention for promoting gratitude in young children. In this study, published in School Psychology Review, children were randomly assigned to either a control group or an intervention group that educated children on “benefit-appraisal”. In the benefit-appraisal group, students were taught how to understand a person’s good intentions when helping someone else, how that helping may come at a cost to the giver or helper, and how beneficial it is to receive a gift from someone else. These lessons were not just lectures, but comprised of discussions, writing assignments, and even role-playing activities – activities that target specific ways children learn. These lessons were carried out every day for one week. They found that students who received these lessons showed increased grateful mood and wrote 80% more thank you notes to the parent-teacher association than the students in the control condition! But this intervention didn’t just last a week – the researchers found that it induced gratitude up to five months later and even showed a positive effect on well-being. Scientists believe that this effect is so powerful because the curriculum induces grateful thinking, which manifests as grateful action and attitude, and therefore changed behavior and enhanced well-being.

Gratitude vs Happiness

More research has shown that gratitude may contribute more to children than momentary happiness – it may even ignite a motivation to give back to their community. In this study, middle school students were asked about their gratitude beliefs, social behavior, life satisfaction, and social integration (e.g., motivation to help others) at three different points in time: when the study started, three months later, and six months later. The researchers found that the measurement of gratitude at the start of the study predicted how well students were socially integrated six months later! The factors driving this finding were social behavior and life satisfaction. Their findings suggest that gratitude and social integration build on each other; one predicts the other, and vice versa. The scientists conclude that in order to shape children into thoughtful, caring, contributing members of society, gratitude interventions may be the first step.

Gratitude and Adolescents

Research has shown that teenagers who were more grateful experienced social support from friends and family, increased optimism, and higher satisfaction in all parts of their life, such as school, family, friends, community, and self, as compared with teens who weren’t as grateful. Also,teens who were more grateful reported greater life satisfaction, academic achievement, passion for activities, and they felt less envious, depressed, and materialistic than their not-so-grateful peers. Overall, it’s clear that developing gratitude is a skill that will positively affect almost every aspect of life. Therefore, it’s vital that children’s media make it fun and easy to focus on cultivating gratitude. Thankfully, there are concrete, evidence-based practices that only take a couple minutes a day and can help children lead a fulfilling life full of gratitude.

How to Integrate Gratitude:

• Counting blessings using a gratitude journal by writing down five things every day for which kids are grateful – take it one step further by also writing down the causes of those good things

• Kids can write a gratitude letter to someone they never really properly thanked –this will make the receiver feel appreciated and the giver feel fulfilled!

• Encourage kids to think about what life would be like had a positive event not occurred – this is called mental subtraction and can increase happiness.

• Show kids that spending money on experiences rather than things will feel better in the long term; instead of buying flashy tennis shoes, buy a board game to play with friends.

Julia Schorn is a second-year Ph.D student in Psychology at UCLA, with a focus in cognitive neuroscience and memory. In her free time she enjoys playing the harp and making science accessible to everyone!

http://juliamarieharp.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-schorn-4128258a/

This blog was originally created to support Baylor University in hosting its Technology Innovation Request for Proposal: Improving Character Strengths of Adolescents through Technology Innovation.

Joy

In January of 2018, nearly one in every four Yale freshmen gathered in a lecture hall with a common task for the semester: to learn what brings us joy. The “Psychology and the Good Life”course was created by Yale psychology professor Dr. Laurie Santos, and it has become the most popular class in the university’s 300-year history. The success of the course mirrors  a broader human fascination with understanding how to experience and increase well-being in our everyday lives.

What  is Joy?

When you hear the word “joy”, you might immediately think of “happiness”—indeed, it is quite common to see these words used interchangeably. However, scholars have suggested that the two terms are distinguishable. Whereas happiness is predominantly derived from external and potentially fleeting sources, joy is thought to be more sustained and reflect a sense of deep connection to something or someone we value. Joy has also been described as a response to something we have been hoping for or anticipating. For example, watching a feel-good comedy might promote our happiness, but being reunited with a loved one after a long separation can bring us joy.

Psychological Research on Joy

Although psychological research on joy has been relatively limited given the complexity of its definition, we do know about some barriers to experiencing joy in our everyday lives.

First, researchers have recognized that humans have a negativity bias, wherein we tend to pay more attention to negative things that happen to us compared to positive things. Think about the last time you had lunch with a friend—did you spend more time talking about your stresses and worries or all the positive things in your life? Although it’s important to seek out social support in times of distress, disproportionately focusing on the negative and ignoring the positive can take a toll on our well-being.

Second, humans exhibit habituation to positive events and experiences—with repeated exposure, pleasant things get less pleasant. Imagine a child who receives a new toy. Although initially overjoyed, after several days the child becomes disinterested and tosses the toy aside. Habituation helps explain why people may have trouble sustaining well-being over time.

How can we combat negativity biases and habituation to lead happier and more joyful lives? It’s important that we not only seek out social support and interaction with others when we’re struggling or when things aren’t going our way (e.g., after a breakup), but also when things are going right. For example, there is scientific evidence that people feel better on days that they tell other people about positive personal events (e.g., receiving phone call from an old friend). Additionally, expressing gratitude(i.e., what we are thankful for) can provide a helpful reminder of all the things we should appreciate in our lives.

Joy in the Connected World of Adolescents

Given the proliferation of electronic communication, it’s also important to think about how we can promote joy and happiness in an increasingly (technologically) connected world. This is especially relevant when we talk about teenagers, who are some of the most prolific users of social media.

Although adults may express widespread fears about the risks of teens online, we also know that technology and social media offer many benefits for teens. The ability to connect with others at the click of a button allows users to stay in touch with and potentially even strengthen friendships. Teens who feel lonely or isolated can also use mobile technologies as a way to more easily interact with peers and receive social support. Additionally, mobile technologies can offer adolescents opportunities to explore different personal identities and express themselves creatively, which can contribute to a stronger sense of self.

On the other hand, there are certain ways that excessive phone use and online activity can undermine adolescents’ joy and happiness. When I asked Dr. Laurie Santos, Yale professor and creator of the new Psychology and the Good Life course, about potential downsides of teen media usage, she also highlighted its effects on health and face-to-face interactions. Adolescents who spend more time on social media sleep less and sometimes even report more emotional distress (e.g., depressive symptoms). For example, whereas using social media to actively connect with others can promote well-being, a lot of passive browsing (e.g., scrolling through Instagram) can create envy and negative mood. This raises an important issue for tech developers looking to create media or apps geared at children and adolescents. Santos notes that we need to carefully “balance any benefits that come from an app [with] the downside of more phone use overall,” especially in light of evidence that increased use of mobile devices predicts less enjoyable face-to-face interactions.

Taking Action

So, how can we find more joy in our daily lives? Here are a few tips based on what we know from the research.

1.    Keep a gratitude journal. Every day, take time to reflect on what you are grateful for and log it in a journal. Even if it’s only for five minutes, this exercise can help you keep perspective on all the things you have to appreciate in life.

2.    Help others. Although there are times we are stressed out and need support from others, research shows that holding doors for strangers, doing volunteer work, and helping out our friends all contribute to better well-being, even among teens and young adults.

3.    Balance online and offline time. Given that online venues offer both opportunities and risks, the question is less about whether we should spend any time online and more about how and when we’re spending time online. Disconnecting before bed might be especially important, and being intentional and cognizant about connecting rather than comparing ourselves is likely to create a more positive experience.

Hannah Schacter is a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the University of Southern California Department of Psychology. Her research examines how adolescents' interpersonal relationships contribute to their health and well-being across varying social contexts. To learn more, please visit www.hannahschacter.com.

This blog was originally created to support Baylor University in hosting its Technology Innovation Request for Proposal: Improving Character Strengths of Adolescents through Technology Innovation.