Gratitude May Help Save the Planet’s Shrinking Resources

In the early weeks of the pandemic, hording of items like toilet paper resulted in bare shelves, with many people buying up far more than they needed, leaving none for others. This tendency to panic in the face of shortage runs deep in the human psyche and, taken to extremes, is bad for the planet and its finite resources.  

New research out of Northeastern University points to a means to more equitable sharing: gratitude.  The studies suggest that those who are grateful are less likely to be greedy. Lead author, Shanyu Kates, says that the research linking gratitude to more sustainable human behavior could have implications in the fight against climate change and other resource challenges.   

In one of the two Northeastern studies, involving 155 graduate students, one group was asked to write about a time they felt grateful, as a means of prepping them to experience gratitude. A control group were asked to write about a typical day. After the writing exercise, the participants played a “resource” game involving a bank of points from which they could draw. They were told the more points they extracted, the more likely they were to win a cash prize.

Players were aware of how many points other players were taking and how many were left in the common pool. Regardless of how quickly the pool was dwindling, the gratitude group did not extract more points, while the control group drew out significantly more points when they saw the pool shrinking.

The second study added a third group of participants—a group who were prepped to feel happy through a writing exercise. The happy group behaved similarly to the normal group, not showing restraint in overdrawing resources. Shanyu Kates theorizes that people who feel happy might behave in a more self-gratifying way than those who feel grateful because they want to extend their sense of well-being.    

Northeastern’s studies back up a large University of Nottingham meta-analysis on gratitude, which found a strong correlation between gratitude and behavior that benefits the common good.