The Science of Gratitude

How we’ve all been getting it terribly wrong

The prosocial circuitry in the brain

Put simply, prosocial behaviours and attitudes are those that bring us closer to others — they allow us to lean in, engage more and be more effective in our interactions. In addition to the more obvious benefits — being able to enjoy deeper relationships and a stronger social support system — activation of the prosocial neural networks can have a significant, positive impact on one’s health, mood and wellbeing. This is in part because the prosocial circuits in the nervous system have a seesaw-like relationship with the circuits that stimulate fear-based, defensive behaviours such as backing away, closing down your body language and that telltale quiver in your voice when you’re nervous.

The takeaway here is that by activating the prosocial circuits regularly, you can increase your capacity for happiness, contentedness and engagement while simultaneously decreasing your capacity for worry, concern and defensiveness. Wonderful.

So how can we intentionally activate the prosocial circuits in the nervous system?

Fairly obviously, engaging in kind, helpful or altruistic activities will have this effect, and the general consensus is that it’s a good idea for us all to do as much of that as we can. But this post isn’t about “random acts of kindness”. Rather, we want to discuss a commonly practiced prosocial behaviour that almost everybody gets wrong: gratitude.

Ask anyone who’s tuned into Instagram over the last ten years how to practice gratitude and they’ll likely tell you to keep a gratitude journal or write “thank you” letters, etc. But while these are lovely things to do, the science does not support them as effective tools for wellbeing.

Then what *is* an effective gratitude practice?

According to Prof. Andrew Huberman at the Stanford School of Medicine, a true gratitude practice is more about relating strongly to someone who is experiencing gratitude than it is about expressing gratitude. In fact, studies have found that the most potent form of gratitude practice does not involve expressing thanks at all, but receiving it — e.g. listening to a friend, co-worker or family member read their (genuine) “thank you” letter out loud to you, rather than writing or reading your own letter to someone else.

Another study found that subjects displayed robust activation in the areas of the brain associated with prosocial behaviours and gratitude while watching videos of genocide survivors who received help as part of their story of survival. Here, the point at which this activity was at its strongest was when the subject started to feel some level of affiliation with the survivor telling the story.

Narrative holds the key

Story, of course, affects us deeply, and this is true right down to our biology. One study found that separate subjects, in separate locations or on separate days, unconsciously synchronised their breathing and heartbeat patterns while listening to the same audio recording of a story. What this suggests is that story can bring about a common, physical experience across a range of demographics. In other words, story can bring us together in a profound way.

Here’s how all this links up:

When it comes to gratitude, it’s the story of people’s experiences that enables the empathetic connection between storyteller and listener that activates the prosocial networks in the brain, allowing us to reap the rewards.

In other words, without narrative, your gratitude practice will fall flat because, without narrative, we simply couldn’t connect with others in the potent way we used to.

How to use this information

To finish, here’s a simple but effective gratitude protocol courtesy of The Huberman Lab podcast. This practice brings together the findings mentioned above and a number of other things that we don’t have the space to report here. If you’d like the full scoop, we highly recommend The Huberman Lab’s podcast episode on gratitude. Find it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts (etc) here.

Step 1

Find a story of gratitude that you resonate with — this could be a memory of someone expressing their thanks to you, or someone else’s story of thanks that you found particularly meaningful.

Note: it’s important that you pick one story and then use that same story repeatedly (rather than surfing the net for a new story each time you want to engage) because by using the same story, your mind will learn the steps and get increasingly proficient at activating the neutral networks involved.

Step 2

Spend a little time engaging with the story and create a list of bullet point reminders of the key moments within it: the particular struggle, the help given, the result of that help, and the emotions involved throughout (both yours and those of the others involved).

Step 3

Approximately three times per week, relive that story by reading through (or remembering) your story summary. Each time you do this, really lean into the emotions evoked to best stimulate your prosocial circuitry.

We’d love to hear about your experience with this tool should you use it! Happy gratituding!
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Notes:

1. Notably this one by Daisuke Hori et al., 2015: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32898150/

2. Frontiers in Psychology, 2015 — https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01491/full

3. Cell Journal, 2021 — https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/927995

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Thank you for reading!

We’re Hazel (ex boxer, therapist and author) and Ellie (ex psychology science writer). We left our jobs to build an interactive narrative app for self-awareness and emotion regulation (Betwixt), which you can try on Android here and on iOS here.

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