Thanks!

by Emmons, Robert A.

• ISBN13: 9780618620197
• ISBN10: 0618620192
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-08-01
• Publisher: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN

Summary

As editor-in-chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology, Dr. Robert Emmons is uniquely qualified to put Albert Schweitzer's famous dictum "Gratitude is the secret to life" to a rigorous scientific test. In a book that will appeal to readers of Stumbling on Happiness and Martin Seligman's classic LearnedOptimism, Emmons draws on the first major scientific study of the subject to show how the systematic cultivation of gratitude can measurably change people's lives. Emmons also reaches beyond science to bolster the case for gratitude by weaving in the writings of philosophers, novelists, and theologians. Like no other book has before, Thanks! inspires readers to embrace gratitude and all the benefits it can bring into our lives.

Author Biography

DR. ROBERT EMMONS is a professor at the University of California, Davis, and one of the leading scholars in the positive psychology movement. He is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology. His work on gratitude has been featured in the Washington Post, the New Republic, Newsweek, and other mainstream media. Dr. Emmons has received multiple grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the John Templeton Foundation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. v
The New Science of Gratitude	p. 1
Gratitude and the Psyche	p. 19
How Gratitude Is Embodied	p. 56
Thanks Be to God: Gratitude and the Human Spirit	p. 90
An Unnatural Crime: Ingratitude and Other Obstacles to Grateful Living	p. 123
Gratitude in Trying Times	p. 156
Practicing Gratitude	p. 185
Notes	p. 211
Index	p. 233
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The New Science of Gratitude I cannot tell you anything that, in a few minutes, will tell you how to be rich. But I can tell you how to feel rich, which is far better, let me tell you firsthand, than being rich. Be grateful . . . It's the only totally reliable get-rich-quick scheme. -Ben Stein, actor, comedian, economist In 1999, the renowned writer Stephen King was the victimof a serious automobile accident.While King was walking on a country road not far from his summer home in rural Maine, the driver of a van, distracted by his rottweiler, veered off the road and struck King, throwing him over the van's windshield and into a ditch. He just missed falling against a rocky ledge. King was hospitalized with multiple fractures to his right leg and hip, a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and a scalp laceration. When later asked what he was thinking when told he could have died, his one-word answer: "Gratitude." An avowedly nonreligious individual in his personal life, he nonetheless on this occasion perceived the goodness of divine influence in the outcome. In discussing the issue of culpability for the accident, King said, "It's God's grace that he [the driver of the van] isn't responsible for my death." This brief glimpse into the private life of the most successful horror novelist of all time reveals that gratitude can occur in the most unlikely of circumstances. Specializing as he does in writing about the darker, more fearful side of life, the "King" of terror is an unlikely poster person for gratitude. Normally we associate gratitude with the more elevated, exalted realms of life. For centuries, theologians, moral philosophers, and writers have identified gratitude as an indispensable manifestation of virtue and excellence of character. One contemporary philosopher recently remarked that "gratitude is the most pleasant of virtues and the most virtuous of pleasures." Despite such acclaim, gratitude has never, until recently, been examined or studied by scientific psychologists. It is possible that psychology has ignored gratitude because it appears, on the surface, to be a very obvious emotion, lacking in interesting complications: we receive a gift- from friends, from family, from God-and then we feel pleasurably grateful. But while the emotion seemed simplistic even to me as I began my research, I soon discovered that gratitude is a deeper, more complex phenomenon that plays a critical role in human happiness. Gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change peoples'lives. It is perhaps inevitable that work rectifying such a glaring scientific omission would, like so many other breakthroughs, begin serendipitously. As a professor at the University of California, Davis, in the 1980s, I had become interested in what is now known as positive psychology, the study of human emotions that are healthy and pleasurable aspects of life (as opposed to the field's prior concentration on clinical and emotional problems). From the late 1980s to the late 1990s, the focus of my research was on happiness and goal strivings. Then, in 1998, I was invited to attend a small conference on what were deemed the "classical sources of human strength": wisdom, hope, love, spirituality, gratitude, humility. Each scientist was given the charge of presenting the known body of knowledge on his or her topic and developing a research agenda for the future.My first choice, humility, was taken; instead, I was assigned gratitude. I canvassed the theological, philosophical, and social science literatures, culling insights from these disciplines in an attempt to understand the essence of this universal stre