The association between trait gratitude and self-reported sleep quality is mediated by depressive mood state
People with higher trait gratitude reported more sleep and more daytime energy - but the relationship ran through depressive symptoms. Grateful people had fewer depressive symptoms, which plausibly meant fewer pre-sleep worries, which meant better perceived sleep.
Grateful people sleep better. That sentence is true and almost always misused.
Eighty-eight non-clinical 18-to-29-year-olds completed measures of trait gratitude, pre-sleep intrusive thoughts, daytime fatigue, sleep quality and depressive symptoms.
Higher gratitude scores went with greater daytime energy and more hours of sleep. But depressive symptoms mediated the relationship - the link between gratitude and sleep ran through mood.
The authors propose one plausible model: highly grateful people have lower depressive symptoms, which leads to fewer pre-sleep worries, which produces better perceived sleep quality. They are explicit that the causal direction still needs disentangling.
Two reasons to read this carefully.
- It is cross-sectional. Nobody was randomised to anything. Better-slept people may simply find it easier to feel grateful.
- Trait gratitude is not a gratitude journal. Being a grateful person and doing a gratitude exercise are different objects, and studies of one do not transfer to the other.
For the causal question, see Jackowska et al. 2016, which randomised people and did measure a sleep effect.
This is cross-sectional and correlational: it cannot establish that gratitude causes better sleep, and the authors say future work must disentangle the causal direction. It measures trait gratitude - a disposition - not a journaling practice, so it is not evidence that keeping a gratitude journal will change your sleep. Sleep was self-reported, not measured.
Summarized by Tiago Martins · Last updated: · How we write these
