Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier
The book-length account of gratitude research written by the psychologist who ran the foundational counting-blessings experiment. It is the readable version of the primary literature, written by someone reporting his own studies rather than summarising other people's.
Written by the researcher behind the original experiment, which is both its strength and the thing to keep in mind.
Robert Emmons co-ran the 2003 counting-blessings studies that opened this field. This is his book-length account of what gratitude research had found by 2007 - the accessible route into the primary literature for anyone who does not want to read journal articles.
Read it alongside the newer evidence, not instead of it. It was published nearly two decades before the 2025 PNAS meta-analysis that pooled 145 papers and landed on a small effect, Hedges’ g = 0.19. Popular books written by researchers about their own work tend to read the evidence generously. Where the two disagree on how large the effect is, the meta-analysis wins.
We cite this as a book, never as evidence. No affiliation, no commercial relationship.
It is a popular book from 2007, written by a researcher about his own field, and it predates the larger meta-analyses that put more modest numbers on the effect. Where it and the 2025 PNAS meta-analysis disagree on effect size, prefer the meta-analysis. A book is not evidence and we do not cite it as such.
Articles citing this book
Summarized by Tiago Martins · Last updated: · How we write these
