Effects of gratitude intervention on mental health and well-being among workers: a systematic review
Gratitude lists significantly improved perceived stress and depression among workers, but effects on well-being were inconsistent. The review's most practical finding is about dose: interventions asking for a gratitude list four times or fewer reported no significant change in any outcome.
This review found the number that actually predicts whether gratitude journaling does anything: how many times you do it.
Komase and colleagues screened 1,957 articles and kept nine randomised controlled trials of gratitude interventions among healthy workers. Eight used gratitude lists.
Across those studies, gratitude lists produced significant improvement in perceived stress and depression. Effects on well-being were inconsistent.
Then the finding worth building a practice around:
Interventions with gratitude list four times or less did not report significant changes in any outcomes.
Four entries is below the floor. Whatever gratitude journaling does, it does not do it in a long weekend. The total number of lists and reflections appeared to influence the effect on both mental health and well-being.
The authors are careful: heterogeneity between the nine studies is high and further study is needed. This is an observed pattern, not a randomised test of frequency. But it is consistent with every other honest finding in this library - the practices that work are the small repeated ones.
Only nine studies met inclusion, the heterogeneity between them is high, and the well-being results were inconsistent enough that the authors decline to draw a conclusion. The dose observation is a pattern across studies rather than a tested threshold - no trial randomised people to different frequencies to prove it.
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Summarized by Tiago Martins · Last updated: · How we write these
