Within-Person Relationships Among Daily Gratitude, Well-Being, Stress, and Positive Experiences

Each day for 2weeks, participants (N=131, psychologically healthy adults residing in the community) described their daily well-being, how grateful they felt that day, and the events they experienced. Multilevel modeling analyses found that daily feelings of gratitude were positively related to well-being at the within-person level. The analyses also found that well-being varied as a joint function of daily gratitude and how stressful events were. Gratitude moderated relationships between stress and self-esteem, worry, depressogenic adjustment, and negative deactive affect (e.g., sad). The negative relationships between the stress of daily events and self-esteem and depressogenic adjustment were weaker on days when people felt more grateful than on days when they felt less grateful as were the positive relationships between stress and worry and negative deactive affect. The analyses also found that relationships between gratitude and worry, depressogenic adjustment, and negative deactive affect were stronger on days when daily events were less positive than on days when daily events were more positive. The possibility that feelings of gratitude can provide a context within which daily experience is evaluated is discussed.