The impact of a brief gratitude intervention for teachers

Given that being thankful has been found to be related to positive affect, life satisfaction, and living a fulfilled life, interventions designed to increase gratitude as a way to enhance well-being have emerged (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). Although inducing gratitude via a gratitude list (e.g., "counting blessings") has consistently produced favorable results in comparison to focusing on hassles, mixed findings have been found when comparisons are made to a control group (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Froh, Sefick, & Emmons, 2008; Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). Moreover, there is a void in the gratitude research such that the utility of such an intervention on teacher well-being has only been researched once before (Chan, 2010). In addition, the benefits beyond well-being and potential extenuating impact upon others have been relatively unexplored.;The aim of the current study was to assess the impact of a brief, counting blessings gratitude intervention on teacher well-being, self-efficacy, irrational beliefs, and perceived relationships with students. One hundred thirty two teachers from New York State completed a series of self-report measures assessing these areas through an online survey site. Teachers were randomly assigned a no treatment control group or the intervention group. The intervention group was required to make a daily list of things for which they were grateful for two weeks. The questionnaires were completed prior to and following the intervention period as well as at a one month follow-up. Results indicate that the groups differed on affective gratitude at post-intervention and did not differ on any of the outcome measures at the one month follow up. The intervention group did demonstrate improvements in affective gratitude, dispositional gratitude, positive affect, life satisfaction, and a reduction in irrational beliefs at post intervention. When comparing the results at follow-up to pre-intervention, positive affect and life satisfaction were greater while reductions in irrational beliefs were evidenced. The implications of the findings for school psychologists as well as limitations and directions for future research are discussed.