The gratitude glossary
Research-backed explanations of gratitude, emotions, memory and journalling.
Affect labelling
Naming a feeling in words lowers its charge. How that applies to a gratitude journal entry, and how small the measured effects are.
Broaden-and-build theory
Broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions widen what you notice and consider doing, and that this widening accumulates lasting resources.
Duration neglect
Length barely counts in how an episode is remembered. What that means for what a gratitude journal entry should actually contain.
Fading affect bias
Bad memories lose their sting faster than good ones lose their glow. Why that is an argument for a gratitude journal rather than against one.
What Is a Gratitude Journal? Meaning and How It Works
Gratitude journalling is the practice of writing down specific things you are grateful for on a regular schedule — most often a short list of three items.
Habit Stacking: What It Is and Whether It Works
Habit stacking means attaching a new behaviour to an existing reliable cue, so the cue does the remembering instead of your intention.
Hedonic Adaptation: Why Good Things Stop Having an Impact
Hedonic adaptation is the drift back towards your ordinary level of happiness after your circumstances change, for better or for worse.
Mood Rating Scale 0-10: What Each Number Means
What each number from 0 to 10 means on a mood rating scale — the full chart, how to rate your mood out of 10, and what a 7 actually looks like.
Negativity bias
Bad events outweigh equivalent good ones. What that does and does not imply for a gratitude journal, with effect sizes from the meta-analysis.
Peak-End Rule: Why Two Moments Define a Day
The peak-end rule describes the pattern whereby people judge a past experience by its most intense moment and by how it ended, rather than by its length.
Savouring
Savouring is deliberately attending to a good experience, while it happens or afterwards, so that the feeling registers and lasts.
Three Good Things: The Exercise, and How to Do It
The three good things exercise involves writing down three things that went well each day, plus why each one happened, every night for about a week.
Toxic Positivity: What It Is and What the Research Says
Toxic positivity is the insistence on a positive frame regardless of circumstance, treating negative feeling as a fault to correct rather than a fact.