What does it matter? Examining the role of meaning in gratitude interventions

The present research sought to explain recent findings that mentally subtracting a past positive event increased one aspect of well-being - namely, positive affect - compared to simply reflecting on a past positive event and to an affectively neutral reflection (Koo et al., 2008). Based on evidence that both the emotion of gratitude and counterfactual reasoning create meaning, I hypothesized that imagining the ways in which a good thing might not have occurred would increase positive affect by increasing the meaningfulness of the event. Contrary to predictions, participants who only reflected on a past positive event, in addition to participants who also reflected on the absence of a past positive event, reported increased positive affect compared to participants who engaged in an affectively neutral task (i.e. reflected on what they did the previous day). The increase in positive affect among participants in the gratitude conditions was mediated by the meaningfulness of the events they described. The implications of these findings for understanding the emotion of gratitude, gratitude interventions, and the role of meaning in each are discussed.