TANJEELA ANJUM SPEECH

STUDENT NUMBER:

Good Afternoon class, today I will be talking to you about my

allocated article, which is Letters of Gratitude and the pros and cons
of this study along with everything within it.

The purpose of this study is to examines the effects of writing letters

of gratitude by observing the positive affect, cognitive evaluation
and negative effect it has on people. It examines the psychological
effects of expressing gratitude as a bottom-up effect to examine
change in well-being. Gratitude is defined as a mixture of
appreciation, thankfulness and appraisal. It has been noted in
various studies to uplift people and their emotions and also have
positive effects. The idea of this study was taken from a pilot study
by Toephfer and Walker (2009) who selected a 3-letter method that
observed the changes over time in happiness, life-satisfaction and
gratitude associated to controls. The pilot study had a lot of
potential however it had small sample size and did not assess the
negative effects. This study endeavours to recreate the initial study
except with a stronger sample size and assess its results more
clearly.

In this study there were 219 adults where 31 were men and 188
were women randomly selected from a research pool at a large
Midwestern university. They aged from 18 to 65 and were mostly
Caucasian with 89%. The task they were given was to write three
letters of gratitude over a 3-week period. The letter writers who
where the participants in the experimental group were instructed to
complete a set of questionnaires 4 times each week for the 4 weeks.
The control group was given the same instruction without having the
writing part. The letters that they had to write had to be reflective,
expressive and not focus on materialism such as being thankful for
gifts that they received.

The writers where examined in 2 ways on happiness, life satisfaction

and gratitude within the groups and between the groups. The results
differed and were scattered as the weeks went by for both the
writers and non-writers. However, it is shown that writers had an
increase in all aspects over the non-writers. From these
investigations, findings have illustrated that depression is influenced
by letters of gratitude, which was not shown in the previous pilot
study. Also happiness, life-satisfaction and gratitude increased for
the writer than the non-writers. Therefore, the study suggests that
writing letters of gratitude do actually improve important qualities of
well-being.
The implications of writing letters provide a practical and simple
habit for helping people improve subjective well-being. Also, writing
letters of gratitude may help people who suffer from depression as it
is a way to release any sadness or anger they may feel and also can
be a way to let go from a particular person or situation.

The limitations mentioned in the study portrays the men Vs women

ration and also the need to understand the difference between
writing letters an other forms of literature. However other ways to
research could be improved that are not mentioned is if the one who
wrote the letter also received a letter of gratitude back to show the
level of happiness they achieve from a return letter. Also, instead of
getting the instructor to mail the letter, it would feel more real if
participants did it themselves.
Thank you