Gratitude facilitates healthy eating behavior in adolescents and young adults

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Abstract

Gratitude has been associated with better physical health. Yet, surprisingly little research has experimentally investigated the capacity of gratitude to motivate individuals to eat more healthfully. In Study 1, among undergraduate students (N = 327) attempting to achieve a healthy eating goal, state gratitude following a writing activity significantly predicted healthier eating behavior 1 week later. In Study 2, across a 4-week intervention, 9th and 10th grade students (N = 1017) from four high schools were randomly assigned to either write weekly gratitude letters or to list their daily activities each week (control). Teens who expressed gratitude reported healthier eating behavior over time, relative to controls, and this effect was partially mediated by reductions in average negative affect across the intervention period. Thus, our findings suggest that gratitude-based interventions may facilitate improvements in healthy eating behavior in adolescents and young adults.

Section snippets

Gratitude facilitates healthy eating behavior in adolescents and young adults

Interventions aimed at improving dietary habits remain an urgent area of research, as rising obesity rates are projected to spur consequent increases in physical health concerns, mortality rates, and health-related economic burden in the United States over the coming decades (Wang, McPherson, Marsh, Gortmaker, & Brown, 2011). Preventing obesity in adolescents and young adults may be particularly critical, as the majority of overweight youth maintain their weight status into adulthood (Magarey,

Participants

Data for this study come from a broader project examining the impact of expressing gratitude on several outcomes not relevant to our present research questions, including implicit theory of willpower and body shame. See Supplementary Materials for a list of measures not reported in the present analyses. Participants (N = 327) were undergraduate students recruited for a study on “Positive Activities and Health.” Our planned sample size was 300 students total (n = 100 per cell), and no analyses

Results

Contrary to our hypothesis, omnibus one-way analyses of variance did not reveal significant differences by condition in eating behavior at T2 (F[2, 252] = 1.06, p = .36) or at T3 (F[2, 246] = 0.51, p = .60). Additional analyses revealed no significant differences in self-reported state gratitude, positive affect, negative affect, or intended effort between conditions at any time point (all Fs < 2.33, all ps > .10; see Supplementary Materials for statistics). Next, we explored changes in eating

Discussion

As experimental condition did not impact our outcomes of interest, it appears that our gratitude-to-others and gratitude-to-self manipulations in this study were unsuccessful at eliciting stronger feelings of state gratitude relative to the event-listing condition, possibly due to our novel instructions inadvertently eliciting defensiveness or other negative states (see General Discussion for full list of potential reasons). Further, participants across all conditions reported eating more

Study 2

In Study 2, we sought to strengthen our experimental manipulation of gratitude and to expand upon our findings from Study 1 in a larger sample of adolescents. This study was conducted as part of a broader project examining the impact of expressing gratitude on several outcomes not relevant to our present research questions, including life satisfaction, improvement motivation, and grade point average (Armenta, 2017). See Supplementary Materials for a list of measures not reported in the present

Participants

Ninth and tenth graders (N = 1017) from four different high schools across the United States (n = 3 schools in the Los Angeles area; n = 1 in New York City; n = 2 public schools; n = 2 independent schools) participated in this study. Due to the difficulty of collecting data in applied settings such as high schools, our planned sample size was 200 students total (n = 50 per cell). However, additional funding and extraordinarily high student and teacher interest in the study enabled us to

Manipulation check

To confirm whether our manipulation of gratitude did indeed induce state gratitude, we used a planned contrast comparing the three gratitude conditions to the control condition. Immediately after the writing activity at T1, participants in the gratitude conditions reported higher state gratitude, relative to participants in the control condition, t(962) = 2.80, p < .01, r = 0.09. Additional analyses revealed that participants in the gratitude conditions also reported higher positive affect, t

Discussion

Our results suggest that gratitude may foster positive change toward healthier eating behavior among 9th and 10th grade students. The stronger gratitude writing prompts used in this study elicited more feelings of gratitude and general positive affect, and less negative affect, relative to the control condition. Subsequently, students in the gratitude conditions also reported healthier eating habits over time. Notably, this effect was evident, despite the fact that we did not explicitly

General discussion

Across two diverse samples of adolescents and young adults, we found evidence that gratitude may facilitate change in healthy eating behavior. In Study 1, contrary to our primary hypothesis, no group differences emerged between gratitude writing activities and the control activity on shifts in healthy eating across our 2-week intervention. However, in line with our theorizing, undergraduates who reported more state gratitude after a writing activity showed subsequent improvements in healthy

Conclusion

Across two diverse samples of adolescents and young adults, we found evidence that gratitude may facilitate improvements in healthy eating behavior, and that this salubrious effect is in part mediated by reductions in negative affect. Given their relative ease of dissemination and implementation, gratitude interventions may serve as particularly effective boosters when coupled with more traditional eating behavior interventions. Thus, gratitude may be a fruitful avenue for young people who wish

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