The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good

Jeremy Adam Smith · Kira M. Newman · Jason Marsh · Dacher Keltner

Sep 2020 · New Harbinger Publications

About this ebook

In our fractured, “me-first” world, the science and practice of thankfulness could be just the antidote we need.

Gratitude is powerful: not only does it feel good, it’s also been proven to increase our well-being in myriad ways. The result of a multiyear collaboration between the Greater Good Science Center and Robert Emmons of the University of California, Davis, The Gratitude Project explores gratitude’s deep roots in human psychology—how it evolved and how it affects our brain—as well as the transformative impact it has on creating a meaningful life and a better world.

With essays based on new findings from this original research and written by renowned positive psychologists and public figures, this important book delves deeply into the neuroscience and psychology of gratitude, and explores how thankfulness can be developed and applied, both personally and in communities large and small, for the benefit of all.

With contributions from luminaries such as Sonja Lyubomirsky, W. Kamau Bell, Arianna Huffington, and many more, this edited volume offers more than just platitudes—it offers a blueprint for a new and better world.

Ratings and reviews

A Deep Look at Gratitude Of course, gratitude is a hot buzzword these days. As someone who reviews a lot of books, I have seen so many on gratitude, including gratitude journals specifically for children, women, and other groups of people. But I've never seen a book quite like this. It is a collection of long and short essays by several authors that take a surprisingly deep dive into the concept of gratitude. The book starts with defining what it is, of course, as well as the science of it, looking at it in primates and within our own brains. The book then discusses the impact that gratitude can have on us personally and how gender and culture can shape it differently and affect its impact. The third part is about how you can cultivate it within yourself, work with a gratitude journal (and how to approach it if gratitude exercises make you feel bad), and rounds out the discussion by looking at how grief and loss can affect gratitude The book also talks about cultivating gratitude as a family, with several articles being about gratitude for the couple before discussing how to nurture gratitude in children. As someone who felt underappreciated by my ex-husband, some of these chapters could have been beneficial! The book goes further than the nuclear family, though, also looking at how gratitude can be projected outward and cultivated at school, work, and other places. If you're looking for a simple book on gratitude, this is not it. But if you think you would appreciate looking at it from a variety of angles, including some surprising ones, you may very well enjoy this book as much as I did. I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.

About the author

Editor Jeremy Adam Smith edits the Greater Good Science Center’s online magazine, Greater Good. He is author of The Daddy Shift, and coeditor of three anthologies. His coverage of racial and economic segregation in San Francisco, CA, schools has won numerous honors, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, and he is a three-time winner of the John Swett Award from the California Teachers Association.

Smith’s articles and essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Scientific American, Utne Reader, The Nation, Mindful, Wired, and many other periodicals, websites, and books. Jeremy has also been interviewed by The Today Show, The New York Times, USA TODAY, Working Mother, Nightline, ABC News, NBC News, The Globe and Mail, and numerous NPR shows about parenting and education. Before joining the Greater Good Science Center, Jeremy was a 2010–2011 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

Editor Kira M. Newman is managing editor of Greater Good magazine, and a former course assistant for The Science of Happiness online course on edX. Her work has been published in a variety of outlets, including The Washington Post, HuffPost, Social Media Monthly, and Mindful magazine. She has created large communities around the science of happiness, including the online course, The Year of Happy; and the CaféHappy meetup in Toronto, ON, Canada. Previously, she was a technology journalist and editor for Tech.Co.

Editor Jason Marsh is founding editor in chief of Greater Good magazine, and the Greater Good Science Center’s director of programs. He is also coeditor of two anthologies of Greater Good articles: The Compassionate Instinct and Are We Born Racist?. His writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Utne Reader, among other publications, and he writes regularly for the opinion section of www.cnn.com.

Editor Dacher Keltner, PhD, is founding director of the Greater Good Science Center, and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of The Power Paradox and Born to Be Good, and coeditor of The Compassionate Instinct.