The Science of Gratitude & How to Build a Gratitude Practice

Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine, opens by framing gratitude as more than a seasonal theme tied to Thanksgiving. He says a growing body of data links an effective gratitude practice to positive changes across mental and physical health, naming cardiovascular health, relationships, mental health, and physical and cognitive performance, and he describes these as very large rather than small effects.

His central surprise is about method. Like many listeners, he assumed an effective practice meant writing down or thinking about things one is grateful for, perhaps while trying to feel those elements of gratitude in the body. According to him, neuroimaging, physiological measures such as inflammatory markers, and psychological studies of short- and long-term effects point to a completely different approach. He adds that the effective versions are easy, sometimes fun, and usable in many contexts, though in this section he has not yet said what they are.

Before the main topic, Huberman highlights a study he attributes to the journal Cell Report, a Cell Press journal, which he says he will return to later in the episode. Subjects listened to the same story but never together: they were in separate rooms, separate locations on the planet, or brought into the lab on different days. Even so, their heart rate varied in the same way, with the gaps between heartbeats coming to resemble one another. When the researchers lined up the heart rates of people who heard the story at completely different times, he says, those traces mapped onto one another almost identically.

He reads this as evidence that brain and body are highly coordinated and that a given story produces what he calls a stereotyped response. He admits he saw no reason in advance why two people hearing the same story should show near-identical heart rates, and he takes the result as pointing to the power of narrative to coordinate physiology, something he says can be leveraged.

The finding also introduces a theme he says will recur: the difference between traits, which are pervasive aspects of who we are and how we tend to react, and states, which are transient, such as fear or relaxation that can be invoked in someone. He suggests the study begins to show that specific approaches can rewire the nervous system so a person becomes calmer or more responsive in certain circumstances, depending on their goal, while deferring the details of how to do that.

Huberman lists the outcomes he says research associates with gratitude practice. Studies, he says, show that doing a practice two or three times a week, or even just once a week, can have a pervasive, long-lasting effect on subjective well-being, with people reporting more happiness, meaning, joy and even awe. He repeatedly qualifies this: it must be the right practice.

Resilience to trauma in two directions: buffering people against the negative physiological and psychological effects of earlier trauma, and, in his words, inoculating them in many ways against traumas that may come later. He attributes this to a shift in how the brain's fear and defense networks function. Social relationships: beyond the relationship with the person one thanks (what he calls a prosocial or intersocial practice), he cites several recent studies in good journals indicating gains across workplace, school, family and romantic relationships, and in one's relationship with oneself, which he equates with subjective well-being. Mechanistic potency: he claims the neurochemical, anti-inflammatory and neural-circuit effects of gratitude are on par with some effects of pharmacology, high-intensity interval training and exercise.

He directly addresses skeptics who see gratitude as wishy-washy, saying his approach will not involve putting a hand on one's heart and feeling into one's good fortune when things are terrible. His summary of the evidence is that the data indicate the effects are very long lasting and that:

a gratitude practice is a very, very potent way in which you can steer your mental and physical health in positive directions

To frame the discussion, Huberman classifies gratitude as a prosocial behavior or mindset. He stresses that social does not have to mean interpersonal: one can be grateful without anyone else involved, and he defines prosocial behaviors as any behavior or mode of thinking that makes us more effective in interactions with others, including ourselves. Prosocial behavior can also be directed toward pets, food, or anything we want to be closer to.

He says prosocial is not just a label. Specific brain circuits, which he calls appetitive, are wired to bring us closer to things and into closer relation with the details of a sensory experience, such as delicious food or time with a loved one or friend. In neuroimaging these circuits light up, meaning their neurons fire more actively. Circuits for aversive or defensive behaviors, which he links to backing up, covering the vital organs, freezing, a quaking voice and fear, are antagonized, or reduced, when the prosocial circuits are more active.

His working metaphor is a seesaw between these two sets of circuits. Gratitude belongs on the prosocial side, which draws us toward experiences and increases the detail we take from them.

Huberman contrasts this two-circuit picture with much of the last century's thinking on happiness versus depression and worry. He reads a passage from Sigmund Freud, whom he calls a genius about many aspects of psychology despite the criticism of some of his traits. Freud describes suffering as coming from three directions: one's own body, the external world, and relations with others, the last perhaps the most painful. The passage opens:

Our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution.