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The Practice I Almost Wrote Off
For years gratitude journaling sounded thin. Lists of nice things from people whose lives were already nice. Then the research kept landing differently than the marketing did. Across 24,000 people in 28 countries, the effect is small but real. Across one careful 2025 trial, the people whose minds were stuck got the biggest lift. So maybe the practice was never thin. Maybe I was reading the wrong reviews of it.
A New Way to Look at an Old Practice
A 2025 review pulled together 145 studies on gratitude practices, covering nearly 25,000 people across 28 countries (Choi et al., 2025). The headline was honest. Gratitude practices help with well-being. The size of the help is small. Not zero. Not magic. Small.
That alone made me look again. A small but consistent effect, across many cultures and study designs, is more useful than a big effect found once. It means something is real underneath all the noise.
And then a different paper, a 2025 trial out of Germany, asked a sharper question (Kalon et al., 2025). Not "does gratitude make people happier on average?" but "does gratitude help the people whose minds will not stop?"
The Loop the Research Was After
The technical name for the thing they were chasing is repetitive negative thinking — the loop of worry, regret, or rumination that runs the same track over and over without getting anywhere new (Watkins, 2008). Most people know the feeling. The 3 a.m. replay of the awkward thing you said. The week-long argument with someone who is not in the room. The same fear, the same five sentences, on a loop.
Researchers care about this loop because it is one of the few patterns of mind that shows up in many different mental health struggles at once (Ehring & Watkins, 2008). Anxiety has it. Depression has it. Stress has it. Quiet that loop, even a little, and a lot of things ease at the same time.
This is the doorway the new gratitude research walks through.
Why I Was Reading the Wrong Reviews
I think I had been reading gratitude as a feeling. A warm one, the kind people post about on a Sunday morning.
That is not what the research is studying. The research is studying a small daily action — write a sentence about a moment that mattered, take a photo of something that caught your eye, name the person whose text felt good — and watching what that small action does to the loop a few weeks later.
That is a much more interesting question than whether grateful people are happier. It is a question about whether a small page-based habit can move a stuck mind. And that, finally, sounded like something worth paying attention to.
Earlier work hinted at this. A 2009 review of positive psychology practices — gratitude exercises included — found that they helped people feel better and reduced symptoms of depression (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009). The effects were modest, but they were measurable, and they lasted.
What we did not know, until recently, was who was getting the most out of these practices.
The Bridge
The next chapter walks through the new study carefully. Three hundred and fifty-two people. A simple phone-based gratitude habit. And a finding that I think changes how the practice should be pitched.
References
Choi, H., Cha, Y., McCullough, M. E., Coles, N. A., & Oishi, S. (2025). A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of gratitude interventions on well-being across cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(28), e2425193122.
Ehring, T., & Watkins, E. R. (2008). Repetitive negative thinking as a transdiagnostic process. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 1(3), 192–205.
Kalon, L. S., Freund, H., Rinn, A., Watkins, P. C., Zarski, A. C., & Lehr, D. (2025). Effectiveness of a gratitude app at reducing repetitive negative thinking as a transdiagnostic risk factor in the general population: Results from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 389, 119664.
Sin, N. L., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2009). Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: A practice-friendly meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(5), 467–487.
Watkins, E. R. (2008). Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 163–206.
352 People, Three Months, One Quiet Question
A research team in Germany asked a simple question: if your mind keeps circling the same dark groove, can a small gratitude habit help you find a different one? They gave 352 adults a phone app. They asked them to capture moments of gratitude in notes and photos. Four weeks later they measured the loops. Not whether people felt happier on Instagram. Whether the loops got quieter. The answer turned out to depend on who was carrying the loops in the first place.
The question the researchers were asking was simple, but I had not heard it asked this way before.
If your mind keeps circling the same dark groove, can a small daily habit on your phone help you find a different one?
That is the study, in one sentence (Kalon et al., 2025).
Who Was in the Study
The research team, led by Lina Kalon at Leuphana University in Germany, recruited 352 adults from the general population. Not a clinical sample. Not people in therapy. Regular adults who agreed to be in a study about a phone-based gratitude practice.
About a third of them — 35 percent — screened positive for depression at the start. So the sample was a mix. Some people were doing fine. Some were not. That mix turned out to matter.
Half the group got the gratitude app right away. Half were put on a waitlist and would get it later. Both groups could keep doing whatever else they were doing for their mental health — therapy, medication, anything. The question was just whether adding a small gratitude practice on top made a difference.
What People Actually Did
The app was simple. People were asked to collect moments of gratitude. Sometimes a written note. Sometimes a photo of something that caught their eye. The team called these moments — small, captured pieces of a regular day. The thing your friend said. The light through the window. The walk that helped.
People could share these with one person they chose, if they wanted. Most just kept them.
That is the whole intervention. Not a workbook. Not a therapy course. A small phone-based habit, kept for a few weeks.
This was not the first study to try this kind of approach. An earlier 2019 trial by the same lab had tested a longer five-week internet and app-based gratitude program (Heckendorf et al., 2019). That study found people in the gratitude group reported less of the looping thinking afterward, with effects that were still visible six months later. A follow-up trial in 2024 tested a multicomponent gratitude program with 200 adults and found similar quieting of the loops, holding up at six-month follow-up (Heckendorf et al., 2024).
So the new 2025 study was building on a foundation that already existed.
What They Measured
The main thing the team measured was the loop. Specifically, repetitive negative thinking — the same thinking pattern from chapter one, measured with a careful questionnaire. They measured it before the study, after four weeks, and again at three months.
Symptoms of depression were measured as a secondary outcome.
What They Found
The numbers, in plain words: people who used the gratitude app reported quieter loops than people on the waitlist. The effect was modest in size. It would not look impressive on a graph in a wellness ad. But it was real and it held up at the three-month follow-up.
Then the researchers looked closer.
When they split the group by who had been in worse shape at the start, the picture changed. The people who had screened positive for depression at the start of the study showed a bigger benefit than the people who had not. About half of an effect size for the depressed subgroup. About a third of an effect size for everyone else. The same pattern showed up for depression symptoms — people who started off heavier got more relief from the practice than people who started off lighter (Kalon et al., 2025).
Put another way. The gratitude app did the most good for the people who were carrying the most.
The Bridge
This is the finding I keep returning to. It is the opposite of how gratitude practices are usually pitched. The next chapter is about why I think it makes sense — and what it suggests gratitude actually is.
References
Heckendorf, H., Lehr, D., Ebert, D. D., & Freund, H. (2019). Efficacy of an internet and app-based gratitude intervention in reducing repetitive negative thinking and mechanisms of change in the intervention's effect on anxiety and depression: Results from a randomized controlled trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 119, 103415.
Heckendorf, H., Lehr, D., & Freund, H. (2024). Effectiveness of a guided multicomponent internet and mobile gratitude training program — A pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Internet Interventions, 38, 100780.
Kalon, L. S., Freund, H., Rinn, A., Watkins, P. C., Zarski, A. C., & Lehr, D. (2025). Effectiveness of a gratitude app at reducing repetitive negative thinking as a transdiagnostic risk factor in the general population: Results from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 389, 119664.
Gratitude Is Not Sunshine. It Is Attention.
Here is the part I keep returning to. Gratitude is not a feeling you talk yourself into. It is a small change in where your eyes land. A loop is your attention stuck in one groove. A gratitude note is the same attention pointed at a different one. That is why the research is finding what it is finding. Not because gratitude is magic. Because attention is the thing that moves, and the page is one of the simplest places to move it.
What a Loop Actually Is
Think about the loop. The 3 a.m. replay of the awkward thing. The week-long argument with someone who is not in the room.
What is the loop made of? It is made of attention. Your attention has settled into one groove and keeps running back along it. The thoughts feel like they are choosing themselves, but really, the attention is. The thoughts are downstream of where the attention has parked.
Researchers describe rumination as a state where attention narrows in on negative content and stays there (Watkins, 2008). The narrowing is the problem. Not the negative content itself — life has plenty of that — but the way attention forgets it can move.
Two early gratitude researchers, Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, ran one of the first careful experiments on gratitude practice in 2003 (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). They asked people to write a few things they were grateful for, once a week, for ten weeks. The people who did this reported feeling better, sleeping better, and exercising more than people who wrote about hassles or neutral events. The effect was small but consistent.
What I notice now, reading that study again, is what they were really doing. They were asking people to point their attention, briefly and on purpose, somewhere different from where it usually went.
What a Gratitude Note Actually Is
A gratitude note is the same attention as the loop, pointed at a different thing.
Not a forced positivity. Not pretending the hard things are not hard. Just — for sixty seconds, on the page, your attention rests on something that mattered today, even if today was hard. The cup of tea your partner brought you. The colleague who said the helpful thing. The fact that the headache lifted before dinner.
A 2010 review of gratitude research described the practice this way: it works because it directs attention toward the helpful, supportive parts of life that the mind, left alone, tends to skip past (Wood et al., 2010). The mind has a strong pull toward what is wrong. A gratitude note is one small lever that pulls in the other direction.
This reframing helped me make sense of a finding from chapter two. The Kalon et al. (2025) trial showed the practice helped most the people whose minds were stuck in the loop. Of course it did. They had the most attention to redirect.
If your attention is roughly free already, a gratitude note is a small, pleasant nudge. If your attention is locked in a groove, a gratitude note is a small lever that helps it move. The lever does the most work in the situation that needs the most work.
What Sarah Algoe Calls Gratitude
The social psychologist Sara Algoe, who has spent her career on gratitude research, has written that gratitude is not just an emotion. It is a function. It points us toward the people and moments that have helped us, and it strengthens the bond with them (Algoe, 2012).
I keep turning that over. Gratitude as a function. A small piece of code your mind runs to remind you that you are not alone, that things have helped, that something has mattered.
A gratitude note on a page is the manual version of running that code on purpose.
Why the Page Helps
Why the page, specifically? Why does writing the moment down work better than just thinking it?
Because thinking it can stay vague. Writing it makes the attention land. I am grateful that the rain stopped before my walk takes more attention to write than it does to flicker through. Writing locks the attention into the new groove for long enough to leave a trace.
A 2022 review of journaling for mental health, looking at 31 different studies, found that even brief writing practices showed measurable benefits (Sohal et al., 2022). The page does something to attention that the head alone does not.
The Bridge
The next chapter is about what to do with all of this. Not as a rule. As a small practice you can try.
References
Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(6), 455–469.
Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389.
Kalon, L. S., Freund, H., Rinn, A., Watkins, P. C., Zarski, A. C., & Lehr, D. (2025). Effectiveness of a gratitude app at reducing repetitive negative thinking as a transdiagnostic risk factor in the general population: Results from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 389, 119664.
Sohal, M., Singh, P., Dhillon, B. S., & Gill, H. S. (2022). Efficacy of journaling in the management of mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Family Medicine and Community Health, 10(1), e001154.
Watkins, E. R. (2008). Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 163–206.
Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905.
A Practice That Meets You Where You Are
Most days, three lines about something small that mattered. The coffee that was good. The friend who texted back. The walk that felt longer than the meeting. On the harder days, the same three lines, with the same small effort. The research suggests this is enough. Not a cure. Not a transformation. A practice that quietly does its work whether the day was light or heavy. A page that does not need you to feel better before you sit down with it.
Three Lines, Any Day
Three lines is enough. Some days you will write more. Most days you will not. That is fine.
The lines are not literary. They are notes. The coffee was good. Priya texted back. The walk felt longer than the meeting.
Anyone with a journaling habit recognizes this kind of writing. Hurroz built Daily5 for exactly this — a five-minute daily writing window, the smallest unit of practice that still leaves a trace. You do not need a full page. You need a regular page. The research keeps showing that small and regular beats long and rare.
A 2022 review of journaling studies found that even brief writing practices, kept up over weeks, produced measurable mental health benefits (Sohal et al., 2022). The work is in the keeping. Not the length.
For Reflective Days, a Different Page
Some days, three lines is not what the page is for. Some days the writing is messier — a question you cannot answer, a feeling you cannot name, a moment you want to sit with for longer than three lines.
This is where reflective journaling lives. Not capturing a moment, but turning one over. Sol in Hurroz holds this kind of writing — a page that asks you a question, listens, and asks another. Slower. Deeper. Less about pointing attention and more about following it.
Both kinds of writing are good. They do different work. A gratitude note redirects attention. A reflective entry follows attention into a place it has not been yet. Most weeks I want both.
The Day-by-Day Version
Here is what the practice looks like, day by day.
On a light day. Three lines about three things from today. The taste of the first sip of coffee. The way the dog looked up when you came home. The fact that the email you had been dreading was actually fine.
On a hard day. The same three lines. They will feel forced. Write them anyway. The research suggests this is the day they do the most work. The mind that is most stuck has the most to gain from a small redirect (Kalon et al., 2025).
On a day when something bigger is asking to be written. Open a longer page. Sit with it. Ask one question and answer it honestly. Then ask the next one. This is not gratitude practice. It is reflection. It is the other muscle.
Both belong in the same practice. Neither replaces the other.
A Caveat I Want to Be Honest About
If you are reading this and any of it resonates, please remember that this is not therapeutic guidance. It is a reflection on research, written from outside the clinic looking in. If depression or persistent anxiety is something you recognize in yourself, especially if it is severe or persistent, the people qualified to help with it are mental health professionals. A journal is a good companion. It is not a replacement.
What I Am Taking From This
I am not changing my whole practice based on one trial of 352 people. The effects are modest. The samples are not huge. The research will keep refining itself in the years ahead.
But I am taking something. The next time my mind is stuck on a 3 a.m. loop, I want to remember that gratitude practice is not about feeling better. It is about pointing attention. The loop is attention stuck. A gratitude note is the same attention pointed at a different thing.
Three lines. Any day. The page does not need me to feel better before I sit down with it. That is part of why it works.
Keep writing.
References
Choi, H., Cha, Y., McCullough, M. E., Coles, N. A., & Oishi, S. (2025). A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of gratitude interventions on well-being across cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(28), e2425193122.
Kalon, L. S., Freund, H., Rinn, A., Watkins, P. C., Zarski, A. C., & Lehr, D. (2025). Effectiveness of a gratitude app at reducing repetitive negative thinking as a transdiagnostic risk factor in the general population: Results from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 389, 119664.
Sohal, M., Singh, P., Dhillon, B. S., & Gill, H. S. (2022). Efficacy of journaling in the management of mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Family Medicine and Community Health, 10(1), e001154.
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