Building Gratitude - Greater Good...Frans de Waal, Emory University Greater Good (ISSN 1553-3239)...

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Building Gratitude

How “thank you” brings health and happiness

Can gratitude save your

marriage?

Why gratitude

matters in Iraq

Plus:Hope on the BattlefieldProof that humans hate to kill

Barbara Ehrenreich invites you to dance

Daniel Goleman on raising secure kids

T h e S c i e n c e o f a m e a n i n g f u l l i f e

Soldiers throughout military history have demonstrated a strong resistance to killing other people.

The capacity for collective joy is encoded into us almost as deeply as the capacity for erotic love.

“I realized how good I really have it. Some kids have nothing. I just never thought about it before.”

How would people really respond if humanity were pushed to the very edge of extinction?

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Cover photo: Alfonso Jaramillo

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2 from the editors

3 letters to the editors

4 in brief

Emotional machines

Why do we give to charity?

The psychology of obesity

And more…

columnS

Brain Teaser: Are women more empathic than men?

Body Language: A soldier’s toughest mission

Social Intelligence: Daniel Goleman on raising secure kids

10 Q&A The Politics of Gratitude An interview with Iraq’s first post-Hussein ambassador to the United States

32 in review

Print: Science, religion, and the changeable brain; the power of play; good news for good people.

Culture: What can science fiction teach us about altruism?

36 an idea for the greater good Barbara Ehrenreich invites you to dance.

37 resources for the greater good

Volume IV, Issue 1

Some seemingly minor gestures can make a child feel nurtured and loved.

When you first move in with your romantic partner, be careful not to cook dinner every night.

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Greater Goodm a g a z i n e o f t h e g r e a t e r g o o d s c i e n c e c e n t e r a t u c b e r k e l e ySummer 2007

A SympoSIum on GrATITude

12 Pay It ForwardGratitude may seem like a simple emotion, but Robert Emmons argues that it inspires kindness, connection, and transformative life changes. And he’s done the research to prove it.Plus: The art of the thank you.

16 Stumbling toward GratitudeNew research suggests gratitude is a key to health and happiness, but Catherine Price wanted to find out for herself.Plus: Four ways to give thanks; spotting “shallow gratitude.”

20 Love, Honor, and ThankResearchers Jess Alberts and Angela Trethewey have found that a successful relationship doesn’t just depend on how partners divide their household chores, but on how they each express gratitude for the work the other one puts in.Plus: How to avoid fights over housework.

23 A Lesson in ThanksPsychologist Jeffrey Froh infused middle-school classes with a small dose of gratitude—and found that it made students feel more connected to their friends, family, and their school.

FeATureS

24 Hope on the BattlefieldMilitary leaders know a secret: The vast majority of people are overwhelmingly reluctant to take a human life.by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

28 Mindful Kids, Peaceful SchoolsWith eyes closed and deep breaths, students are learning a new method to reduce anxiety, conflict, and attention disorders. But don’t call it meditation.by Jill Suttie

2 Greater Good Summer 2007

Greater GoodMagazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley

editorsDacher Keltner Jason Marsh

managing editorJeremy Adam Smith

circulation & marketing directorTom White

design editorAlfonso Jaramillo, iarte design

circulation AssistantsJoseph Ferrell Jeremy LeeRaphael Moreno

editorial AssistantsNaazneen Barma Julia BarzikJonathan Chow Shannon McIntyreNalini Padmanabhan Eréndira RuedaTanya Vacharkulksemsuk

Book review editorJill Suttie

copy editorElka Karl

executive director, Greater Good Science centerChristine Carter McLaughlin

editorial BoardRichard Davidson, University of Wisconsin, MadisonPaul Ekman, University of California, San FranciscoDeirdre English, University of California, Berkeley Amitai Etzioni, The George Washington UniversityOwen Flanagan, Duke UniversityRobert Frank, Cornell UniversityCharles A. Garfield, Shanti; University of California, San FranciscoAlfie Kohn, authorJonathan Kozol, authorNel Noddings, Stanford UniversityPearl Oliner, Humboldt State UniversitySamuel P. Oliner, Humboldt State UniversityElliott Sober, University of Wisconsin, MadisonFrans de Waal, Emory University

Greater Good (ISSN 1553-3239) collects, synthe-sizes, and interprets groundbreaking scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. It fuses this cut-ting edge science with inspiring stories, promoting dialogue between social scientists and parents, teachers, community leaders, and policy makers.

Subscriptions: Subscriptions to Greater Good are now $20 for one year (four issues) and $36 for two years (eight issues). Orders outside the U.S. should add $6 for shipping and handling. Checks should be made payable to UC Regents and mailed to Greater Good, 2425 Atherton St., #6070, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720-6070, USA. Questions? Please email [email protected], call 510-643-8965, or visit www.greatergoodmag.org.

Greater Good is published by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, an interdisciplinary research center that promotes the study of human happiness, compassion, and altruism. Funding comes from Tom & Ruth Ann Hornaday, the Herb Alpert Foundation, and other individual donors.

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i n t h i s i s s u e o f g r e at e r g o o d , Robert Emmons argues that Americans trivialize gratitude. It’s easy to understand why. After all, “thank you” is one of the first phrases we teach children to say—how complicated could the concept be? We see gratitude as a basic form of politeness, like chewing with your mouth closed, and we don’t usually consider what deeper significance it may hold.

Yet the fact that we try to make “thank you” such an essential part of a child’s vocabulary, and that children (and adults) often have a hard time bringing themselves to utter those two words, suggests gratitude is more complex than we typically assume. Indeed, as the contributors to this issue make clear, true gratitude is more a state of mind than a single act, and it takes real effort to cultivate.

Fortunately, we have good reason to believe that gratitude is a skill most of us can develop—and there’s overwhelming evidence to suggest that we should. Ins-pired by remarkable new research findings, our goal in this issue of Greater Good is to show how gratitude can serve as a pow-erful tool to build trust, cooperation, and respect between people. Emmons, perhaps the leading scientific expert on gratitude, makes this case convincingly in his essay.

Other contributors show how the research on gratitude can be put into practice. In her essay, Catherine Price recounts how she tried several of the research-tested methods for cultivating gratitude, and reports on the pleasures, challenges, and insights she experienced as a result. Researchers Jess Alberts and Angela Trethewey explain the vital role that gratitude plays in healthy marriages, particularly when it comes to housework, and offer tips on how to infuse your relationship with more gratitude—and, in turn, more stability and satisfaction. Psychologist Jeffrey Froh describes his own experiment in teaching gratitude to hundreds of middle school students, finding that the lessons—and the benefits—of gratitude are not lost on the young. And this issue’s Q & A explores how gratitude can affect relationships on a global scale: Iraq’s first post-Hussein ambassador to the United States, Rend al-Rahim Francke, discusses the complicated role of gratitude in Iraqis’ feelings toward the U.S.

These essays illustrate how gratitude is a crucial tool for the greater good—exactly

the kind of human trait this magazine is designed to explore and make us rethink. In their thoughtful treatments of gratitude, our contributors offer hope that there are indeed realistic, concrete, and practical steps we can take everyday to foster stronger and more peaceful bonds.

* * *This marks Greater Good ’s first issue

on a quarterly schedule, and you’ll notice some changes to its format along with its increase in frequency. After hearing from many readers that they value the magazine’s ability to report on groundbreaking scientific findings in a way that makes them accessible and engaging, we’ve made our In Brief section several pages longer, which enables us to provide more extensive coverage of the science of social and emotional well-being. Within this section are several new columns that apply scientific insights to everyday life: Brain Teaser, Body Language, and Social Intelligence. This last column will feature contributions from a range of thought leaders; appropriately, the first installation comes from Daniel Goleman, who popular-ized the term “social intelligence.”

Over the past three years, we’ve also noticed that an increasing number of books and other media have explored themes relevant to the magazine, and readers have said they look to Greater Good for guidance on how to navigate all this new material. As a result, we’ve expanded our reviews section. In addition to our short book reviews, we now feature a longer essay evaluating trends across several new books, as well as an essay discussing how topics such as altruism, compassion, and empathy are manifesting in popular culture.

We believe these additions give Greater Good an analytic edge to complement its focus on science reporting and storytelling. The magazine’s content will surely continue to evolve. But for the time being, we hope you enjoy these new dimensions to Greater Good.

from the editors

Summer 2007 Greater Good 3

letters to the editors

Nonviolent disputeDear Editors,

In an interview with Greater Good (“Bystanders to Genocide,” Fall/Winter 2006-07), Philip Gourevitch, lamenting that after Somalia the international community has been unable to intervene in severe humanitarian crises, said, “. . . we have to confront the limits of our ability to marry our moral sense of pure common humanity to the amoral instruments of politics and force.”

Setting aside for the moment his framing the dilemma in terms of morality (though that is part of the problem), one could not ask for a clearer expression of the dilemma that faces not only governments but the “we” of his statement, humanity in general, when such conflicts (or in a wider sense, any conflicts) arise. While the more aware of us do not want to use force, we are repeatedly caught between using it or doing nothing, because we do not know any alternative.

And yet there is an alternative, and it is not hiding under a rock. According to Richard Deats, until recently with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, during the last century no less than 3.4 billion people, slightly over one half of the global popula-tion, lived in regimes that experienced some kind of conspicuous nonviolent action, the majority of which succeeded.

In the course of this remarkable develop-ment, new formats were worked out for the exercise of nonviolent power in situations of serious conflict, including the formaliza-tion of Gandhi’s concept of a “peace army” or nonviolent third-party intervention by, among other groups, the Nonviolent

Peaceforce, which is operating (on a shoe string, of course) in Sri Lanka and opening up additional operations as we speak. This is precisely the type of intervention that could have been employed in the crises where the international community was—or thought it was—helpless, and there are other nonviolent options known to work in such situations if only they are known about and developed.

Nonviolence costs a mere speck of what military force does in either lives or dollars, is reasonably safe to carry out, and remarkably effective not only in the short run but especially in establishing a better aftermath—the area in which the use of force so conspicuously fails. But nonviolence still lies outside the paradigm, or frame of reference, of most individuals, and of course all states. How to wake people up to the potential of this kind of power is the most important survival task of our time.

Michael NaglerProfessor Emeritus

Peace and Conflict Studies University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley, California

Philip Gourevitch Responds: As was the case with Jews during the Holocaust, the overwhelming majority (I’d hazard more than 95 percent) of Rwandan Tutsis responded to the genocide with non-vio-lence—and what the world has to show for it is a lot of mass graves. As for the wonders of Gandhianism, I’m sure Professor Nagler does not mean to belittle the staggering death toll from communal violence at the time of India’s independence. And, having spent some time on the front lines of the Sri Lankan civil war not long ago, I can assure Professor Nagler that nonviolence is not prevailing there, either.

two thank yousDear Editors,

I most sincerely owe you two major kinds of thanks.

First, for Dacher Keltner and Jason Marsh’s article “We Are All Bystanders” (Fall/Winter 2006-07). It was a lucid and engaging account of some of the bystander work, and that is by no means an easy thing to write.

But second, and a much more major thank you, for bringing Greater Good to life, and all the hard work involved in getting the funding, arranging a home for the

magazine, and—now—editing it. That is a considerable set of altruistic acts, and I am most grateful to you for taking them on.

John Darley

Warren Professor of Psychology Princeton University

Princeton, New Jersey

in praise of school counselorsDear Editors,

As a retired school counselor, I applaud the “whole school approach with dialogue at its heart” described by Nel Noddings in her article, “Handle with Care” (Spring/Summer 2006). But I wondered why Noddings never mentions school counselors, who are at the heart of every school.

In school systems across the country where comprehensive guidance and coun-seling programs are in place, students are exposed to adults who model caring, engage in meaningful dialogue, listen attentively, and reinforce caring behavior. Counselors provide daily examples of how educators can shape, teach, and affirm good ethical decisions through small group discus-sions, classroom guidance activities, and staff/faculty training. Troubled students and their families gain from individual coun-seling or referrals to community-appropriate providers.

School counseling continues to keep pace with today’s ethical dilemmas. I am proud to have been one of those caring adults who helped students navigate through the many ethical questions of everyday life!

Wendy Sykes MopsikOakland, Maryland

Greater Good welcomes reader feedback on the current issue of the magazine, as well as on back issues. Please write to us at [email protected] or Greater Good, 2425 Atherton Street, #6070, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720-6070.


iN brief

P e r h a P s N o q u a l i t y s e e m s m o r e h u m a N t h a N our ability to empathize with others. Yet today scientists and engineers around the world are developing an oxymoron for the 21st century: the empathic robot.

It sounds like science fiction, but for years research-ers around the world (especially in Japan and Korea) have been trying to build autonomous, human-like machines that could serve as domestic servants and provide around-the-clock care to the elderly or terminally ill—services that will become invaluable, they imagine, as the world’s elderly population skyrockets in the coming decades. Electronic caregivers will need to be able to detect emotional signs of distress or anxiety—in order, for instance, to provide companionship and offer gentle reminders to take medication.

“[Robots] are increasingly being designed to serve as pets, nurses, office assistants, tour guides, teachers, domestic servants, and even emotional companions,” says Kwan Min Lee of the University of Southern California, who studies communication between humans and machines. These new applications for robots have caused an important shift in the study of human-robot interaction. “Rather than viewing robots as mere tools or senseless machines, researchers are beginning to see robots as social actors that can autonomously interact with humans in a socially meaningful way.”

To do that, machines will not only need to be able to understand which emotions a human is feeling. They’ll also need to respond with an emotionally appropriate

behavior—be it through facial expressions, body posture, gaze direction, voice, or touch. These are all methods the robots Kismet (pictured) and Leonardo use to communicate emotion with their human companions. Designed and built by Cynthia Breazeal and her col-leagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, Kismet and his cute, furry successor Leon-ardo are touted as the world’s first empathic androids. The cuddly Kismet uses three digital cameras, three microphones, 21 encoders, and a host of mechanisms to “interact physically, affectively, and socially with humans in order to learn from them,” explains Breazeal in her article “Toward Sociable Robots.” Kismet is pro-grammed with “stimulation drives” that cause it to seek out companionship and play with toys. It can even get bored: When no one talks to it, the robot-head’s eyes sweep the room, looking for someone to play with.

The design of Kismet’s social “brain” was influenced by University of Cambridge psychiatrist Simon Baron-Cohen’s work on autism, in which he identified four brain modules—Intentionality Detector, Eye Direction Detector, Shared Attention Mechanism, and Theory of Mind Mechanism—that are necessary for everyday social interaction.

“Kismet was a breakthrough in the design of social robots, in that unlike previous robots, it was the first robot equipped with those modules needed for normal human social interaction,” says Lee. For example, Kismet’s equivalent of an “eye direction detector”

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Can robots feel your Pain?Not yet, but empathic androids are the next wave in robotics. By Jeremy AdAm Smith

the robot Kismet expresses (clockwise from bottom left) fear, anger, and surprise.


electronic caregivers will need to be able to detect emotional signs of distress or anxiety.

module allows him to follow a human’s gaze, focusing his attention on the same object the human is looking at—and then react appropriately to that stimulus.

The designs of sociable robots like Kismet have also been shaped by University of California, San Francisco, social psychologist Paul Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System, a taxonomy of human facial expressions. Breazeal and colleagues actually drew on scientific maps showing how emotion is expressed in the human face and voice, then endowed Kismet with “face actuators” and an “articulatory-based speech synthesizer”—Kismet’s raised brows, for example, are designed to mimic human “attentional activity” that expresses both fear and surprise. When described in technical jargon, Kismet sounds rather cold—but lab experiments by Lee and other researchers, including

Cory Kidd at MIT and Cliff Nass at Stanford, have shown that people can warmly interact with sociable robots and even derive emotional satisfaction from mechanical company.

Though robotics is now drawing on psychological research into human social and emotional intelligence, Lee believes that one day the knowledge will flow in the other direction. “In the future, I believe studies on social robots will give us many new insights on the nature of our social brain,” he says. “Social robots can be used as an excellent simulation tool to investigate the nature of human emotion, empathy, and social interaction.”

Jeremy Adam Smith is the managing editor of Greater Good and the author of Twenty-First-Century Dad, forthcoming from Beacon Press.

the powerof one

a t l e a s t 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 P e o P l e h a v e been killed in Darfur, more than one million Ethiopians starved to death in the mid-1980s, and an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days in 1994—all as the world looked on. Confronted with these staggering death tolls, why haven’t people done more to intervene?

New research suggests that, if you want to encourage people to take humanitarian action, figures like these

actually do more harm than good. In a series of experiments, psychologists Deborah Small, George Loewenstein, and Paul Slovic provided people with one of two letters from an anti-hunger charity, requesting a donation. One letter provided statistics about starvation in Africa; another featured the story of a single African girl who was suffering from starvation. In one version of the experiment, some people received a different letter, providing the statistics alongside the girl’s story. The psycholo-gists then gave all study participants the chance to donate money to the charity.

They found that people who only read the girl’s story gave more than twice as much money as people who only read the figures on starvation. But when the child’s image was accompanied by details about the millions of other needy children like her, people actually donated less money than when they read the child’s story alone.

These results were consistent with other research showing that people are biased in their charitable giving: They typically give more money to causes when they know about individual victims rather than abstract statistics. The psychologists informed some study participants of this common bias in an effort to see how that knowledge might change their behavior. It had a perverse effect: Informed study participants gave less to the identifiable little girl, but

they did not give more to the statistical victims.

Writing about their results in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, the researchers conclude that people have more sympathy for identifiable victims because they invoke a powerful, heartfelt emotional response, whereas impersonal numbers trigger the mind’s calculator. In a fascinating cognitive twist, this appeal to reason actually stunts our altruistic impulses.

“A pitch from a charity or a news article that personalizes suffering or tragedy is the most effective way to get people to care,” says Small. “Finding a way to make people feel a personal connection to victims should increase giving.”

The good news is that inaction in response to suffering does not seem to come from any fundamental deficiency in our humanity: People are, after all, often very motivated to exert significant effort to help needy individuals. But activists and policy makers shouldn’t assume there’s some humanitarian tipping point, where people will be galva-nized into action once a crisis amasses a high enough body count. What may be more successful in spurring a response to genocide and other crises are detailed individual stories that resonate with the human instinct for compassion. —Naazneen Barma

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f o r m o r e t h a N 3 0 y e a r s , the conflict in Northern Ireland pitted Protestants against Catholics over the question of whether to join Ireland or remain part of the United Kingdom. More than half of the population knows someone who was injured or killed in the “Troubles,” as the conflict is called.

Tania Tam and Miles Hewstone at the Uni-versity of Oxford set out to discover what—if anything—might help foster forgiveness after such a long and bloody dispute. The research-ers asked Catholic and Protestant university

students from Northern Ireland to rate their attitudes and emotions toward members of the other religious group, their level of contact with that group, and their opinions about the importance and feasibility of forgiveness between the two communities.

Unsurprisingly, Tam and Hewstone found that students who showed the most anger toward their former enemies were the least likely to consider forgiving them. But the researchers also found that forgiveness is possible, and even likely, if the right steps are taken. Their analysis showed that simple human contact between groups led to lower levels of anger and more positive attitudes toward the other group—which in turn made them more likely to forgive past transgressions.

The researchers also discovered that while anger made forgiveness less likely, fear actu-ally made it more likely. Tam and Hewstone speculate, based on focus groups and other research they have conducted, that people of both communities are desperately afraid that the violence will re-erupt, and understand that mutual forgiveness is a critical step on the path to peace.

Their key recommendation is that peace efforts must focus on reducing anger by promoting one-to-one contact and other social and educational activities that might help each group see the other’s humanity. Then maybe, their results suggest, forgive-ness will follow. —Nalini Padmanabhan

What’s Good on tv?By the NumBers

v i o l e N C e o N t e l e v i s i o N h a s l o N G b e e N a scourge of parents, politicians, and children’s advocates. Countless hours have been spent documenting and criticizing—to say nothing of watching—TV’s depiction of murder, torture, and other violent acts.

But what about televised altruism? For the first time ever, researchers have measured the amount of behavior on TV that reflects the brighter side of human nature, and they’ve outlined where viewers can find it.

For 17 hours a day over 12 weeks, researchers recorded 18 channels on American TV—from PBS to Fox to MTV to A&E—and analyzed the results. They were looking for particular kinds of helping or sharing behavior. “If it was a mother helping her own child—that’s not really altruism, it’s role related,” says Sandi Smith, a professor of communication at Michigan State University and one of the lead researchers. “It had to be above and beyond what you’d expect in everyday life.”

Over those 12 weeks, they found that 1,621 programs featured altruistic acts, which represents nearly 73 percent of all the programs they recorded. There was a total of 5,152 incidents of altruism on those programs, a rate of 2.92 acts per hour.

Here are some other highlights from their study, which was recently published in the Journal of Communication. —Jason marsh

iN brief

Altruism 2.92

Violence* 6

altruistic acts per hour by channel type

altruistic acts per hour by genre

incidents per hour

* Source: Smith, S. L., et. al. (1998). National Television

Violence Study. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Child-oriented cable (e.g., Disney) 4.02

Independent broadcasters (UPN and WB) 2.95

Public broadcast (PBS) 2.86

Basic/premium cable (e.g., HBO, MTV) 2.65

Broadcast networks (e.g., NBC, CBS) 2.36

Comedy 4.5

Children’s 4.18

Drama 3.2

movies 2.88

reality 1.13

the Path to

forgiveness


Q: Are women more empathic than men?

A: We all know the stereotype: Women are better than men at taking other people’s perspectives, feeling their pain, and experiencing compassion for them. Surveys of men and women suggest there’s some truth to that assumption. But it’s not clear if women’s empathy is the result of nature or nurture.

Some research suggests women’s brains are more likely to signal empathy than men’s brains. A 1995 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology showed that women involuntarily imitate other peoples’ emotional expressions more than men—a behavior thought to reflect increased activity of “mirror neurons,” cells in the brain that activate both when someone performs an action and when he or she sees someone else perform that same action. Still, no research has compared the frequency or intensity of mirror neuron activity between the sexes.

Other studies have suggested that rational thought trumps empathy in men’s brains more than in women’s brains. For instance, a 2003 article in the journal Neuroreport found that when women were asked to identify other people’s emotions, their brain activity indicated they were truly feeling the emotions they saw. Men, by contrast, showed activity in brain regions associated with rational analysis, indicating they were just identifying the emotions and considering whether they’d seen them before—a more objective position.

All that said, research has shown that men and women do not differ consistently in their ability to detect their own or other people’s emotions. Since accurate detection of emotions is a first step toward feeling empathy, this finding suggests men and women at least start out biologically equal. Support-ing this idea is a 1993 study from the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which found that infant boys rated just as highly as infant girls in their sensitivity and attention to other people.

So while some research suggests women are more empathic than men, perhaps this is the only definitive conclusion we can draw: Almost all humans, regardless of sex, have the basic ability to cultivate empathy.

emiliana r. Simon-thomas, Ph.d., is a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Her Brain Teaser column addresses popular questions, myths, and misconceptions about the neurobiological roots of human behavior and emotion. If you have a question for the Brain Teaser column, please email it to [email protected].

b r a i Nt e a s e r

a l G o r e a N d A n I n c o n v e n I e n t t r u t h C a N o N l y d o s o m u C h to save the environment, so here’s another tool that may help: empathy.

A recent study published in Environment and Behavior proposes that people will become more concerned about the environment if they try to take the perspective of animals or plants and imagine how those objects are affected by human activity. To test this hypothesis, Spanish psychologist Jaime Berenguer presented study participants with an image of a bird or tree harmed by human impact. After viewing the image, the participant was then either prompted to “feel the full impact of what the bird or tree has been through” or “remain objective and detached.”

Compared to participants who remained detached, participants instructed to take the perspective of the imperiled bird or tree reported stronger empathic feelings toward those objects, and toward the environment as a whole. These empathic feelings translated into a greater willingness to help the environment: The people prompted to feel empathy wanted to give more money to environmental causes than did the other study participants.

While previous studies have shown that inducing empathy for people with AIDS, the homeless, and racial and ethnic minorities can improve people’s behavior toward them, Berenguer’s study is the first to make such a direct connection between empathy and environmental action.

Berenguer says his results suggest the value of empathy in achiev-ing a more environmentally sustainable society. But he cautions that more research is necessary before these findings can be integrated into environmental programs. “In this sense, we find ourselves more at a starting point than at a finishing line,” he says. “But it is a good starting point.” —Shannon mcintyre

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altruistic acts per hour by channel type

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body l a NGuaGedAcher KeltNer reveAlS the StorieS BehiNd everydAy geStureS

the scene: at the end of a visit to the home of James and beverly balsley, whose son michael balsley died in iraq, maj. John Preston says goodbye at the door.

i f t h e P a r e N t s o f o v e r W e i G h t teens want to boost their kids’ self-esteem, here’s what they should say to them about dieting: nothing.

A new study, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, looked at how families affect the mental health of overweight adolescents, many of whom suffer from low self-esteem and show symptoms of depression. It found that parental encouragement to diet has a clearly negative impact on kids’ psycho-logical well-being. Even parents’ seeming-ly kind weight-related comments have the potential to lower children’s self-esteem and influence them to take unhealthy steps to control their weight, such as skipping meals or using diet pills.

On the contrary, scheduling a regular family mealtime and creating a pleasant mealtime atmosphere—while refraining from any discussion of diets or weight, not to mention teasing—may boost over-weight teens’ self-esteem, lower their depressive symptoms, and lead to better family connectedness.

“Adolescents can be very sensitive about their bodies, particularly during periods of great bodily changes,” says Jayne Fulkerson, the lead researcher and a professor at the University of Min-nesota. “Instead of commenting about an overweight adolescent’s weight, parents may be more effective focusing on the health of the entire family by providing healthful foods in the home and promot-ing physical activity for everyone.” –Julia Barzik

the quiet

diet

the analysis: t h e e m o t i o N a l P o W e r of this photo comes from the contrast between the parents and the soldier. Major Preston, in his shrugging shoulders and caved chest, is expressing weakness, resignation, and submission. We also detect resignation and disappointment in his lips, which are pressed and tightened at the corners. Notice the downward direction of his gaze and the tilt of his head away from Mr. Balsley: These movements differ dramatically from usual signs of strength and engagement, such as moving toward people with eye contact and expanded, upright posture. Major Preston’s body conveys dejection, disappointment, and perhaps remorse.

His gestures contrast with what we see in the Balsleys. They both look with a fixed gaze toward Major Preston. The father in particular moves forward with his handshake: He wants to connect.

But Major Preston doesn’t reciprocate. He moves away and into himself. These are people who are sharing the same space, but they’re really in separate worlds.

dacher Keltner, Ph.d., a co-editor of Greater Good, is expertly trained at decoding the emotional messages conveyed by facial expressions and body language. Body Language is a new feature to help readers improve their “emotional literacy”—their ability to identify and empathize with other people’s emotions, and to understand their own emotions.

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Shoulders: Submissive, shrugging shoulders express resignation.

head: Head tilted to the side and downward gaze indicate dejection or shame.

lips: Pressed lips, tightened at the corners, also indicate resignation.


h a l f a d o z e n mothers are watching videos of themselves caring for their tod-dlers, taped in their homes a week or two before. The videos present a montage of each of the mothers with their toddlers in

warm moments. The soundtrack: the song “You Are so Beautiful.”

“That is the song,” the group leader tells them, “your children are singing to you.”

The point of the meetings is for each mother to become more aware of her strengths at mothering, and to try to get better at habits that need improvement. So over the ensuing weeks, they will see other videos that show ways they might struggle at caregiving—being too intrusive, or tuned-out, or simply missing cues from their toddlers about what they need.

The mothers study the videos of themselves and their toddlers, and get coached in how, for instance, to be more relaxed about letting their kids explore and play, or being more sensitive to when a two-year-old wants a hug or just the reassurance of sitting on her lap.

Such simple lessons in mothering may seem obvious, but here they have a pur-pose. This program, called the Circle of Security, is typical of many designed for mothers who are “at-risk”: alcoholic or drug users, clinically depressed, or single and living in poverty. When mothers have problems like these, they are more prone to being off-key with their toddlers—overly protective or indifferent—in ways that can be damaging to their child’s sense of secu-rity. Children of such mothers are more likely to grow up with difficulties forming secure attachments, that most basic key to human connection.

But if caught early, such patterns can be changed for the better. Mothers can learn to correct the ways they inadvertently disrupt their loop with their toddlers, or

to repair such disruption when it does occur. That claim stands not just on one or two studies, but on a meta-analysis of 70 separate assessments of programs involving thousands of parents and toddlers, designed to help them connect better.

The verdict was that the programs led to a strong improvement in parents’ abili-ties to empathize with their toddlers; they became more sensitive to cues indicating their children needed comforting or were ready to go out and play on their own.

“When an intervention is rather successful in enhancing maternal sensitivity, this change appears to be accompanied by a parallel positive change in infant attachment security,” write the authors, researchers at Leiden Uni-versity in the Netherlands.

In other words, the parents became better at providing a secure emotional base for their children. The more parents’ attun-ement improved, the greater the toddlers’ sense of security. And, the authors add, “interventions involving fathers appear to be significantly more effective than interventions focusing on mothers only.”

To be sure, most mothers or fathers do not need such coaching. But the good news is that the biggest improvements were seen in the very families where help was needed the most—for example, with poor unwed teen mothers, those who were clinically depressed, or both.

Surprisingly, the interventions did not need to be all that elaborate to work. Some of the strongest improvements were found in just five sessions of coaching—even

when mothers simply watched a 15-minute videotape and were given a Snuggli infant carrier they could use to keep their baby attached to them throughout the day. And when the coaches were other mothers, the studies showed better results than when the programs used highly trained mental health workers.

These programs try to get kids on the right neural track during that early window of opportunity, the first three years of life, when their brains go through a major

sculpting of neurons. The success of these programs shows how

some seemingly minor ges-tures, such as helping a

toddler calm down when she’s in tears

and checking in with her to see how she’s feeling, can make a child feel nurtured and loved. And if kids get off

to a nurturing start in life, their

heightened capac-ity for affection and

empathy will pay off in a loving adulthood.

daniel goleman, Ph.d., is the author of the bestsellers Emotional Intelli-gence and, most recently, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, which goes into more detail on parenting. His website is www.danielgoleman.info. “Social Intelligence” is also the name of this new column in Greater Good, featuring the voices of leading thinkers and research-ers in the science of human relationships.

The circle of Securitynew programs help at-risk parents tune in to what their children really need. By dANiel golemAN

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q u e s t i o n s a b o u t t h e r o l e —and the limits—of gratitude have hovered around the United States-Iraq relationship since the fall of Saddam Hussein. With Iraq now free from dictatorship but enveloped in chaos, do the Iraqi people feel more grat-itude or resentment toward the United States? Can they juggle both feelings simul-taneously?

These are questions Rend al-Rahim Francke has confronted for years. As Iraq’s first post-Hussein ambassador to the U.S., al-Rahim had to nurture the complicated and delicate ties between the two nations.

For more than a decade before assuming that post, she had been a strong and influ-ential advocate of regime change—most notably as a founder and executive director of the nonprofit Iraq Foundation, based in Washington, D.C.

But despite her longstanding support for the invasion of Iraq, al-Rahim has openly criticized the Bush administration’s post-invasion plans. One of her most prominent displays of criticism came three years ago, in her first Congressional testimony as Iraq’s representative to the U.S.

She began by expressing “gratitude for the leadership of the United States in liberating Iraqis from the murderous dicta-torship of Saddam Hussein.” Yet she soon balanced this gratitude with objections to the way the war had been waged.

“Iraqis wanted and welcomed the U.S. and the Coalition as liberators and partners, not as occupiers,” she said. “We wanted lib-eration to have an Iraqi face and to take ownership of it. … Declaring an occupation dealt a blow to Iraqi dignity and national pride.”

As these comments illustrate, al-Rahim has claimed sparsely populated middle ground between the Iraq war’s defenders and critics. The nuances to her position seem consistent with her own personal background as a native of Iraq who has been an American citizen for 20 years, unusual for a foreign ambassador.

Her willingness to both praise and criticize the U.S. may have gotten her into trouble. When al-Rahim resigned from her post a few months after her testimony, it was amid speculation that her criticism had brought her out of favor with the American and Iraqi governments. (She’s now a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, a federally funded organization that promotes conflict prevention and resolu-tion, and she has also resumed her role as executive director of the Iraq Foundation.)

But her perspective also makes al-Rahim especially qualified to discuss the tension —psychological as well as political—that exists in the U.S.-Iraq relationship. She recently spoke with Greater Good about the pivotal role of gratitude in this relationship

over the past four years, and in the years to come.

Greater Good: In your 2004 testimony before Congress, why did you feel it was necessary to begin by expressing gratitude toward the United States?

rend al-rahim: I absolutely wanted to make clear, right at the beginning, that the Iraqi people are thankful that the United States helped them by getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime. I did not want that point to remain ambiguous or in doubt. The Iraqi people—we’re talking here about 90 percent of the Iraqi people, a very, very high percentage—were absolutely grateful.

GG: So fast forward three years, when the situation in Iraq has deteriorated and criticism of the United States within Iraq and around the world has really intensified. How do we reconcile current events with the feelings of gratitude that you expressed and represented three years ago? Given the current situation, how strong or influential is the feeling of gratitude within the mix of all the emotions that Iraqis now hold toward the United States and its government?

rr: The fact is that nobody in the universe likes occupation, and in the Middle East, it is a particularly sensitive topic because the Middle East has suffered from occupation and mandates for so long.

the Politics of GratitudeAN INterVIew wIth IrAq’s former AmBAssADor to the uNIteD stAtes,

reND AL-rAhIm frANCKeBy JASoN mArSh


It’s a very traumatic issue. And it gets to the complexity of feelings toward the U.S.

If we go back, we can say there’s gratitude for what the U.S. did in March and April of 2003. But there may be griev-ances for things that the U.S. did after that. And I can give you examples: Dismissing thousands of [Iraqi] army officers is a grievance, and many people have that grievance. The insensitive tactics that the U.S. military used in their search and seize operations is a grievance. The U.S. military shot and killed my own bodyguard, who at the time was unarmed. I have a grievance.

So there are grievances. But looking back, I think people say there was an absolute good that the U.S. did for us.

GG: How do you balance some of these conflicting feelings—the gratitude and the grievances?

rr: It certainly is conflicted emotionally. I think in general, any relationship has to be worked on. And the parties to a relationship have to understand what the needs and the fears and the sensitivities of the other are—whether this is a parent-offspring relationship, or any relationship where emotions of gratitude come in. You cannot simply say, “Well, they have to be grateful, and I don’t have to do anything more.” Any emotions of gratitude have to continue to be nurtured. And I think that, certainly, the U.S. has not been very sensitive to the need to continue to nurture that relationship in a healthy and positive way.

I will give you a personal example of this on a micro scale, and a larger example on a macro scale. On a micro scale, when the U.S. shot my bodyguard, nobody from the U.S. military made any effort to find out who this person was. When we told them who he was, they didn’t go and apologize to the family. They didn’t send a letter, they didn’t send money, they didn’t in any way, shape, or form express contrition publicly to the family or give them any kind of compensation. I think that is grossly insensitive.

On a more public scale, take the Abu Ghraib incident. That was horrific. Now, do these things happen all the time? Yes. Do the Iraqi police do things like that and worse? Yes. But that doesn’t absolve the U.S. military from grave wrongdoing, and the kind of wrongdoing that goes to the heart of Iraqi dignity and self-respect.

It seems to me that at the time, the U.S. government—at the level of the Pentagon, State Department, and the White House—should have meted out

much sterner justice, much quicker justice, and much more public justice in a way for the Iraqis to see justice being done. So I think there’s a great deal of negligence. It’s not evil; it’s negligence and insensitivity.

On the other hand, I think Iraqis are also deficient in the awareness that they need to work on this relationship themselves. I hold a very peculiar position because I’m an Iraqi-American, and I hear a lot of Iraqis not caring enough about the deaths of the young American soldiers, not expressing enough sympathy. And I find this very puzzling and very unpleasant because, after all, these are sacrifices being made by Americans for Iraq. So I think on both sides there’s an element of negligence toward that relationship.

And I don’t think it’s possible to keep a healthy relationship unless you show that you care about a person, or a group of people, on a continuing basis. You cannot simply feed off a fund of gratitude. It has to be replenished. And similarly, as I say, in the case of the Iraqis, they must have much more sympathy and empathy for the fact that young Americans are coming to this country, suffering heat and deprivation, and dying and being maimed.

GG: So in order to replenish feelings of gratitude and goodwill, where can the United States and Iraq go from here?

rr: I think the best way to go forward is to find out what the U.S. has done right. There are so many books about what went wrong—and I’ve testified and written about that. But I think there needs to be much more attention to what is going right in that relationship.

Let me give you an example. There are literally thousands of NGOs working in Iraq—I think there are over 4,000. Many of them have been trained and are being helped by larger American NGOs. These range from women’s groups to human rights groups to advocacy groups of all kinds. On the humanitarian level, a lot of American-based organizations have also gone out there and delivered aid and assistance. I think that’s important to highlight.

I think that’s one area we should look at. Another area is more military. There was a lot of comment that, in the first two or three years after the fall of the regime, the American military concentrated on force protection, not citizen protection. The perception of the Iraqis is that the U.S. military focused on its own protection. And I would agree with that from my own personal experience.

Just recently, we’ve seen that shift: From force protection, it appears the U.S. mili-tary is now looking at citizen protection. And in the process, by the way, U.S. troops are putting themselves in far greater danger than they have over the past four years. I think if there is a perception by Iraqis that the focus has shifted, that the American forces are now going to concentrate on protecting and helping Iraqis, then I think that will make an impact.

It is all a question of showing that you care about the other, that you’re in a partnership—not a relationship of the occupier and occupied. You’re not in a relationship where it’s the all-powerful and the powerless.

GG: Looking back over the past four years, how would you describe your own personal mix of emotions toward the U.S. and its relationship with Iraq?

rr: Well, as I say, I’m in a very peculiar position because I’m both an American and an Iraqi. And in a sense, I feel privileged to be in that position because I think it is a very important relationship. I have always thought that, even before 2003. But it’s distressing that it should be a schizophrenic relationship, or at best a frustrating one. I do think both sides need to work on it. And I certainly feel, on a very personal level, that I need to resolve this within myself. I must not get carried away either by anger or by overwhelming gratitude that blinds me to mistakes on either side.

Jason marsh is a co-editor of Greater Good.

It is all a question of showing that you care about the other, that you’re in a partnership—not a relationship of the all-powerful and the powerless.

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elizabeth bartlett is a professor of political science at a Midwestern university. At the age of 42, her irregular heartbeat had become life-threatening. A heart transplant was her last hope, and she was fortunate to receive one. In a book chronicling her journey, she writes that she felt thankful for her new lease on life—but simply feeling thankful wasn’t enough.

I have a desire to do something in return. To do thanks. To give thanks. Give things. Give thoughts. Give love. So gratitude becomes the gift, creating a cycle of giving and receiv-ing, the endless waterfall. Filling up and spilling over… perhaps not even to the giver but to someone else, to whoever crosses one’s path. It is the simple passing on of the gift.

What Bartlett describes is true gratitude. As this brief passage illustrates, gratitude is more than a pleasant feeling; it is also motivating. Gratitude serves as a key link between receiving and giving: It moves recipients to share and increase the very good they have received. Because so much of human life is about giving, receiving, and repaying, gratitude is a pivotal concept for our social interactions. The famed sociolo-gist Georg Simmel declared that gratitude is “the moral memory of mankind.” If every grateful action, he went on to say, were sud-denly eliminated, society would crumble.

Yet gratitude’s benefits are rarely dis-cussed these days; indeed, in contemporary American society, we’ve come to overlook, dismiss, or even disparage the significance of gratitude.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we lack a sophisticated discourse for gratitude because we are out of practice. The late philosopher Robert Solomon noted how

relatively infrequently Americans talk about gratitude. Despite the fact that it forms the foundation of social life in many other cultures, in America, we usually don’t give it much thought—with a notable exception of one day, Thanksgiving. On the other hand, we tend to scrutinize anger, resentment, happiness, and romantic love.

It has been argued that males in particular may resist experiencing and expressing gratefulness insomuch as it implies dependency and indebtedness. One

fascinating study in the 1980s found that American men were less likely to regard gratitude positively than were German men, and to view it as less constructive and useful than their German counterparts. Gratitude presupposes so many judgments about debt and dependency that it is easy to see why supposedly self-reliant Americans would feel queasy about even discussing it.

We like to think that we are our own creators and that our lives are ours to do with as we please. We take things for granted. We assume that we are totally responsible for all the good that comes our way. After all, we have earned it. We

deserve it. A scene from The Simpsons captures this mentality: When asked to say grace at the family dinner table, Bart Simpson offers the following words: “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.”

In one sense, of course, Bart is right. The Simpson family did earn their own money. But on another level, he is missing the big-ger picture. The grateful person senses that much goodness happens independently of his actions or even in spite of himself. Gratitude implies humility—a recognition that we could not be who we are or where we are in life without the contributions of others. How many family members, friends, strangers, and all those who have come before us have made our daily lives easier and our existence freer, more comfortable, and even possible? It is mind boggling to consider.

Indeed, contemporary social science research reminds us that if we overlook gratitude, it will be at our own emotional and psychological peril. After years of ignoring gratitude—perhaps because it appears, on the surface, to be a very obvious emotion, lacking in interesting complications—researchers have found that gratitude contributes powerfully to human health, happiness, and social connection.

I first started studying gratitude 10 years ago. While the emotion initially seemed simplistic to me, I soon discovered that gratitude is a deep, complex phenom-enon that plays a critical role in human happiness. My research partnership with Michael McCullough at the University of Miami has led to several important findings about gratitude. We’ve discovered scientific proof that when people regularly work on cultivating gratitude, they experience a variety of measurable benefits: psychologi-


Gratitude may seem like a simple emotion, but robert emmons argues that it inspires kindness, connection, and transformative life changes. And he’s done the research to prove it.

too youNg for grAtItuDe?Researchers at Boston University found that only 21 percent of kids younger than six said “thank you” to adults who gave them candy. By contrast, more than 80 percent of kids older than 10 expressed gratitude in the same situation.

Pay It forward

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cal, physical, and social. In some cases, people have reported that gratitude led to transformative life changes. And even more importantly, the family, friends, partners, and others who surround them consistently report that people who practice gratitude seem measurably happier and are more pleasant to be around. I’ve concluded that gratitude is one of the few attitudes that can measurably change peoples’ lives.

the science of gratitudeAt the outset of our research, Mike McCul-lough and I assumed that regularly practic-ing gratitude should enhance people’s psychological and social functioning; we then based a series of experiments on that assumption.

In our first study, Mike and I randomly assigned participants one of three tasks. We decided to encourage some participants to feel gratitude and others to be negative and irritable. We also created a third, neutral group by which to measure the others.

Once a week for 10 weeks, the study’s participants kept a short journal listing five things that had occurred over the past week. They either briefly described, in a single sentence, five things for which they were grateful (“the gratitude condition”), or they did the opposite, describing five hassles that displeased them (“the hassles condition”). The neutral control group was simply asked to list five events or circumstances that had affected them each week, and they were not told to accentuate the positive or negative aspects of those circumstances.

To give a flavor for what participants wrote about, examples of gratitude-inducing experiences included “waking up this morning,” “the generosity of friends,” “God for giving me determination,” and “the Rolling Stones.” Examples of hassles were: “hard to find parking,” “messy kitchen no one will clean,” “finances depleting quickly,” and “doing a favor for friend who didn’t appreciate it.”

Although I believed we’d see the benefits of gratitude, I wasn’t sure this result would be inevitable or unequivocal. To be grateful means to allow oneself to be placed in the position of a recipient—to feel indebted, aware of one’s dependence on others, and obligated to reciprocate. An exercise like ours might remind people that they need to repay the kindness of others, and they may resent these obligations and even report strong negative feelings toward their benefactors.

So I was surprised at how dramati-cally positive our results were. At the end of the 10 weeks, participants who’d kept a gratitude journal felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about the future than participants in either of the other two conditions. To put it into numbers, according to the scale we used to calculate well-being, they were a full 25 percent happier than the other partici-pants. Those in the gratitude condition reported fewer health complaints and even

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spent more time exercising than control participants did, and significantly more time exercising than those in the hassles condition (nearly 1.5 hours more per week). This is a massive difference. The gratitude group participants also experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness than those in either of the other two groups.

In a second study, we asked participants to keep journals every day for two weeks. People assigned to express gratitude again showed an impressive array of benefits: On surveys we gave all study participants, people who kept a gratitude journal reported feeling more joyful, enthusiastic, interested, attentive, energetic, excited, determined, and strong than those in the hassles condition. They also reported offering others more emotional support or help with a personal problem—supporting the notion that gratitude motivates people to do good. And this was not limited to what they said about themselves. We sent surveys to people who knew them well, and these significant others rated participants in the gratitude group as more helpful than those in the other groups (these friends were not aware of which experimental condition the participants were in).

We got similar results in a study of adults with neuromuscular disorders, many of whom suffered from fatigue, slowly progressive muscle weakness, muscle and joint pain, and muscular atrophy. Little is known about factors affecting the quality of life among people with neuromuscular disorders. This study gave us a unique opportunity to determine if the gratitude intervention could help improve the well-being of these people coping with a chronic physical disease.

Participants in the gratitude condition showed significantly more positive emotions and satisfaction with life than a control group, while also showing fewer negative emotions. They also felt more optimism about the upcoming week and felt closer and more connected to others, even though many lived alone and did not increase their actual contact time with oth-ers. Remarkably, these positive emotional and psychological changes weren’t only apparent to the participants themselves: Based on reports we received from the spouses of study participants, people in the gratitude condition seemed outwardly happier than people in the control group.

Participants in the gratitude condition also reported getting more hours of sleep each night, spending less time awake before falling asleep, and feeling more refreshed

upon awakening. This finding is enormous, in that sleep disturbance and poor sleep quality have been identified as central indicators of poor overall well-being, as well as increased risk for physical disease and premature death. It may sound simplistic, but the evidence cannot be ignored: If you want to sleep more soundly, count blessings, not sheep.

One of the important features of all of these studies is that we randomly assigned participants to conditions. Many people who tend toward pessimism may have been placed in the gratitude group, just as optimists may have been in the other conditions. Plus, few studies have been

able to successfully create interventions to increase happiness or well-being; we were able to do so with an exercise that required minimal effort.

Other studies have corroborated our findings and further testified to gratitude’s benefits, especially for social connections. For example, additional research Mike and I conducted has shown that individuals who report habitually experiencing gratitude engage more frequently in kind or helpful behaviors than do people who experience gratitude less often.

We’ve also identified people with strong dispositions toward gratitude and asked their friends to tell us about them. We

then compared their friends’ responses to feedback we received from the friends of less grateful people. According to their friends, grateful people engaged in more supportive, kind, and helpful behaviors (e.g., loaning money, providing compassion, sympathy, and emotional support) than did less grateful people.

Some particularly informative research has been conducted by David DeSteno and Monica Bartlett at Northeastern University. In their creative studies, participants worked on a computer-generated task; when they were about to receive their score, the screen suddenly went blank. Another person in the room—a “confeder-ate,” someone secretly working with the researchers—“discovered” that the monitor’s plug had been pulled partially out of the power strip and then helped display the participant’s scores. Upon leaving the laboratory, the participant was asked if they would volunteer to assist in another, ostensibly unrelated experiment, which involved completing a tedious and taxing survey.

Compared to people who didn’t receive the favor, including some who were put in a good mood by watching a funny video clip, the people who received the favor and felt grateful toward the confederate were more likely to go through the trouble of filling out the survey. This suggests the unique effects of gratitude in motivating helping behavior, more so than the general effects of simply being in a positive mood.

Why is gratitude good?So why is gratitude good? For two main reasons, I think. First, gratitude strengthens social ties. It cultivates an individual’s sense of interconnectedness. This was beautifully illustrated in a story by Roger, a man we interviewed in our research on patients with chronic neuromuscular disease.

Faced with escalating medical bills and an extended period of unemployment, Roger was on the verge of losing his home—until friends organized a benefit party to raise money for him. He wrote in his gratitude journal:

Well the big day came after much anticipation. About two hundred people showed up, bought raffle tickets, drank, danced, partied and ate til 1 a.m. closing! We went up on stage to thank everyone amid joy, tears, and hugs. My manager cut me a check for over $35,000 the next week! Without that check my


thANK you reVeNue• When a server writes “thank you”

on a restaurant bill, his or her tip goes up by as much as 11 percent.

• Including thank you notes in mail surveys typically increases response rates.

• According to a study in the mid-1970s, jewelry store customers who received a phone call to thank them for their business spent more in the store over the next month than customers who hadn’t received the thank you call. In fact, customers who got a thank you call spent more than customers who were thanked and told that the store would be having a 20-percent-off sale.

A story of grAtItuDe

house/car would have been on the market.... We saw so many friends and co-workers it was truly a great night. The $1,000 first prize was donated back to us by the winner (a stranger!). My doctor and nurse also attended and our priest stopped by for a few beers—I keep thinking of more highlights as I write. I truly felt like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life! I feel myself almost tearing up as I write. My heart warms as I see the people that attended. I also feel a need to help or reach out to others whenever I can help by speaking or just listening.

In Roger’s response to that evening, and his desire to help others as a result, we can see how gratitude truly serves as “the mor-al memory of mankind.”

A second reason supporting the power of gratitude is that gratitude increases one’s sense of personal worth. When we experience gratitude, we understand that another person wishes us well, and in turn, we feel loved and cared for. If someone has incurred a personal cost by helping me out, then how can I not conclude that I have value in that person’s eye?

It might be this link that explains why gratitude can be a powerful antidote to a depressed view of life. One of the reasons gratitude makes us happier is that it forces us to abandon a belief that may accompany severe depression—that the world is devoid of goodness, love, and kindness, and is nothing but randomness and cruelty. By recognizing patterns of benevolence, the depressed person may change his or her self-perception (“I guess I’m not such a loser after all”). By feeling

grateful, we are acknowledging that someone, somewhere, is being kind to us. And therefore, we can see not just that we are worthy of kindness, but that kindness indeed exists in the world and, therefore, that life may be worth living.

We are receptive beings, dependent on the help of others, on their gifts and their kindness. As such, we are called to gratitude. Life becomes complete when we are able to give to others what we ourselves received in the past. In one of our studies, a 33-year-old woman with spinal muscular atrophy captured this dynamic:

All of my life, people have been involved to assist me in getting dressed, showered, to work/school, etc. It was my hope that one day, I would be able to do something really significant for someone else, like others have always done for me. I met a man who was married and very unhappy. He and his wife had a little boy born to them and then die at seven months of age. For 10 years they remained married, trying to have another baby. They were never able to have a child again. They divorced and he became my friend and lover. He told me of his life’s dream of having another child. I got pregnant from him and had a miscarriage. I got pregnant again and had an ectopic pregnancy. (No loss of my tube, thank God!) A shot took care of the problem. I got pregnant a third time; our beautiful son was born on 12/20/98. I have never felt as grateful for anything in my life. I was actually able to give something back to someone. Me, who was supposed to die before I was two years old.

It is gratitude that enables us to receive and it is gratitude that motivates us to return the goodness that we have been given. In short, it is gratitude that enables us to be fully human.

robert A. emmons, Ph.d., has taught in the department of psychology at the University of California, Davis, since 1988. He is founding editor and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology, and is author of the forthcoming THANKS! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Houghton-Mifflin).

the art of the thank you by saGe CoheN

I hated writing thank you notes as a child, but I had no choice: My mother was adamant about

honoring other people’s kindness and generosity. She was like a master composer, insisting that her protégé practice thank-you-note scales. But now, after a childhood spent crafting those notes, the music of gratitude flows naturally from me.

For example, I hired Brant to build an arbor around my front door. I drew it exactly as I wanted, and he realized my vision perfectly. Marveling at how the arbor’s beauty uplifted me every time I crossed my threshold, I called Brant a few weeks after the arbor went up. He answered the phone defensively.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, his voice a cold brillo of distance.

“You can say, ‘You’re welcome,’” I responded.“I don’t understand,” Brant shot back.“I am calling to say ‘Thank you.’”Silence.“What do you mean?” he asked.“I love my arbor, and I wanted you to know

how much I appreciate your work.”More silence.“I’ve been doing this work for 20 years, and

no one has ever called to thank me for it,” said Brant. “People only call me when they have problems.” He was incredulous.

I had a similar experience with L.J., who sold me my car at the Honda dealership. He answered my questions, didn’t push, and gave me space to think and decide. I wrote to let him know that he completely exceeded my expectations of what a beat-‘em-down car sales experience would be like, and that I was happy with my car choice.

L.J. called me a few days later. He said that his was the first thank you note in the history of the dealership. The managers open the mail and then pass on all acceptable communications to the sales team. Evidently, my note was circulated through the ranks, and as a result, L.J. was mercilessly teased. But I’ll bet that every one of his peers looked at him differently after that.

Encounters like these give me pause. Are we really living in an age when feedback loops only close with complaints? It seems to me that when we focus on problems, we only foster dissatisfaction and resentment. But when we focus on celebrating goodness, we are likely to tune into what is good.


tAKeN for grANteD

In a study by researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel and the University of Pittsburgh, people were asked to imagine getting a ride to the airport—either from a parent, sibling, friend, acquaintance, or a stranger. They said they’d feel the least amount of gratitude toward parents or siblings, and the most toward a friend, acquaintance, or stranger.

BuILDINg grAtItuDe


i h av e a con fe s s ion : w h e n i g o to a bookstore, I like hanging out in the self-help section. I don’t know if it’s because I think I’ll find a book that will solve all my problems, or if seeing all the books on problems I don’t have makes me feel better about myself. But whatever it is, I keep going back.

On recent visits, I’ve noticed a trend: The market has been glutted by books promising the secrets to happiness. That might not seem new (isn’t happiness the point of the entire section?), but these aren’t touchy-feely self-help titles—they’re books by scientific researchers, who claim to offer prescriptions based on rigorous empirical research. It’s all part of the “positive psychology” movement that has spilled out of academic journals and into best-selling books, popular magazine articles, and even school curricula.

As I glanced through a few of these titles, two things quickly became clear. First, positive psychologists claim you can create your own happiness. Conventional wisdom has long held that each of us is simply born with a happiness “set point” (meaning that some people are constitutionally more likely to be happy than others). That’s partially true—but according to positive psychologists Sonja Lyubomirsky and Ken Sheldon, research now suggests that up to 40 percent of our happiness might stem from intentional activities in which we choose to engage.

Second, in trying to explain which activities might actually help us cultivate happiness, positive psychology keeps returning to the same concept: gratitude. In study after study, researchers have found that if people actively try to become more grateful in their everyday lives,

they’re likely to become happier—and healthier—as well.

So how do positive psychologists recommend that you increase your level of gratitude—and, therefore, happiness? They endorse several research-tested exercises. These include keeping a “gratitude journal,” where you record a running list of things for which you’re grateful; making a conscious effort to “savor” all the beauty and pleasures in your daily life; and writing a “gratitude letter” to some important person in your life who you’ve never properly thanked.

These gratitude exercises all sounded pleasant enough, but would they work for me? While I’m not currently depressed, I’m very aware that depression runs in my family: I’m the only person—including the dog—who has not yet been on Prozac. So I decided to indulge in all three of these

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stumbliNG toWard Gratitudenew research suggests gratitude is a key to health and happiness, but catherine price wanted to find out for herself.

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four Ways to Give thanksby CatheriNe PriCe

research in positive psychology has identified several ways that practicing gratitude can boost

people’s health and happiness. Here are four of these research-tested “gratitude interventions.”

1. Write a gratitude letter. Research by Martin Seligman, Christopher Peterson, and others has shown this one to be particularly effective. Write a letter to a mentor, family member, or some other important person in your life whom you’ve never properly thanked. Deliver it in person. Read it out loud. Bring tissues.

2. Keep a gratitude journal. Studies by psychologists Michael McCullough, Robert Emmons, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and others have backed up this exercise, which involves keeping a list of things for which you’re grateful—anything from your children or spouse to the beauty of the tree outside your window. Doing so helps you focus on the positive things in your life—a practice that’s been shown to increase happiness.

3. Savor. Take the time to notice beauty and pleasures in your daily life. Loyola University psychologist Fred Bryant has shown that savor-ing positive experiences can heighten your positive responses to them. A key to savoring is what Bryant calls “thanksgiving,” or expressing gratitude for the blessings that come your way, large and small.

4. think outside the box. It’s fairly obvious why we might feel grateful for grandmothers, lovely sunsets, and anything else that has provided comfort or beauty in our lives. But what about thanking the homeless people who come to the shelter where you volunteer? “Individuals who do volunteer work sometimes speak of the benefits they receive from service,” writes Robert Emmons in his forthcoming book, Thanks! “Since service to others helped them to find their own inner spirituality, they were grateful for the opportunity to serve.” If we look hard enough, he argues, we can find a reason to feel grateful for any relationship—even when someone does us harm, as that person helps us appreciate our own vulnerability. Emmons claims that such highly advanced forms of gratitude may actually increase the level of goodness in the world by inspiring positive acts in ourselves and others.


exercises over a six-week period, risking the possibility that I might become an insufferably happy and cheerful person.

I emailed University of Miami psy-chologist Michael McCullough, a lead-ing gratitude researcher, to ask what he thought I could expect as a result of my gratitude overdose.

“If you’re not experiencing more happiness and satisfaction in your life after this six-week gratitude infusion,” he wrote back, “I’ll eat my hat!”

Getting gratefulMy first step was to get a gratitude journal. Luckily, a year earlier my recently retired father had stumbled across a bookstore that sold “quotable journals” —blank books with inspiring quotes on their covers. My father, always a sucker for inspiration, sent me seven of them. I settled on one with a cover that said, in all caps, “Life isn’t about finding your-self. Life is about creating yourself.” Given my experiment in manufactured happiness, this seemed appropriate.

Journal at my side, I decided to start by taking a happiness inventory (avai- lable, along with a bunch of other quiz- zes, at authentichappiness.org, the website run by positive psychology guru

Martin Seligman). I scored a 3.58 out of 5, putting myself ahead of 77 percent of participants, but still leaving plenty of room for improvement—as evidenced by my first journal entry.

“It’s been a somewhat depressing day,” starts my gratitude journal. “Or, rather, week.”

At first, it felt a little awkward to keep a journal specifically for gratitude—I felt as if I should plaster my car in cheesy bumper stickers (“Happiness is”) and call it a day. But even on that first downbeat afternoon, my journal did make me feel a little better about things. Listing things I was grateful for made me feel, well, grateful for them—and since I’d also decided to jot down moments each day that had made me happy (another positive psychology-endorsed exercise), I had a concrete list of cheerful experi-ences to look back on when I was feeling down. Thanks to my journal, I know that on January 18th I was happy because I’d exercised, had a good Chinese lesson, and spent 15 minutes dancing around my room to Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.” On January 30th, I was grateful for my perseverance, the Pacific Ocean, and the fact that I have really, really good cholesterol.

I’ve always kept a journal, but once my initial excitement about my new project had passed, my writing schedule felt a bit contrived—I often had to force myself to stay awake for a few minutes before bedtime so that I wouldn’t miss an entry. But I quickly found that encourag-ing myself to focus on the good in my life instead of dwelling on the bad was helping me gain a bit of perspective on things. “The actions in my day-to-day life are actually quite pleasant,” I wrote on January 21st, in a moment of insight. “It’s anxieties that get me derailed.”

It was also good to get in the habit of countering bad things in my day with reflections on the good. For example, on February 1st—which I described as “having a lot going against it”—I wrote that I “spent a bunch of the day cleaning my room and trying to get my new phone to work, went on fruitless errands, ripped out part of a sweater I was knitting, and when I emailed the pattern designer—who goes by “Yarn Boy” —to ask if he could help me figure out where I’d gone wrong, he sent me an email back telling me to ‘take it to a yarn shop.’ Thanks a lot, Yarn Ass.” And yet the entry ends as follows: “But I did

on January 30th, I was grateful for my perseverance, the pacific ocean, and the fact that I have really, really good cholesterol.

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get my phone set up and cleaned my room a bit. Chinese went well. I got cute new barrettes. I worked out even though I didn’t feel like it, then I savored the feel of my calf muscles.”

That might not sound like much, but trust me: It’s an improvement.

Despite my calf muscle appreciation, I wasn’t exactly sure how to practice my “savoring” exercise, so I emailed Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University who teaches an immensely popular class called “Science of Well-Being and Character Strengths.” Kashdan, who worked on the floor of the stock exchange until a late night revelation on a golf course made him realize he’d rather spend his life studying creativity and happiness, wrote back quickly.

“You can do something simple, such as stop and notice an instance of natural beauty, e.g., a sunrise, a flower, a bird singing, a couple gazing at each other,” he suggested. “Or start keeping a journal of beautiful moments in which you write down each day the most beautiful things you saw and then return to it before you go to sleep.”

Not wanting to start another journal, I instead tried to take more time to appreciate my surroundings. On an eight-mile run on a fire trail, I stopped at a bench on top of a steep hill to give myself a chance to “savor.” I felt a bit like I was cheating—after all, the real reason I’d stopped was that if I hadn’t, I’d have thrown up—but as my heart rate slowed I allowed myself to appreciate what was around me: the view of San Francisco, the warmth of the sun, the cool breeze, and the sounds of the birds. It made me feel nice, and since it didn’t involve jogging, I continued to savor for 20 minutes before forcing myself back on the trail.

Surprisingly, that exercise made me want to try to savor other small things in my day: watching a mechanic on break from work crack open a beautiful ripe pomegranate, noticing rays of light outside my kitchen window—even enjoying the feeling, weird as it might sound, of brushing my own hair. These were all small, private moments, but consciously try-ing to find things to savor was kind of like looking for manhole covers on the street: Once you start paying attention, they’re everywhere.

For my gratitude letter, I decided to write one to my grandmother back in New York for her 84th birthday. It took me three weeks to build up the emotional energy to do it (something about putting all that emotion down on paper made me procrastinate), and, as expected, as soon as

I started writing, I began to cry. “I remember you singing

me to sleep when I was little,” I wrote. “And helping me with my math homework and quizzing me on spelling while I tried to do handstands in the living room, and picking me up from the school bus, and

coming into school for grandparents’ day—I

was always so proud to have you there.” I told her how lucky I felt to have her in my life, how much I respected her for having raised my mother on her own, and how much it meant to me that we were so close. By the time I finished writing the letter, I was exhausted—and when I called to read it to her (since she lives across the country, I couldn’t do it in person), we both ended up in tears.

Negativity biasHalfway through my experiment, I was

running into problems. I had been trying to appreciate happy

moments in my life, but that didn’t stop me from getting into a verbal fight with a mechanic, who became so angry that he threatened to have me arrested. I had delivered my gratitude letter to my grandmother, which did make us both happy, but also made her think I was writing her eulogy; she told me,

pointedly, that she wasn’t planning to die yet. And when I tried to savor a beautiful afternoon by taking a hike along the coast with my boyfriend, we got poison oak.

What’s more, I noticed that when I was particularly stressed or angry or feeling down, I didn’t want to reflect on things I was happy or grateful for. During those moments, thinking about reasons my life was good just made me more anxious.

I decided to call Julie Norem, professor and chair of the psychology department at Wellesley College, for reassurance. She told me my reaction made sense.

“If you’re trying to be grateful all the time but are in a really sucky situation,” she said, “then you set yourself up for feeling like things are even worse than they were before because you didn’t get cured by this gratitude thing that was supposed to make you happy.”

Granted, Norem has her biases. She’s the author of a book called The Positive Power of Negative Thinking and believes that for some people, whom she calls defensive pessimists, trying to be constantly positive and optimistic can lead to more stress. But apparently I’m biased, too, because as I read through her website, I could feel myself identifying with it.

“Defensive pessimists lower their expectations to help prepare themselves for the worst,” says her website. “Then they mentally play through all the bad things that can happen. Though it sounds like it might be depressing, defensive pessimism actually helps anxious people focus away from their emotions so they can plan and act effectively.”

Intrigued, I took the quiz on Norem’s website titled “Are you a defensive pessimist?” and scored exactly in the middle between optimism and defensive

“I remember you singing me to sleep when I was little,” I wrote. “And quizzing me on spelling while I tried to do handstands in the living room.”

shallow Gratitudeby Christi Chidester

in an issue of the journal Granta earlier this year, editor Ian Jack railed against a new trend in the

literary world: the tendency of young American writers to burden their books with excessively long acknowledgments sections, thanking everyone from their agents to their friends to the baristas at their local cafés. This is all a bit much for Jack.

“Why should the writer imagine we care about any of them?” he writes. “Might it be that he thinks his work is so brilliant that its worth needs some explanation?”

Jack contrasts these American writers with their British counterparts, as well as their American predecessors, who offer short, simple, and even cryptic words of thanks, such as “To H.J.” So what are we to make of these very different displays of gratitude?

One answer is suggested by a 1995 study of gratitude. The researchers asked participants to write about two events in their lives, a major success and a major failure. Half of the subjects were told to write their names on every page of the response sheets and to be prepared to share their stories with six to eight other participants. The other group was instructed to leave their names off the responses and was told their responses would be kept completely confidential.

The major difference between the two groups came in their success stories: Those who expected to share their stories were significantly more likely to mention how other people had contributed to their accomplishments.

The researchers, Roy Baumeister and Stacey Ilko, describe this phenomenon as “shallow gratitude,” speculating that the subjects may not have truly believed that the other people deserved their recognition but felt social pressure to cite their help.

“Had they really felt strongly grateful for the others’ help,” they write, “these acknowledge-ments would presumably have shown up in their private accounts as well.”

So is today’s literary gratitude actually quite shallow? One way to find out could be to start pulling original manuscripts off writers’ computers and out of their desk drawers. If Baumeister and Ilko’s findings are any indication, we may find that while published acknowledgements go on for pages, first drafts may be thankless.

hyPotheses


pessimism—which makes sense, given the fact that I do try to be positive about things, but use negativity to cope. It goes along with a saying I learned from my grandmother: “Hope for the best; expect the worst.”

Perhaps ironically, thinking about pessimism made me feel better, especial-ly when University of Michigan psychol-ogist Christopher Peterson admitted to me that even positive psychologists like himself are not always brimming with joy. “I’m not a Pollyanna,” he said when I called to ask how positive psychology had affected his life. “And obviously, someone who’s unrelentingly cheerful can be a pain in the ass.”

happy mealBut how about unrelenting gratitude? To celebrate finishing my experiment—not to mention filling up my journal—I took my boyfriend out for dinner at a restaurant here in Berkeley called Café Gratitude. It’s a place that is anathema to my cynical New York roots: cheery waitresses who call everyone “darling,” posters on the walls that ask questions like, “Can you surrender to how beauti-ful you are?” and, worst of all, a menu of organic, vegan dishes, all named with life-affirming sentences. For example, saying to your server, “I am fabulous” means that you would like some lasagna. “I am fun” indicates that you want some toast. Unfortunately, there is no organic, vegan interpretation of “I am about to vomit.”

My boyfriend and I settled on being generous, fulfilled, and accepting (guaca-mole, a large café salad, and a bowl of rice), and in honor of my experiment, I insisted on ordering the “I am thankful” (Thai coconut soup, served cold). To offset the restaurant’s unrelenting cheer, we both ordered alcohol (luckily, even in Café Gratitude, a beer is just a beer).

While nibbling on carrot flaxseed crackers (“I am relishing”), we talked about the past six weeks. McCullough doesn’t need to eat his hat—I definitely had experienced moments of feeling happier and more consciously grateful as a result of the exercises, and by the end of my experiment, my happiness index had gone up to 3.92. But I also found that there are times when I need to allow myself to feel bad without fighting against my negative emotions. And my cynical side continues to dream of opening a rival restaurant next door called the Cantankerous Café, with menu items like “I am depressed” and “I am resentful.”

My biggest question was how long these exercises’ effects would last.

“Sometimes positive psychologists sound like we’re trying to sell miracles to people. There are no miracles. … There are no long-term quick fixes for happiness,” said Peterson, when I asked him how I could maintain my happiness boost. “So if you become a more grateful person and you add those exercises to your repertoire, you’ll be different six months or a year from now. But if you say okay, I’m done with the story and I’m going back to the way I was, it’ll just have been a six-week high. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not going to permanently change you.”

Perhaps that’s why, when I got home from dinner, I went straight to my bookcase where I keep stuff my dad has sent me—and picked out another journal.

catherine Price is a freelance writer for publications including The New York Times, Salon, and Men’s Journal, and is founder and editor-in-chief of Salt magazine (www.saltmag.net). She’s serious about the Cantankerous Café.

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Q: Are you grateful for your partner’s household labor?Him: Uh, yeah, I guess so.Q: How do you express it?Him: She just knows. —From a focus group conducted by the authors

the div ision of household labor is one of the most frequent sources of conflict in romantic relationships. As couples researchers Philip and Carolyn Cowan have shown, when partners feel that the division of labor (a combination

of housework and paid work) in their relationship is unfair, they are more dissatisfied with their marriage and more likely to think they would be better off divorced. However, even an equitable division of labor may not be enough to ensure that partners are satisfied with their relationship.

As sociologist Arlie Hochschild and oth-ers have argued, a successful relationship doesn’t just depend on how partners divide labor, but on how they each express grati-tude for the labor the other one contributes. This can be as true for single-income

couples as for dual-income ones. When you perform work around the house—from cooking to laundry to checking your kids’ homework—it often feels like a burden to yourself and a gift to your partner. So if you don’t feel that your partner is grateful for your efforts, especially if you perform the lion’s share of domestic labor, that’s likely to exacerbate feelings of inequity and dissatisfaction, making a difficult situation even worse.

In our research, we set out to test this theory—that it’s not just the division of labor but the expression of gratitude that’s

love, honor, and thank

researchers Jess Alberts and Angela Trethewey have found that a successful relationship doesn’t just depend on how partners divide their household chores, but on how they each express gratitude for the work the other one puts in.


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key to a strong and lasting relationship. Through focus groups, interviews, and surveys with people in heterosexual and same-sex relationships, we’ve found evidence that gratitude isn’t just a way to mitigate the negative effects of an unequal division of labor. Rather, a lack of gratitude may be connected to why that division of labor is so unequal to begin with.

Fortunately, through our research we’ve started to understand how couples can identify different reasons behind their unbalanced workloads and achieve more equity in their division of labor—cultivating a greater sense of fairness, satisfaction, and gratitude in their relationships.

Why doesn’t he see it? Her: The house is a wreck! Why didn’t you put a load of laundry in the wash, put the dishes in the dishwasher, or just take out the garbage that’s overflowing? Him: I didn’t notice.

We have found that this conversation resonates with virtually all of our research participants—either as the complainer or the complained about. Complainers say, incredulously, “How can he (or she) not see it!?” Their partners claim earnestly that they really didn’t notice the mess and don’t understand why their partners are so upset. To make matters worse for the complainers, not only do their unaware partners fail to notice the dirty windows, piles of laundry, or overflowing garbage, they don’t even notice when someone else takes care of these problems.

Although gender is a strong predictor of who will perform household labor (conservative estimates suggest women perform two-thirds of all household tasks, not including childcare), it isn’t entirely clear why women take on this burden even in cases where they earn 50 percent or more of a family’s income.

Our research suggests one of the keys to determining who will perform a specific household task is each partner’s “response threshold,” which describes the degree of disorder that must exist before someone is sufficiently bothered to perform a task that’s not being done. Individuals with low response thresholds for a specific task are moved to perform the task earlier than those who have a higher threshold.

Interestingly, this theory is originally based on studies of social networks and

division of labor among ants and bees. In her research, entomologist Jennifer Fewell found that certain bees were almost always the ones to take action once the level of honey in the hive had dropped to a particular level. In addition, she discovered that their work reduced the chance that other, higher-threshold bees would perform the job in the future.

We’ve all seen the same dynamics play out among humans. For example, if Joan’s partner Ted is disturbed when the trash in the wastebasket approaches the rim, whereas it doesn’t bother her until the trash spills onto the floor, Ted will take out the trash before Joan is moved to do so. If the difference in their disturbance levels is great enough, Joan never will empty the trash, because Ted will always take care of it before it bothers her, possibly before she ever even notices the garbage.

What’s more, if one partner does something well, that increases the chance he’ll perform that task again, just as failing at the task (or a lack of opportunity to complete it) decrease the chance he’ll get another turn. Then consider that, before long, the partner who performs a task more frequently will likely be seen as a specialist at it. Taken together, these facts explain how one partner can get stuck with a household chore.

Consider Cristina and Stephen: Cristina began doing the laundry because she had a lower threshold for piles of dirty clothes, but through repetition, she became an “expert” at laundry and, ultimately, she and Stephen came to see the task as “hers.”

Partners may have different thresholds for many (or even most) tasks. If one partner’s threshold level consistently is lower than the other’s, then that first partner will take on a greater share of the housework. He might be able to tolerate this imbalance if his partner appreciated his extra work, but too often it’s taken for granted.

Why isn’t she grateful?Her: So that roommate that I had last year was horrible. She never thanked me for anything, she never cleaned the house—it was horrible. Yeah, I wouldn’t live with her again.

Arlie Hochschild’s theory of “the economy of gratitude” explains why under-performers often aren’t grateful for their partner’s efforts and don’t pitch in

how to avoid labor Painsby Jess alberts aNd aNGela tretheWey

our research suggests that the following strategies may help increase fairness

and gratitude in relationships.

People who find themselves doing more than their fair share of the housework can: • Avoid repeatedly performing a task they

don’t want to “own,” especially when first living with their partner. From the time they first start living together, each partner should take turns at many different tasks, so they can both own those tasks down the line.

• Communicate to their partner when they feel a task should be performed, rather than waiting for the partner’s threshold level to be reached—and resenting them for their lack of awareness.

• Express appreciation for the work their partner does do, even if that work doesn’t meet the highest standard. Statements of appreciation—rather than criticism for not doing a task correctly or for doing it too late—are more likely to encourage repetition and improvement.

People who are doing less than their fair share of housework can:• Perform tasks before they seem neces-

sary or bothersome. One easy strategy for following through on this is to stick to a schedule for specific tasks.

• Be mindful of the work their partner is doing and remember to express gratitude for it routinely, which should make their partner feel less taken for granted.

Both partners can:• Write down a list of their tasks, then

switch lists (and tasks) for a week or month to better understand their partner’s contributions.

• Understand how different “response thresholds” can influence their partner’s perception of the housework, which should help them address their partner in a calmer, less accusing fashion.

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their fair share. Hochschild argues that, in relationships, individuals offer each other “gifts,” which are something extra, beyond what is expected. Therefore, if the laundry (or trash, or dishes, or all of the above) is defined as “yours,” then your partner is unlikely to feel gratitude toward you for doing it. After all, you are just doing what you are “supposed” to do, what you are “so much better” at doing. In fact, he may argue, since the undone task bothers you, you aren’t doing it for him, but for yourself. Thus, he is unlikely to feel gratitude—because he doesn’t view your efforts as a gift to him.

In terms of the division of labor, then, household partners often develop this pat-tern: The person with the lower threshold performs tasks before the partner is moved

to do so, the tasks come to be defined as “hers,” the partner does not feel responsible for performing the task—and he does not feel grateful, because the over-performer is just doing “her” job… all of which makes him less likely to lend a hand in the future.

Importantly, gratitude can help alter the dynamics of couples’ division of labor. Expressing gratitude reminds the under-performing partner that the division of labor is not fair, and that his partner’s contributions are a gift. And since people who receive gifts typically feel obligated to reciprocate, this insight can lead the under-performing partner to offer “gifts” of his own by contributing more to household tasks. In addition, the over-performing partner is likely to experience less resent-ment and frustration once her efforts are recognized and appreciated.

The economy of gratitude, then, helps to explain the fact that husbands and wives are most satisfied in their marriages when they perceive that their spouses do more than their fair share of the work. That is, when one views a partner’s household labor as a gift, over and above what is expected, then one is grateful and happy in the marriage. And, in turn, we have found that individuals who feel appreciated by their partners do indeed express less resentment over the division of labor and greater

satisfaction with their relationships than do other study participants.

appreciating giftsSo how can couples cultivate gratitude, compensate for different tolerances of disorder, and thus create more equitable divisions of household labor—and greater satisfaction with their relationships?

Part of the answer comes from simply being aware of these phenomena. Once one understands that, in a sense, one’s partner truly did not “see” the dirty dishes, piles of laundry, and overflowing garbage, one tends to be less angry and can discuss the issue more calmly and in a less accusatory fashion—which, in turn, can help one’s partner be less defensive.

In general, it is best to anticipate prob-lems before they arise. Over-performers should avoid repetitively performing a task they don’t want to “own,” especially when first living with their partner. In other words, when you first move in with your romantic partner, be careful not to cook dinner every night—or you can expect to continue cooking it every night for the rest of your relationship. Take turns in the beginning so that you can both own the task down the line.

Over-performers can also communicate to their partner when a task should be performed, rather than waiting for the part-ner’s threshold level to be reached—and resenting them for their lack of awareness. Also, although under-performers may not perform a task to their partner’s standards, statements of appreciation—rather than criticism for not doing it right or for doing it too late—are more likely to encourage repetition.

It also helps if under-performers understand that their partners are more disturbed by a messy house, so they need to develop strategies to respond to the differences in threshold levels, such as performing a task even before it bothers them. Each partner can take responsibility for specific tasks that they perform on a schedule, regardless of whether they are

disturbed by it—for instance, by taking out the garbage every Monday and Thursday, whether or not they think it needs to be done.

Finally, domestic partners may find it helpful to write down a list of their tasks and then switch lists for a week or month to better understand their partner’s contributions. They may be surprised to discover their partners do far more than they thought. When her husband Jim was on crutches for two weeks, one of us ( Jess) discovered that she did, in fact, perform more routine household labor, but she also discovered that Jim performed many of the “dirty” tasks that she really didn’t want to do. She then began to see the division of labor as more equitable.

The gratitude issue is thornier. But understanding the role of gratitude in the division of labor can encourage over-per-formers to take responsibility for fewer tasks so that these tasks are not taken for granted as “his” or “hers.” Also, under-standing the economy of gratitude can help under-performers recognize that they do benefit from their partner’s efforts—that this work is, in fact, a gift to them, wrapped in clean laundry and vacuumed rugs. They might not be disturbed by disorder as early as their partners, but eventually they would be, and would have to do the tasks them-selves. Thus, their partners are performing tasks that, rightly, belong to both of them. And if partners practice some of the steps outlined above to create a more equitable division of labor, they’re likely to gain new-found appreciation for the work the other performs for them.

It’s unlikely that these suggestions will eliminate conflict around couples’ division of labor. But we do believe that they can help partners reduce the frequency of their conflict, increase their expressions of gratitude, and improve their overall feelings about their relationship. Most of all, they can help partners avoid the trap of taking each other for granted, and start to appreci-ate all the gifts—big and small—that they give to one another.

Jess Alberts, Ph.d., is President’s Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University; her research interests include conflict, relationship communication, and the division of labor. Angela trethewey, Ph.d., is an associate professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication who explores the intersections of gender, work, and identity.

BuILDINg grAtItuDe

If the laundry is defined as “yours,” then your partner is unlikely to feel gratitude toward you for doing it.


“ ja mes” was a n a nomaly at the middle school where I worked as a psy-chologist. Most of the students came from upper-middle class backgrounds. James lived in a shelter with his mother, where nutritious meals and restful sleep were scarce. Every morning German cars lined the front of the school as parents dropped off their children; James commuted one-and-a-half hours by bus.

Winter approached, yet James still wore t-shirts, prompting his teacher, “Mrs. Riebe,” to give him a sport jacket she had picked up from her church. It was a kind gesture, but a sixth grader with a sport jacket in a public school meant one thing to me: a bully target. When I found James, he wasn’t embarrassed by wearing a jacket several sizes too big; instead, he was smiling from ear to ear. I tried to talk but he kept cutting me off. “Dr. Froh, check out this cool jacket Mrs. Riebe gave me,” he said. “I love it. I can’t stop thanking her.” James stood in the hallway wearing an oversized sport jacket, tired, hungry—and expressing gratitude. Many other students wore the latest trends, slept in comfortable beds, were well-fed, and yet craved more.

This was a defining moment for me. I started to imagine how our school’s climate might change if more of our students could learn to express gratitude for all they had been given in their lives. By helping them appreciate the daily gifts bestowed upon them—friends who offered emotional sup-port, teachers who gave up their lunch peri-od to provide extra help, staff who cleaned their hallways and lunch tables—I thought we might strengthen their feelings of close-ness and commitment to each other, their teachers, and their entire school.

Research by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough (see page 12), among others, had already found that keeping a “gratitude journal,” in which people count their blessings, provides them with mental and physical health benefits. Yet no one had investigated the effects of gratitude in youth. Emmons and I, along with our

colleague William Sefick, decided to be pioneers.

In our study, we followed 221 middle school students for five weeks. We random-ly assigned 11 classrooms to one of three conditions: gratitude, hassles, and a con-trol group. Students in the gratitude condi-tion were asked to record up to five things they were grateful for since the previous day. Students in the hassles condition were given similar directions, except to focus on irritants. Before this exercise, all of these students, along with students in a control group, completed questionnaires measuring their mental and physical health, and their attitudes and behavior toward others. They filled out the same questionnaires immedi-ately after the two-week intervention, and then again three weeks later.

Students in the gratitude condition found they had many blessings to count. While some of these were a bit idiosyncrat-ic (e.g., being thankful for Star Wars books), the common denominator was acknowl-edging a gift given by a benefactor. Their journals included entries such as: “I am grateful that my mom didn’t go crazy when I accidentally broke a patio table,” “My coach helped me out at baseball practice,” and “My grandma is in good heath, my family is still together, my family still loves each other, my brothers are healthy, and we have fun everyday.”

But we still had to answer the million-dollar question: For our school and our students, what were the greater benefits of giving thanks?

The results were clear: Higher levels of optimism, increased life satisfaction, and decreased negative feelings were all associ-ated with students’ expressions of gratitude. By the follow-up three weeks later, students who had been instructed to count their blessings showed more gratitude toward people who had helped them, which led to more gratitude in general.

Expressing gratitude was not only asso-ciated with appreciating close relationships; it was also related to feeling better about life and school. Indeed, compared with stu-dents in the hassles and control groups, students who counted blessings reported greater satisfaction with school both imme-diately after the two-week exercise and at the three-week follow-up. They made state-ments such as: “I go to a great school,” “I am grateful for my education,” and “I am thankful for my academics and for making the National Junior Honor Society.”

These encouraging results inspired me to take this exercise one step further: I shared it with our entire middle school. All of our roughly 1,000 students were given the same instructions as the gratitude condition from our study.

We didn’t keep track of changes on a school-wide level, but the results were definitely visible in my homeroom class. Several students said they recognized that “life could be so much worse.” One student, who was from a wealthy family, stated, “I realized how good I really have it. Some kids have nothing. I just never thought about it before.”

I don’t mean to suggest that counting their blessings for two weeks will cause adolescents to stock up on thank you cards; I think becoming a grateful person takes a prolonged, consistent effort. But the time to start practicing gratitude is when you’re young, and I think schools can play a vital role—especially since our intervention only took a few minutes a day. As our results suggest, gratitude serves the school’s edu-cational mission while also tending to stu-dents’ social and emotional needs. By help-ing to teach it, we might make kids more receptive to everything else they can learn from their teachers, parents, and friends.

Jeffrey Froh, Psy.d., is an assistant professor at Hofstra University, with primary responsibilities in the Psy.D. Program in School-Community Psychology. His son wrote his first thank you letter at the age of three months.

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a lesson in thankspsychologist Jeffrey Froh infused middle-school classes with a small dose of gratitude—and found that it made students feel more connected to their friends, family, and their school.



d u r i n g w o r l d w a r i i , u . s . a r m y Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall asked average soldiers how they conducted themselves in battle. Before that, it had always been assumed that the average soldier would kill in combat simply because his country and his leaders had told him to do so, and because it might be essential to defend his own life and the lives of his friends.

Marshall’s singularly unexpected discovery was that, of every hundred men along the line of fire during the combat period, an average of only 15 to 20 “would take any part with their weapons.” This was consistently true, “whether the action was spread over a day, or two days, or three.”

military leaders know a secret: the vast majority of people are overwhelmingly reluctant to take a human life.

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Marshall was a U.S. Army historian in the Pacific theater during World War II and later became the official U.S. historian of the European theater of operations. He had a team of historians working for him, and they based their findings on individual and mass interviews with thousands of soldiers in more than 400 infantry companies immediately after they had been in close combat with German or Japanese troops. The results were consistently the same: Only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide—in many cases they were willing to risk greater danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages. They simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges.

Why did these men fail to fire? As a historian, psychologist, and soldier, I examined this question and studied the process of killing in combat. I have realized that there was one major factor missing from the common understanding of this process, a factor that answers this question and more: the simple and demonstrable fact that there is, within most men and women, an intense resistance to killing other people. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it.

Indeed, the study of killing by military scientists, historians, and psychologists gives us good reason to feel optimistic about human nature, for it reveals that almost all of us are overwhelmingly reluctant to kill a member of our own species, under just about any circumstance. Yet this understanding has also propelled armies to develop sophisticated methods for overcoming our innate aversion to killing, and, as a result, we have seen a sharp increase in the magnitude and frequency of post-traumatic response among combat veterans. Because human beings are astonishingly resilient, most soldiers who return from war will be fine. But some will need help coping with memories of violence. When those soldiers return from war—especially an unpopular one like Iraq—society faces formidable moral and mental health challenges in caring for and re-integrating its veterans.

resistance to killingS.L.A. Marshall’s methodology has been criti-cized, but his findings have been corroborated by many other studies. Indeed, data indicate that soldiers throughout military history have demon-strated a strong resistance to killing other people.

When 19th-century French officer and military theorist Ardant du Picq distributed a question-naire to French officers in the 1860s, he became one of the first people to document the common tendency of soldiers to fire harmlessly into the air simply for the sake of firing. One officer’s response

stated quite frankly that “a good many soldiers fired into the air at long distances,” while another observed that “a certain number of our soldiers fired almost in the air, without aiming, seeming to want to stun themselves.”

Missing the target does not necessarily involve firing high, and two decades on army rifle ranges have taught me that a soldier must fire unusually high for it to be obvious to an observer. In other words, the intentional miss can be a very subtle form of disobedience. When faced with living, breathing opponents instead of a target, a signifi-cant majority of the soldiers revert to a posturing mode in which they fire over the enemy’s heads.

A 1986 study by the British Defense Opera-tional Analysis Establishment’s field studies divi-sion examined the killing effectiveness of military units in more than 100 19th- and 20th-century battles. They compared the data from these units with hit rates from simulated battles using pulsed laser weapons.

The analysis was designed (among other things) to determine if Marshall’s non-firer figures were consistent with other, earlier wars. When researchers compared historical combat perfor-mances against the performance of these test subjects (who were using simulated weapons and could neither inflict nor receive actual harm from the “enemy”), they discovered that the killing potential in these circumstances was much greater than the actual historical casualty rates.

Battlefield fear alone cannot explain such a con-sistent discrepancy. The researchers’ conclusions openly supported Marshall’s findings, pointing to “unwillingness to take part [in combat] as the main factor” that kept the actual historical killing rates significantly below the laser trial levels.

Thus the evidence shows that the vast majority of combatants throughout history, at the moment of truth when they could and should kill the ene-my, have found themselves to be “conscientious objectors”—yet there seems to be a conspiracy of silence on this subject. In his book War on the Mind, Peter Watson observes that Marshall’s find-ings have been largely ignored by academia and the fields of psychiatry and psychology.

But they were very much taken to heart by the U.S. Army, and a number of training measures were instituted as a result of Marshall’s sugges-tions. According to studies by the U.S. military, these changes resulted in a firing rate of 55 percent in Korea and 90 to 95 percent in Vietnam. Some modern soldiers use the disparity between the firing rates of World War II and Vietnam to claim that S.L.A. Marshall had to be wrong, for the average military leader has a hard time believing that any significant body of his soldiers will not do its job in combat. But these doubters don’t give sufficient credit to the revolutionary corrective measures and training methods introduced over the past half century.

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manufactured contemptSince World War II, a new era has quietly dawned in modern warfare: an era of psychological war-fare, conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one’s own troops. The triad of methods used to enable men to overcome their innate resistance to killing includes desensitization, classical and operant conditioning, and denial defense mecha-nisms.

Authors such as Gwynne Dyer and Richard Holmes have traced the development of boot-camp glorification of killing. They’ve found it was almost unheard of in World War I, rare in World War II, increasingly present in Korea, and thoroughly institutionalized in Vietnam. “The language used in [marine training camp] Parris Island to describe the joys of killing people,” writes Dyer, helps “desensitize [marines] to the suffering of an ‘enemy,’ and at the same time they are being indoctrinated in the most explicit

fashion (as previous generations were not) with the notion that their purpose is not just to be brave or to fight well; it is to kill people.”

But desensitization by itself is probably not sufficient to overcome the average individual’s deep-seated resistance to killing. Indeed, this desensitization process is almost a smoke screen for conditioning, which is the most important aspect of modern training. Instead of lying prone on a grassy field calmly shooting at a bull’s-eye target, for example, the modern soldier spends many hours standing in a foxhole, with full combat equipment draped about his body. At periodic intervals one or two man-shaped targets will pop up in front of him, and the soldier must shoot the target.

In addition to traditional marksmanship, soldiers are learning to shoot reflexively and instantly, while mimicking the act of killing. In behavioral terms, the man shape popping up in the soldier’s field of fire is the “conditioned stimu-lus.” On special occasions, even more realistic and complex targets are used, many of them filled with red paint or catsup, which provide instant and positive reinforcement when the target is hit. In this and other training exercises, every aspect of killing on the battlefield is rehearsed, visualized, and conditioned.

By the time a soldier does kill in combat, he has rehearsed the process so many times that he is able to, at one level, deny to himself that he is actually killing another human being. One British veteran of the Falklands, trained in the modern method, told Holmes that he “thought of the enemy as nothing more or less than Figure II [man-shaped] targets.”

There is “a natural disinclination to pull the trigger… when your weapon is pointed at a human,” says Bill Jordan, a career U.S. Border Patrol officer and veteran of many gunfights. “To aid in overcoming this resistance it is helpful if you can will yourself to think of your opponent as a mere target and not as a human being. In this connection you should go further and pick a spot on your target. This will allow better concentra-tion and further remove the human element from your thinking.”

Jordan calls this process “manufactured contempt.”

the hidden cost of killingThe success of this conditioning and desensitization is obvious and undeniable. In many circumstances highly trained modern soldiers have fought poorly trained guerilla forces, and the tendency of poorly prepared forces to instinctively engage in posturing mechanisms (such as firing high) has given significant advantage to the more highly trained force. We can see the discrepancy in dozens of modern conflicts, including in Somalia, where

if society prepares a soldier to overcome his resistance to killing and places him in an environment in which he will kill, then that society has an obligation to deal with the psychological repercussions.

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18 trapped U.S. troops killed an estimated 364 Somali fighters, and in Iraq, where small numbers of U.S. troops have inflicted terrible losses on insurgents. Though we might be quick to credit technology for American deadliness, keep in mind that the lopsided casualty rates apply even in situations of close, small arms combat, where the technological gap between opposing forces is not a decisive factor.

The ability to increase the firing rate, though, comes with a hidden cost. Severe psychological trauma becomes a distinct possibility when military training overrides safeguards against killing: In a war when 95 percent of soldiers fired their weapons at the enemy, it should come as no surprise that between 18 and 54 percent of the 2.8 million military personnel who served in Vietnam suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder—far higher than in previous wars.

It’s important to note that, contrary to stereo-type, numerous studies have demonstrated that there is not any distinguishable threat of violence to society from returning veterans. Statistically there is no greater a population of violent crimi-nals among veterans than there is among non-veterans. What the epidemic of PTSD among Vietnam vets has caused is a significant increase in suicides, drug use, alcoholism, and divorce.

In 1988, a major study by Jeanne and Steven Stellman at Columbia University examined the relationship between PTSD manifestations and a soldier’s involvement in the killing process. This study of 6,810 randomly selected veterans is the first in which combat levels were quantified. Stellman and Stellman found that the victims of PTSD are almost solely veterans who participated in high-intensity combat situations. These veter-ans suffer far higher incidence of divorce, marital problems, tranquilizer use, alcoholism, jobless-ness, heart disease, and ulcers. As far as PTSD symptoms are concerned, soldiers who were in noncombat situations in Vietnam were found to be statistically indistinguishable from those who spent their entire enlistment in the U.S.

During the Vietnam era millions of American adolescents were conditioned to engage in an act against which they had a powerful resistance. This conditioning is a necessary part of allowing a soldier to succeed and survive in the environment where society has placed him. If we accept that we need an army, then we must accept that it has to be as capable of surviving as we can make it.

But if society prepares a soldier to overcome his resistance to killing and places him in an environment in which he will kill, then that society has an obligation to deal forthrightly, intelligently, and morally with the psychological repercussions upon the soldier and the society. Largely through an ignorance of the processes and implications involved, this did not happen for Vietnam veterans—a mistake we risk making

again as the war in Iraq becomes increasingly deadly and unpopular.

the resensitization of americaToday I am on the road, almost 300 days a year, speaking to numerous military organizations going in and out of the combat zone. I explain to them the two dangers that they must guard against. One danger is the “Macho Man” mental-ity that can cause a soldier to refuse to accept vital mental health services. But the other danger is what I call the “Pity Party.” There is a powerful tendency for human beings to respond to stress in the way that they think they should. If soldiers and their spouses, parents and others, are all convinced that the returning veteran will have PTSD, then it can create a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy.

Thus there is a careful balancing act, in which our society is morally obligated to provide state-of-the-art mental health services to returning vet-erans, and for the returning soldier to partake of such care if needed. But we also must remember (and even create an expectation) that most com-bat veterans will be okay. For those who do have a problem, we must make it clear to them that PTSD is treatable and can be curable, and when finished with it they can potentially be stronger individuals for the experience.

Most importantly, if we do want to build a world in which killing is increasingly rare, more scientists, soldiers, and others must speak up and challenge the popular myth that human beings are “natural born killers.” Popular culture has done much to perpetuate the myth of easy killing. Indeed, today many video games are actually replicating military training and conditioning kids to kill—but without “stimulus discrimina-tors” to ensure that they only fire under authority. Even at elite intellectual levels, the natural born killer myth is too often embraced uncritically and promoted aggressively, sometimes at the service of an ideological agenda.

We may never understand the nature of the force in humankind that causes us to strongly resist killing fellow human beings, but we can be thankful for it. And although military leaders responsible for winning a war may be distressed by this force, as a species we can view it with pride. It is there, it is strong, and it gives us cause to believe that there may just be hope for human-kind after all.

A former Army Ranger and paratrooper, lt. col. dave grossman, m.ed., taught psychology at West Point and is formerly a professor and chair of the department of military science at Arkansas State University. He is the author of On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.

When faced with living, breathing opponents, a significant majority of soldiers intentionally fire over the enemy’s heads.

students at toluca lake elementary school in los angeles participate in a class on mindfulness, led by the organization innerKids.


at toluca lake elementary school in Los Angeles, a cyclone fence encloses the asphalt blacktop, which is teeming with kids. It’s recess time and the kids, who are mostly Latino, are playing tag, yelling, throwing balls, and jumping rope. When the bell rings, they reluctantly stop and head back to their classrooms—except for Daniel Murphy’s second grade class.

Murphy’s students file into the school audi- torium, each carrying a round blue pillow deco-rated with white stars. They enter giggling and chatting, but soon they are seated in a circle on their cushions, eyes closed, quiet and concentrating. Two teachers give the children instructions on how to pay attention to their breathing, telling them to notice the rise and fall of their bellies and chests, the passage of air in and out of their noses. Though the room is

chilly—the heating system broke down earlier that day—the children appear comfortable, many with Mona Lisa smiles on their faces.

“What did you notice about your breath this morning?” one teacher asks.

“Mine was like a dragon,” says Michael, a child to the teacher’s right. Albert, another child, adds, “Yeah, I could see mine. It was like smoke.”

The teachers lead the children through 45 minutes of exercises focused on breathing, listening, movement, and reflection. At different points, the kids are asked to gauge their feelings—calm, neutral, or restless. There are no right or wrong answers, just observation. The session ends with the children lying quietly on their backs, stuffed animals rising and falling on their stomachs, as they contemplate peace within themselves and in their community.

With eyes closed and deep breaths, students are learning a new method to reduce anxiety, conflict, and attention disorders. but don’t call it meditation.

mindful KidsPeaceful schools

By Jill SuttieAll photos by Timothy Wheeler


Later, seven-year-old Emily sums up her experience. “I like the class because it makes me calm and soft inside. It makes me feel good.”

Toluca Lake is one of a growing number of schools that are using “mindfulness trainings” in an effort to combat increasing levels of anxiety, social conflict, and attention disorder among children. Once a week for 10 to 12 weeks, the students at Toluca take time out from their normal curriculum to learn techniques that draw on the Buddhist meditative practice of mindfulness, which is meant to promote greater awareness of one’s self and one’s environment. According to mindfulness educator Susan Kaiser, bringing this practice into schools is “really about teaching kids how to be in a state of attention, where they can perceive thoughts, physical sensations, and emotions without judgment and with curiosity and an open state of mind.”

That such an unconventional practice—with its roots in a religious tradition, no less—has made its way into public schools may come as a surprise to many people. But schools have been turning to mind-fulness for very practical reasons that don’t concern religion, and their efforts have been supported by a recent wave of scientific results.

Steve Reidman first introduced mindfulness prac-tices to Toluca Lake about six years ago. Reidman, a fourth grade teacher at the school, had been expe-riencing problems with classroom management—a first for him, after many years of teaching. Conflicts on the playground were escalating and affecting his students’ ability to settle down and concentrate in class. When he confided his problems to Kaiser, a personal friend, she offered to come to his class to teach mindfulness, a technique she’d taught to kids as a volunteer at a local boys and girls club.

“I noticed a difference right away,” says Reidman. “There was less conflict on the playground, less test anxiety—just the way the kids walked into the classroom was different. Our state test scores also went up that year, which I’d like to attribute to my teaching but I think had more to do with the breath-ing they did right before they took the test.”

News of Reidman’s positive experience spread to other classes at the school and helped launch Kaiser’s career as the founder and director of a new nonprofit organization: InnerKids. Funded through private grants, its mission is to teach mindful awareness practices to students in public and private schools for little or no cost. In the last five years, the organization has served hundreds of schools across the country and has grown to the point where there’s more demand for the program than Kaiser can handle alone. Recently, she retired from her successful law practice to devote herself fully to InnerKids. She’s now busy training new teachers. “Requests come from all over—New York, California, the Midwest,” says Kaiser. “It’s really amazing how this has caught on.”

A 2004 survey of mindfulness programs by the Garrison Institute in New York—an organization that studies and promotes mindfulness and medita-tion in education—showed that many schools are

adopting mindfulness trainings because the tech-niques are easy to learn and can help children become “more responsive and less reactive, more focused and less distracted, [and] more calm and less stressed.” While mindfulness can produce internal benefits to kids, the Garrison report also found that it can create a more positive learning environment, where kids are primed to pay attention.

InnerKids is one of several mindfulness education programs that have sprouted up around the country; others include the Impact Foundation in Colorado and the Lineage Project in New York City, which teaches mindfulness to at-risk and incarcerated teen-agers. Like these programs, Kaiser’s curriculum was inspired by the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Stress Reduction Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was among the first scientists to recognize that mindful-ness meditation might have healing benefits for adult patients suffering from chronic pain. He developed a secular version of the Buddhist practice, which he called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and ran studies demonstrating its effectiveness. Now, with over a thousand studies published in peer review journals about it, Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR program has been found to reduce not only chronic pain but also high blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Evidence also suggests MBSR can help improve one’s ability to handle stress and alleviate depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and eating disorders.

Despite the success of MBSR with adults, there has been little corresponding research on children, though that’s starting to change. At the University of British Columbia in Canada, psychologist Kimberly

schools have been turning to mindfulness for very practical reasons, and their efforts have been supported by a wave of scientific results.


Schonert-Reichl and a graduate student, Molly Stewart Lawlor, recently finished a pilot project on mindfulness in schools, with funding and teacher training provided by the Bright Lights Foundation (now called the Goldie Hawn Institute), an organization founded by actress and children’s advocate Goldie Hawn. Fourth through seventh graders in six Vancouver public schools were instructed in mindful awareness techniques and positive thinking skills, then tested for changes in their behavior, social and emotional competence, moral development, and mood.

The positive response to the program was almost immediate. “In one classroom, the children went from having the most behavioral problems in the school—as measured by num-ber of visits to the principal’s office—to having zero behavioral problems, after only two to three weeks of instruction,” says Schonert-Reichl. Her results also showed that these children were less aggressive, less oppositional toward teachers, and more attentive in class. Those who received the mindfulness training also reported feeling more positive emotion and optimism, and seemed more introspective than children who were on a waitlist for the training. “It’s important to do research like this because kids need something to cope with all the pres-sures at school,” says Schonert-Reichl. “If we don’t find something to help them, there are going to be tremendous health costs for these kids down the road.”

Similar research is getting underway in the United States. Susan Smalley, a geneticist and the director of the new Mindful Awareness Research Center at the University of California,

Los Angeles, has found that a modified version of MBSR can help teenagers with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) by reducing their anxiety and increasing their ability to focus. She is continuing to work with ADHD teens, but her encouraging results have prompted her to wonder if MBSR might help other groups of children—particularly preschoolers, who must learn to regulate their emotions and behaviors to be successful throughout school. She contacted Kaiser and together they launched a program with children attending a preschool run by UCLA. They adapted a version of Kaiser’s curriculum to see if it could be taught to such young kids; their results so far indicate that it can. Now they’re embarking on a series of studies over the next year that will compare a control group to the UCLA preschoolers, as well as to second and fourth graders at Toluca Lake.

“We want to find out if mindfulness can help children over their entire lifespan, and if it might help inoculate them against psychologi-cal problems later in life,” says Smalley.

Patricia Jennings, a researcher at the Garrison Institute, finds much of this research encouraging but says more work is necessary to prove the effectiveness of mindfulness programs. In particular, she hopes studies will focus on specific components of these programs and control for other factors that might be operating on the kids. This will give researchers and practitioners a better sense of which aspects of the programs have the most positive effects on children. “If we found something, like breath awareness, that is effective at reducing stress and requires very little in terms of teacher training or cost, we would have a lot easier time getting it into school curricula,” she says.

Despite these concerns, teachers have encountered little resistance to introducing mindfulness to their students, and they report generally positive results. Though some expressed initial concern about how parents might react to the programs—which, after all, grew out of spiritual traditions—practitioners and researchers say they have successfully removed mindfulness from any religious context. “I don’t even like to use the word ‘meditation’ when I talk about mindfulness, since it has religious connotations for some,” says Smalley. “The programs we are studying are about stress reduction and increasing awareness and are totally secular.”

Still, there’s likely to be controversy around these programs as they expand, says Goldie Hawn. “There will always be people who see this as scary, or as some kind of Eastern philoso-phy that they don’t want for their kids,” she says.

But, she adds, most people find research results convincing, and she believes research

“the programs we are studying are about stress reduction and increasing awareness and are totally secular.”


will eventually show that mindfulness helps kids in much the same way it’s already been shown to help adults. “Mindfulness gives kids a tool for understanding how their brain works, for having more self-control,” says Hawn. “If we know it also has the potential to decrease stress, decrease depression, and increase health and happiness—like the research on adults shows—wouldn’t it be selfish to withhold it from children?”

At Toluca Lake Elementary School, the stu-dents make their own arguments in favor of mind-fulness. “Last week, I made a picture of a heart to give to a special friend of mine, but my little brother ripped it up. I was really mad at him,” says Emily, of Daniel Murphy’s second grade class. She pauses a moment before adding, “Breathing helped me to calm my anger. I realized, ‘Hey, I can just do it over again.’ I never would have thought like that if I hadn’t taken the class.”

Jill Suttie, Psy.d., is Greater Good’s book review editor and a freelance writer. Her article on compassion in the workplace appeared in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue.

“mindfulness gives kids a tool for understanding how their brain works, for having more self-control,” says Goldie hawn.

Contribute to the Greater Good! Greater Good magazine is published by the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC), a non-profit organization based at the University of California, Berkeley. The GGSC promotes the study and development of human happiness, compassion, and altruism. No other center in the country has the same commitment to both sponsoring cutting edge research and helping people apply it to their lives.

The GGSC is funded exclu-sively by private donations, not the university. Subscriptions cover only a small portion of our costs. To sustain the work of our center and magazine, we need your support!

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Change Your Mind and Your Brain Will FollowBy mirKA KNASter

neuroscience and Buddhism, followed by lively debates. The session devoted to emo-tions is perhaps the most intriguing part of the meeting, since Western psychological and Buddhist philosophical traditions differ significantly in their understanding of how we experience emotion.

“There is no term in the traditional Buddhist vocabulary that resembles our [Western] notion of emotion,” says Georges Dreyfus, professor of religion at Williams College and the first Westerner to obtain the title of Geshe Lharampa, the highest degree conferred within the traditional Tibetan monastic system. In his presenta-tion, he points out that there are numerous mental states in the Buddhist typology that are identifiable as emotions, including “anger, pride, jealousy, loving-kindness, and compassion.” However, all mental states, whether they’re emotions or not, are grouped together and considered on ethical grounds: Are they afflictive, leading to suffering—or are they wholesome/virtuous, leading to enduring peace and happiness?

“[E]thics have to be tied to the basic fact of our experience of pain and happiness,” says the Dalai Lama. “We don’t desire suffering, and we always aspire to be free of suffering. Restraint from the conditions that lead to suffering is ethics.” Indeed, this perspective helps to explain why many types of meditation are intended to relieve practitioners of afflictive states.

This ethical dimension is absent from the perspective of Western biobehavioral science. Rather, as Richard Davidson,

the dalai lama at mitedited by aNNe harriNGtoN aNd arthur Za JoNCHarvard University Press, 2006, 304 pages

train your mind, Change your brain: how a New science reveals our extraordinary Potential to transform ourselvesby sharoN beGley Ballantine Books, 2007, 304 pages

h i s t or ic a l ly, t h e r e l at ion s h i p between science and religion has resembled a divorce made in hell rather than a match made in heaven. But the two camps have recently found some common ground, thanks to an unusual series of dialogues between Western scientists and the Dalai Lama, recipient of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. Organized since 1987 by the Mind & Life Institute, a nonprofit that fosters collaboration between eminent researchers and leading figures in Buddhism, these dialogues point to the possibility of a new kind of relationship, one in which both partners contribute vital answers to one of life’s big questions: How can we overcome negative emotions and cultivate positive ones?

Two new books suggest provocative answers to this question. They both document recent dialogues in the Mind & Life series. The first, The Dalai Lama at MIT, is a “broadcast” of an historic 2003 meeting between the Dalai Lama and 22 world-renowned scientists at the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology. Edited by Anne Harrington, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, and Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst College, The Dalai Lama at MIT does an excellent job of introducing readers to Buddhist and scientific approaches to understanding human consciousness.

The MIT conference incorporated presentations on three topics—attention, mental imagery, and emotions—from the perspectives of both Western cognitive

the dalai lama talks with neuroscientist helen Neville at his residence in dharamsala, india, as part of the 12th mind & life conference.

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director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wiscon-sin, Madison, describes in his presentation, emotion is considered a mental state with three aspects: a valenced quality (it may be positive or negative), a bodily reaction, and outward expressive signs. According to a theory first advanced by the early Ameri-can psychologist and philosopher William James, the body plays a central role in our understanding of emotion: Emotion results from the brain’s interpretation of bodily signals from our organs and muscles.

The MIT exchange reveals an important distinction between Buddhism and West-ern science. The Buddhist point of view doesn’t reduce human psychology to neu-rons, neurotransmitters, and protein recep-tors; instead, it sees our emotional states as the products of ethical choices we make. Thus it suggests we are not slavishly depen-dent on genetics for our joy and serenity but, rather, are capable of controlling our thoughts and emotions.

This view lies at the heart of Sharon Begley’s Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, the second recent chronicle of a Mind & Life conference. A year after the MIT encounter, Mind & Life XII convened in Dharamsala, India, the residence of the Dalai Lama, to focus on a revolutionary science called “neuroplasticity,” which studies the brain’s ability to modify its shape. Begley, the former science columnist for the Wall Street Journal and former science writer at Newsweek, attended that meeting, reports on it in her book, and, in the process, provides a strong introduction to the science of neuroplasticity.

Begley describes how neuroplasticity began with early brain mapping in the second half of the 19th century. In 1890, William James introduced the word “plasticity” with respect to nervous tissue. But in 1913, Spanish neuroanatomist and Nobel Prize recipient Santiago Ramón y Cajal declared that “the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, and immutable.” This remained conventional wisdom about the adult mammalian brain for many decades to come: “No new neurons are born in it, and the functions of the structures that make it up are immutable,” writes Begley, “so that if genes and development dictate that this cluster of neurons will process signals from the eye, and this cluster will move the fingers of the right hand, then by God they’ll do that and nothing else come hell or high water.”

During the course of the 20th century, research (first with animals, then with

human adults and children), incrementally poked holes in such dogma. But neurosci-entists couldn’t overturn a longstanding belief in neurogenetic determinism until the advent of lab equipment that could measure even the subtlest events in the brain. Pioneering experiments have demonstrated that certain kinds of experi-ence can modify the brain’s structure and generate neurons—and, in turn, revamp the way our minds and bodies function. As Begley notes, these discoveries have led to successful, non-pharmaceutical treatments for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and even strokes.

For example, research conducted by neuropsychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which is derived from the Bud-dhist practice of mindfulness, could benefit people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). PET scans after treatment demonstrated a dramatic drop in activity in their orbital frontal cortex, the part of the brain strongly associated with OCD. As Schwartz explains in Begley’s book, “The ensuing brain changes offered strong evi-dence that willful, mindful effort can alter brain function, and that such self-directed brain changes—neuroplasticity—are a genuine reality.”

Plasticity involves a two-way causality between mind and body: The physical affects the mental and the mental affects the physical. The upshot is that we can no longer fall back on an old excuse—“It’s all my mother’s fault!”—as our genes don’t necessarily have to limit our capacity for happiness. Here we see how the interaction between scientists and Buddhists at the Mind & Life meetings might point to ways to increase well-being—and how insights from each group can serve the other.

“Science stands to gain by being pushed to consider mind or consciousness non-mechanistically, or by having to confront extraordinary inner mental states that are not normally within the purview of its investigations,” José Ignacio Cabezón, a for-mer Buddhist monk who’s now a scholar of religion and science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, tells Begley. “Buddhists stand to profit by gaining access to new facts concerning the material world (body and cosmos)—facts that have lain outside of traditional Buddhist speculation due to technological limitations.”

Begley sees the “discovery that mere thought can alter the very stuff of the

brain [as a] natural point of connection between the science of neuroplasticity and Buddhism. Buddhism has taught for 2,500 years that the mind is an independent force that can be harnessed by will and attention to bring about physical change.” In addition, it teaches that “by observing our thinking dispassionately and with clarity, we have the ability to think thoughts that allow us to overcome afflictions such as being chronically angry.” Scientific research is now backing up these beliefs, along with the idea that mental training, which is inte- gral to Buddhist practice, can enable us to identify and take control over our emotions and mental states.

Though presenters chronicled in both books seek harmony between science and Buddhism, being Buddhist is not necessary to transform our emotions or boost our levels of happiness. When Jon Kabat-Zinn began teaching mindfulness meditation at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center’s Stress Reduction Clinic in 1979, he severed its ties to religion and still proved its effectiveness in reducing stress and improving patients’ health. At hundreds of clinics around the world, even short-term practice of meditation has been found to offer mental and physical health benefits. Other spiritual traditions may have their own empirical methods to add to this enterprise.

Indeed, at the end of Mind & Life XI, the Dalai Lama himself insists that this is not a religious matter; he prefers to call it “secular ethics.” His greatest wish is not for everyone to take up Buddhism but “simply to try to be a better human being.” The Dalai Lama at MIT and Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain give readers easy access to understanding how this is possible, even if they don’t have a background in science or Buddhism. In particular, Begley’s use of popular metaphors and simple images helps clarify otherwise abstruse technical details. And the upbeat nature of both books encourages hope that we can make positive life changes with the right tools and the right effort.

mirka Knaster, Ph.d., is an independent scholar, freelance writer, and editor, and is the author of Discovering the Body’s Wisdom (Bantam). She is currently working on Living the Life Fully, a book about meditation teacher Anagarika Munindra, who embodied the potential for positive transformation dis-cussed in the books in this review.


the Power of Play by david elKiNdDa Capo Lifelong Books, 2007, 240 pages

thirty years ago, the prominent child psychologist David Elkind published The Hurried Child, which argues that modern parents are prone to pushing their children—emotion-ally and intellectu-ally—too far and too

fast. In his new book, The Power of Play, Elkind argues that our fast-paced, screen-laden, and safety-obsessed way of life is destroying spontaneous, creative, child-led play, with unhappy consequences. The absence of play, argues Elkind, contributes to the epidemic of childhood obesity and emotional stress—and can actually hurt children’s chances of academic success.

Elkind uses child development research to explain the ways that time-honored children’s games like peek-a-boo and old-fashioned toys like wooden blocks encour-age early learning far more effectively than educational DVDs and computer games. He uses real-world anecdotes to illustrate complex theories and give readers a better understanding of the way even the simplest games build brainpower.

While at times Elkind veers into wistful nostalgia, especially when comparing his adult children’s parenting style to his own, he argues persuasively that parents must try to give their children more time for play. His most compelling argument comes in the epilogue, when Elkind simply says that play provides a refuge for children—both in the present and in their future as adults, when they’ll be able to enjoy memories from a happy childhood. —dawn Friedman

Why Good things happen to Good People by stePheN Post aNd Jill NeimarKBroadway Books, 2007, 320 pages

i n t h i s v e r y r e a d a b l e b o o k , Stephen Post and Jill Neimark make the case that giving to others—in small doses and from a young age—will help you “be happier… healthier… and even live longer.” Post, a bioethicist and the president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, is

a leading figure in the study of compassion and altruism; together with journalist Neimark, he has produced a lively and inspiring overview of this research. But Why Good Things Happen to Good People also has some serious weaknesses.

For example, at the end of each chapter, the authors offer self-assessment question-naires and suggest ways to give, but this material feels tedious and unnecessary. And to the book’s detriment, Post and Neimark widen the definition of giving to include everything from compassionate acts to confronting wrongs to being creative. This dilutes the concept of giving and weakens the book’s main argument.

The authors succeed when they tighten their focus and avoid a self-help approach. The heartwarming stories of others who gave selflessly—which the book, thankfully, includes in abundance—and the research on generosity’s positive benefits are the most convincing aspects of the book. Despite the gimmicky title—which seems too good to be true—this book might inspire even the worst cynics to reconsider their giving behavior. —Jill Suttie

the mark of shame: stigma of mental illness and an agenda for Changeby stePheN P. hiNshaWOxford University Press, 2007, 352 pages

in ninth century B.C. Greece, conven-tional wisdom held that the gods caused mental illnesses by stealing people’s minds. Large num-bers of the mentally ill were stoned or murdered, and

countless others hid at home rather than face such severe threats and social stigma.

To be sure, a lot has changed since then—after all, mental illness is now a subject of wide scientific concern and public discourse. Yet in The Mark of Shame, University of California, Berkeley, psychologist Stephen Hinshaw argues

persuasively that the mentally ill still suffer from intense shame and discrimination, often with debilitating results. In many cases, forms of discrimination have become so common and institutionalized that we don’t even recognize them—for instance, in insults such as “You’re crazy!” or “He’s a psycho!” and in the antipathy we show toward the homeless, at least a third of whom suffer from severe mental disorders.

Hinshaw’s previous book, The Years of Silence are Past, chronicled his own father’s struggle with bipolar disorder, and The Mark of Shame serves as a valuable succes-sor and companion volume to that work. (Full disclosure: Hinshaw is a founder of the Greater Good Science Center, which publishes Greater Good.) Building on his own personal experiences, Hinshaw draws from psychology, sociology, and history to provide a rigorous analysis of the challenges the mentally ill face today. And despite the heavy subject manner, he manages to offer grounds for hope: The last third of the book truly does offer the “agenda for change” promised by its title, outlining steps that the media, policy makers, and family members can take to reduce the stigmatization of the mentally ill. —Jason marsh

alone together: how marriage in america is Changingby Paul r. amato, alaN booth, david r. JohNsoN, aNd staCy J. roGers Harvard University Press, 2007, 336 pages

i n a l o n e t o g e t h e r , f o u r Pennsylvania State University researchers use two identical national surveys, one conducted in 1980 and the other in 2000, to quantitatively track how the experience of marriage has changed over a 20-year period. The bad news is that husbands and wives today are spending less time with each other and participate in fewer community activities. But the good news is that they are far more equal than they were in the past, which has led to rising family incomes, less violence, and more empathy and cooperation between spouses. The book provides welcome relief from political rhetoric and refutes extreme views of the family, instead painting a complex picture of marriage in transition. —Jeremy Adam Smith

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in the 1970s, anthropologist robert Trivers proposed the theory of reciprocal altruism, which argues that organisms provide a benefit to others only in expecta-tion of future reward.

But Trivers’ influential theory has some holes. It doesn’t necessarily explain why someone would sacrifice her life for another, nor does it cover anonymous acts of char-ity. These behaviors offer a more benevo-lent picture of human nature, challenging the inherent selfishness presumed by Triv-ers’ tit-for-tat theory of altruism. So which is the more accurate depiction of altruism—and, by extension, of human nature?

It’s a thorny, inconclusive question that has been explored in science, religion, art, and some unlikely corners of popular culture. Even dark, violent, and special-effects-laden television series can show what is best in humanity—and in the process, illustrate the moral complexities of behaviors like altruism. The Sci Fi channel’s Battlestar Galactica might be the best and most perceptive of the lot.

In Battlestar Galactica, 12 space-faring colonies of human beings—far from Earth and unknown to us, but sharing a common biological ancestry—are destroyed by a species of intelligent, emotive machines called the Cylon. Billions are killed, but 50,000 humans escape in a small fleet of space ships pursued by the Cylon.

Some readers might recall the original Battlestar Galactica as a cheeseball 1970s space opera, but the new series is as mor-ally complicated and emotionally fraught as the old one was frivolous and dumb. Like all decent science fiction, the new Battlestar Galactica serves as a philosophi-cal thought experiment and considers the profound implications of a speculative premise: How would people really respond if humanity were pushed to the very edge of extinction?

Part of the answer is that individual people would be driven to extremes of altruistic self-sacrifice—which inflicts a ter-rible psychological cost on the characters in Battlestar Galactica—and that individuals who refuse to behave altruistically would be branded moral outlaws. As they sacrifice more and more for the sake of their species, the social bonds of the Colonists—as the humans are called—tighten and reinforce altruistic behavior.

Scientists have come up with a name for this kind of behavior: “selective investment theory,” first proposed by psychologists Stephanie and Michael Brown last year in the journal Psychological Inquiry. Whereas reciprocal altruism emphasizes what indi-viduals ultimately get from others, selective investment theory argues that social bonds evolved to override self-interest and moti-vate high-cost altruism among individuals

who depend on one another for the surviv-al and reproduction of their species.

While the Colonists sometimes illustrate the Browns’ theory, the Cylon personify it completely. The Cylon were created by the Colonists to be perfect altruists, always putting the welfare of others ahead of their own. Because they do not love each other or themselves as individuals, they conceive of their conflict with humanity as total and collective. Any number of deaths—Cylon or other—are acceptable if it serves the purpose of Cylon survival.

But when individual members of the fanatically religious, monotheistic Cylon develop deep attachments to individual Col-onists, it undermines their sense of group purpose and solidarity. “Genocide was a sin in the eyes of God!” proclaims one Cylon after she falls in love with a human being—which gets her branded a heretic.

Selfishness remains foreign to the Cylon, but not to the Colonists. When the charac-ter Gaius Baltar strikes up an alliance with the hated Cylon, he is motivated primarily by his own private needs and desires. “The trick to being human,” he tells a Cylon, “is to always think about yourself first”—a seductively cynical definition of humanity that the series explicitly rejected at the close of its third and most recent season this past March, when Baltar was put on trial for his life. At issue: When Baltar joined forces with the Cylon, was he acting selfishly or for the greater good of humanity?

In the end, the judges decide that his selfishly motivated actions helped human-ity to survive, though Baltar remains a moral and social outsider. Meanwhile, the Colonists and the Cylon inch toward a syn-thesis, with one side taking on the charac-teristics of the other—to the point human and Cylon defectors marry and give birth to human-machine hybrids.

Over time, then, the lines begin to blur between the selfish and the altruistic char-acters, as we learn that selfish motives can still serve collective goals, and complete selflessness can cause horrific acts of geno-cide. This might make the series sound relentlessly grim, and it is. Though it embraces a view of humanity as fundamen-tally altruistic, Battlestar Galactica depicts altruism as a complex, double-edged fact of life, neither good nor bad, but essential to survival. It is also a quality that ties ene-mies together, and opens the possibility, however remote, for reconciliation.

Jeremy Adam Smith is the managing editor of Greater Good.

altruism in spaceWhat does the science-fiction series Battlestar Galactica teach us about human nature?By Jeremy AdAm Smith

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a makeshift memorial on board the battlestar Galactica reminds the crew of their sacrifices.


Invitation to the danceBy BArBArA ehreNreich

imagine an 18th-century indigenous Australian, Plains Indian, or resident of New Guinea dropped into, say, modern midtown Manhattan, just as the lunch-hour crowds are hitting the street.

Leaving aside the technological future-shock, with all its comic possibilities, what will amaze him most is the size of the crowd he finds himself in: as many people, within a block or so, as he has ever seen together in his life, and then only at the annual gatherings of his tribe, where several hundred people might come together at a time, for days of dancing, feasting, and other carnival-like activities.

For a moment, the prevalence of face paint on the New Yorkers and—from our visitor’s point of view—their universal “cos-tuming” may fool him into thinking he has emerged into a similar kind of festivity, but the facial expressions of the people around him will immediately belie this supposition. The faces are closed, unsmiling, intent on unknown missions, wary of eye contact. Whatever these people are doing, they are not celebrating. And this will be the biggest shock to him: their refusal, or inability, to put this abundant convergence of humanity to use for the kind of collective, festive celebration that gave joy and meaning to our visitor’s life.

Our civilization has its compensatory pleasures, of course. Most often cited is the consumer culture, which encourages us to deflect our desires into the acquisition and display of things: the new car, or shoes, or face-lift. We have “entertainment,” too, including movies, computer games, and iPod-delivered music for solitary enjoyment. It is a measure of our general deprivation that the most common referent for “ecstasy” in usage today is not an experience but a drug, MDMA, which offers fleeting feelings of euphoria and connectedness.

How can civilization be regarded as a form of progress if it precludes something as distinctively human, and deeply satisfying, as the collective joy of festivities and ecstatic rituals? In a remarkable essay entitled “The Decline of the Choral Dance,” Paul Halmos wrote in 1952 that the ancient and universal tradition of

the choral dance—meaning the group dance, as opposed to the relatively recent, European-derived practice of dancing in couples—was an expression of our “group-ward drives” and “biological sociability.” Hence its disappearance within complex societies, and especially within industrial civilization, can only represent a “decline of our biosocial life”—a painfully disturbing conclusion.

But there is no obvious reason why fes-tivities and ecstatic rituals cannot survive within large-scale societies. Whole cities were swept up in the French Revolution’s Festival of Federation in 1790, with lines

of dancers extending from the streets and out into the countryside. Rock events like Woodstock have sometimes drawn tens of thousands for days of peaceful dancing and socializing. Modern Brazil still celebrates carnaval. Today’s nonviolent uprisings, like Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, invariably feature rock or rap music, dancing in the streets, and “costuming” in the revolution-appropriate color.

Festivity seems to generate inclusive-ness. The music invites everyone to the dance; shared food briefly undermines the privilege of class. No source of human difference or identity is immune to the carnival challenge: Cross-dressers defy gender just as those who costume as priests or kings mock power and rank. At the height of the festivity, we step out of our assigned roles and statuses—of gender, ethnicity, tribe, and rank—and into a brief utopia defined by egalitarianism,

creativity, and mutual love. This is how danced rituals and festivities served to bind prehistoric human groups, and this is what still beckons us today.

Many millions of people around the world are engaged in movements for eco-nomic justice, peace, equality, and environ-mental reclamation, and these movements are often incubators for the solidarity and celebration so missing in our usual state of passive acquiescence. Of course, no amount of hand-holding or choral dancing will bring world peace or environmental heal-ing. In fact, festivities have served at times to befuddle or becalm their celebrants. European carnival coexisted with tyranny for centuries.

And yet… it does not go away, this ecstatic possibility. Whatever its shortcom-ings as a means to social change, protest movements keep reinventing carnival. Almost every demonstration I have been to over the years has featured some element of the carnivalesque: turtle suits symbolizing environmental concerns, drumming, giant puppets, dancing. The media often deride the carnival spirit of such protests, as it were a self-indulgent distraction from the serious political point. But seasoned organizers know that gratification cannot be deferred until after “the revolution.” People must find, in their movement, the immediate joy of solidarity, if only because, in the face of overwhelming state and corporate power, solidarity is their sole source of strength.

The capacity for collective joy is encod-ed into us almost as deeply as the capacity for erotic love. We can live without it, as most of us do, but only at the risk of suc- cumbing to the solitary nightmare of dep-ression. Why not reclaim our distinctively human heritage as creatures who can generate their own ecstatic pleasures out of music, color, feasting, and dance? We have nothing to lose but our isolation.

Barbara ehrenreich, Ph.d., is the author of 14 books, most recently Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (Metropolitan Books), from which this essay is adapted.

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resourCes for the Greater Good

in this issueAuthentichappiness.org is a web-

site run by Martin Seligman, director of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psy-chology Center and founder of positive psychology. The site contains links to positive psychology research and other organizations associ-ated with positive psychology, as well as questionnaires that measure users’ levels of happiness, life satisfaction, and other attributes. www.authentichappiness.org

the center for mindfulness in medicine, health care, and Society, based at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, runs a wide range of clinical, research, education, and outreach initiatives in the public and private sector. These initiatives include the renowned Stress Reduction Program—the oldest and largest academic medical center-based stress reduction program in the country. www.umassmed.edu/cfm/index.aspx, 508-856-2656

innerKids is a national nonprofit organization that teaches children the skills of mindful-ness in order to increase attentiveness and self-control, and reduce conflict among them. www.innerkids.org, 310-440-4869

the Killology research group, directed by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, examines how healthy people (such as police and members of the military) react to killing another human being, and explores the factors that enable and restrain killing in these situations. It disseminates its work on

the psychological and social impact of killing through books, videos, and public presentations. www.killology.com, 870-931-5172

the mind & life institute sup-ports a working collaboration and research partnership between modern science and Buddhism. Often working in association with the Dalai Lama, it pursues a better understanding of how the mind works in order to allevi-ate suffering. www.mindan-dlife.org, 720-891-4292

the research Project on gratitude and thankfulness, co-directed by Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, is a long-term research project designed to create and disseminate a large body of novel scien-tific data on the nature of gratitude, its causes, and its potential consequences for human health and well-being. It has also tried to identify methods to cultivate gratitude in everyday life. An overview of its major findings to date is at http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons

the robotic life group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab works on developing socially intelli-gent robots that communicate and cooperate with humans, and learn from them as well. Directed by MIT professor Cynthia Breazeal, the group has created the sociable robots Kismet and Leonardo. http://robotic.media.mit.edu, 617-253-5960

research sourcesthe National center for

learning and citizenship is an organization of school district superintendents, service-learning profession-als, and others who support service learning. Members are committed to linking school-based service and service learning to K-12 curriculum, and to organizing schools to maximize community volunteer efforts. www.ecs.org/nclc, 303-299-3600

the National institute of child health and human development’s Study of early child care and youth development is the most comprehensive child care study conducted to date to determine how variations in child care are related to children’s development. Its website provides a summary of the study, along with its data and applications of this data. http://secc.rti.org/home.cfm

the Stanford center on Adolescence aims to promote the character and competence of all young people growing up in today’s world. Its research focuses on the general question of how to prepare young people for active and productive citizenship in a democratic society. The center’s work provides guidance for parenting, for improved educational practice, and for youth development in a wide variety of commu-nity settings. www.stanford.edu/group/adolescent.ctr, 650-725-8205

the World database of happiness tracks scientific research on the subjective enjoyment of life. Based at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, it collects findings from a wide variety of studies on happiness and presents an extensive bibliography of publications on happiness. www.worlddatabaseofhappi-ness.eur.nl

in the fieldthe green World campaign is

“an open source charity”—a global network of individuals who identify sustainable, effective grassroots projects that can help people and the planet, then develop simple, direct ways to contribute to their success. www.greenworldcampaign.org

the incredible years are research-based programs for reducing children’s aggres-sion and behavior problems, and for increasing their social competence at home and at school. www.incredibleyears.com, 888-506-3562

SharpBrains offers science-based cognitive and emotional training products and programs, intended to help people improve their memory and overall “brain fitness.” www.sharpbrains.com, 888-742-7765

the Wellness community is an international nonprofit organization that provides education and resources to people affected by cancer. It aims to help them regain a sense of control over their lives, reduce isolation, and restore hope regardless of the stage of their disease. www.thewellnesscommunity.org, 202-659-9709

Be a part of the Greater Good!Greater Good is published by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, which promotes the study of human happiness, compas-sion, and altruism. Funding for Greater Good comes from the Herb Alpert Foundation and Tom & Ruth Ann Hornaday. If you would like to make a donation, please visit greatergood.berkeley.edu or contact Christine Carter McLaughlin at [email protected].

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Building Gratitude - Greater Good...Frans de Waal, Emory University Greater Good (ISSN 1553-3239)...

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