Gratitude: an Underutilized Tool for Preventing Risky Health Behaviors

What is it about?

Emotional states can shape peoples’ decisions on risky health behaviors, but research has concluded that inducing positive emotional states may have little effect on curbing those behaviors. However, this paper reveals a previously unrecognized role for the positive emotion of gratitude. Through a series of multi-method studies, researchers found consistent evidence that inducing feelings of gratitude was associated with lower rates of smoking behavior. Yet, federally funded anti-smoking public service campaigns have seldom induced gratitude. These findings have the potential to improve public health campaigns and reduce the 480,000 deaths annually in the United States attributed to smoking-related illnesses. The study also suggests broader applications for curbing other harmful health behaviors such as excessive alcohol use and overeating.

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Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

Why is it important?

These findings create opportunities to rethink the design of anti-smoking campaigns. The investigators reviewed the largest federally funded anti-smoking public service campaign, Tips from Former Smokers, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unfortunately, this landmark campaign has seldom induced gratitude. Instead, it has most often induced sympathy, sadness, and compassion – three emotions that may not produce intended effects on smoking cessation behaviors. In the case of sadness, earlier research by the research team found that evoking sadness actually increased the desire to smoke, as well as the intensity with which smokers inhale immediately after the emotion is triggered. Compared to how much money tobacco companies spend on advertising and marketing, public health campaigns are vastly under-resourced; they need to make the most of every dollar. The theoretically-grounded and empirically-tested framework presented here will, hopefully, help public health officials design more impactful public media campaigns across a broad spectrum of appetitive risk behaviors that have underlying emotional components.