Effects of an app-based brief gratitude practice on positive and negative daily affect during the COVID-19 pandemic

Gratitude practices have been suggested to be helpful in decreasing negative and increasing positive affect. Using large-scale data from a smartphone app (How We Feel) in the United States across three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic before spring 2021 (Wave 1: 61,267 users; 677,246 observations; Wave 2: 16,037 users; 267,938 observations; Wave 3: 9128 users; 265,575 observations), the current study examined associations between a brief gratitude practice and individuals' daily discrete positive and negative affect from Days 1 to 6 after the practice. The results showed that writing down one thing a person feels grateful for was associated with decreased stress, anxiety, tiredness, and loneliness, and most of these effects were sustained one to six days post-practice. However, the brief practice resulted in counterintuitive findings in relation to positive affect; individuals reported feeling less happy, hopeful, and optimistic after writing about what they were grateful for at the beginning of the pandemic. The discussion focuses on the effectiveness of brief, low-cost digital gratitude practices on individuals' affect.