Gratitude Can Make You More Patient for Future Rewards

The conventional advice for overcoming our tendency to seek immediate gratification and discount future rewards is to increase our patience by suppressing emotions, but one emotion—gratitude—appears to enhance patience, says a team led by David DeSteno of Northeastern University. In an experiment, people who were induced to feel grateful were subsequently better able to resist instant gratification: In order to forgo $85 three months in the future, they required, on average, $63 immediately, whereas those in neutral or generally happy emotional states required just $55. Because gratitude can prompt kindness from others, the patience-enhancing effect of gratitude may have evolved as a way to allow people to wait for those kindly acts, the researchers suggest.