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ABSTRACT
Literature examining well-being benefits of gratitude experiences is currently thriving in psychological science. However, evidence of the physical health benefits of gratitude remains limited. Research and theory in affective science suggests an indirect relationship between gratitude and physical health. This study examines how receiving expressions of gratitude predicts physical health outcomes in a sample of acute care nurses over time. Registered nurses (N = 146) practicing in Oregon completed weekly surveys over 12 consecutive weeks describing their positive and negative events, health, and work-related experiences. Multilevel mediation models revealed that being thanked more often at work was positively related to a nurse’s satisfaction with the care they provided within that week, which subsequently predicted sleep quality, sleep adequacy, headaches, and attempts to eat healthy. These findings contribute to literature demonstrating the health benefits of gratitude by indicating that benefactors may experience improvements in subjective physical health through positive domain-relative satisfaction.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge with gratitude Sheila Umemoto for her thoughtful support.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Age, gender, occupational tenure, self-efficacy, and neuroticism were also tested as covariates. However, these variables did not emerge as significant predictors of physical health outcomes or satisfaction with care, and thus, were removed from the final analyses.
2. The ‘.00’ value within the 95% confidence interval is due to decimal point rounding within the Mplus software; outputs report the indirect effect as p-value < .05.