Beyond Thanksgiving: Gratitude Impacts Well-Being Worldwide

Source: Impact Photography

Thanksgiving is around the corner, bringing with it our annual reminder of the importance of practicing gratitude. While “Turkey Day” is celebrated in the United States, many countries around the world have their own holidays commemorating the importance of showing gratitude. Beyond these thankful holidays, gratitude is expressed around the world daily, from daily prayers to sending someone a thank you text.

Many psychological studies have tested the effect of gratitude practices on well-being (Kirca et al., 2023). Common gratitude interventions used in research include creating gratitude lists, writing letters, journaling, or expressing gratitude directly to someone. But do these gratitude interventions work the same across cultures?

Past studies on potential cross-cultural differences in gratitude practices have mainly explored the differences between collectivist and individualist cultures. For example, one study found that people from a collectivist culture (South Korea) benefited less than people from an individualist culture (United States) from practicing gratitude (Layous et al., 2013). Current research on gratitude continues to focus on how gratitude interventions benefit people, and who might benefit from them.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined the effects of gratitude interventions on well-being across cultures to better answer these questions. Choi et al. (2025) conducted a meta-analysis, which included 145 studies and over 24,000 participants from 28 different countries. Their analysis showed that:

• Overall, gratitude practices have a positive effect on well-being, specifically in the increase of positive emotion.
• Gratitude interventions increased well-being in some countries (e.g., United States, China, Germany Canada, Australia), but not in others (France, India, Japan, the Netherlands, United Kingdom).
• The effect on well-being increases when you practice multiple interventions.

The researchers give a few possible explanations for the differences in the effects of gratitude interventions among countries. First, while the researchers tested several cultural factors (such as individualism and religiosity), they found that contrary to previous research, none of these factors significantly explained the differences among countries. They propose this might be because culture is complex and difficult to measure, and there may be other cultural factors that can explain the difference.

Second, they explain that these differences between countries might be because of the way gratitude interventions were tested, and how well-being was measured across studies, rather than reflecting cultural differences in the effects of gratitude. Some studies included in the meta-analysis focused on measuring the decrease of negative emotion, while others focused on measuring the increase of positive emotion. While this difference might seem subtle, the review found that gratitude interventions increased positive emotions more than decreasing negative emotions. This could explain why some countries found that gratitude did not significantly improve well-being.

Lastly, the researchers propose that these differences may be due to the way culture and/or religion respond to different types of gratitude interventions. For example, expressing gratitude to a person versus practicing gratitude meditation are two very different interventions and thus their effects could vary significantly across cultures or even from person to person. There is no “one size fits all” gratitude intervention, and researchers emphasize the need for future studies on “culturally aligned gratitude interventions” (Choi et al., 2025). In the meantime, the researchers recommend incorporating gratitude practices into everyday life, as it is a low-cost and simple way to increase positivity over time.

Overall, there is a lot we still don’t know about how the effects of gratitude may vary across the world. But we do know that gratitude practices do increase positive emotion, and this effect is only strengthened with the incorporation of different practices. So, this holiday season, try incorporating a few different gratitude practices—maybe even ones you haven’t tried before. With regular practice, you may notice benefits and boost happiness all year long.

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Roni Itkin-Ofer, a Clinical Research Assistant in the Cognition and Affect Research and Education (CARE) Lab at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, contributed to this post.