Thanking

by Brian on April 3, 2006

I really don’t have anything to add to it, but I wanted to highlight this very nice post on thanking by Roger Shuy over at Language Log.

{ 8 comments }

1

Blar 04.03.06 at 1:06 pm

I have something to add: Shuy’s suggestion (or at least something very much like it) actually works. Thanking does make you feel better, and it has a lasting effect. That’s been found by positive psychology researchers like Marty Seligman:

About 300 people have gone through the gratitude visit. In the gratitude visit — and as you’re viewing this I’d like everyone to do it — you think of someone in your life who made an enormous positive difference, who’s still alive, whom you never properly thanked. You’ve got such a person? It’s important to be able to do that, by the way, since empirically the amount of gratitude is related to baseline levels of happiness. The less gratitude you have in life the more unhappy you are, interestingly.

If you were going to make a gratitude visit, you do the following: First you’d write a 300-word testimonial to that person; concrete, well-written, telling the story of what they did, how it made a difference, and where you are in life now as a result. Then you’d call him up and say, “I want to come visit you.” And he’d ask you why, and you’d say, “I don’t want to tell you. It’s a surprise.” And you’d show up at his door, sit down, and read the testimonial — it turns out everyone weeps when this happens — and then a week later, a month later, three months later, and a year later, we give you the battery of tests, and ask the question relative to placebo controls, “Are you happier? Are you less depressed?” It turns out the gratitude visit is one of the exercises which, to my surprise, makes people lastingly less depressed and happier than the placebo.

2

jayann 04.03.06 at 1:16 pm

What’s the placebo? — I see Seligman won’t say. But I do wonder whether it’s possible to allocate a “placebo intervention” that’s neutral in terms of happiness/less depression.

3

harry b 04.03.06 at 1:42 pm

I wondered if the placebo was doing all that to someone you weren’t genuinely grateful to. Or saying something utterly anodyne to someone you genuinely were grateful to. Unlike Jayann, then, I can’t think of a placebo that doesn’t seem like something out of Monty Python.

4

Blar 04.03.06 at 2:03 pm

I’m not too worried about the unspecified placebo (which remains unspecified because, if Seligman publicized what interventions didn’t work, then researchers couldn’t use them as placebos any more – telling people to do one of those interventions would be like telling them “here, have these sugar pills”).

All you have to do to find a placebo is to come up with something that people could do that doesn’t have a lasting impact on their happiness or depression (that’s most things), but that seems like it could (which makes it a little trickier). Self-help books are full of plausible-sounding suggestions of ways to make yourself happier, and my guess is that most of them don’t actually do anything (at least not anything lasting). So, all you have to do is to run some studies to sort out the successful interventions from the worthless ones, and then call them “placebos” instead of “failed interventions”. Most likely, the placebos have nothing at all to do with gratitude.

5

jayann 04.03.06 at 2:53 pm

Not unlike me at all, harry, except that I’m perhaps more concerned and less giggly than you (or was less giggly till I read your comment!)
Let’s say we both have strong methodological doubts…

6

jayann 04.03.06 at 2:59 pm

All you have to do to find a placebo is to come up with something that people could do that doesn’t have a lasting impact on their happiness or depression (that’s most things), but that seems like it could

my point precisely, blar. As for your

would be like telling them “here, have these sugar pills””

I think you mistake the process: surely patients in a double blind trial do know they may be getting a sugar pill (but may not be). So if the psychological studies are analogous — as you suggest they are — they’d have to know they might be getting an ineffective intervention..

(harry you’re right: it’s Monty Python time)

7

Seth Edenbaum 04.03.06 at 4:08 pm

After all the discussion of prayer now we have thanking.
And I’m not sure if thy prayer study covered praying for oneself (or faith) or only having others pray for you. Knowing that people were praying for me would make me feel ill at ease, I’d worry about disappointing them, and that wouldn’t help much.
Thanking sounds a lot like prayer without the requirement that you submit to someone else’s tiresome request to get well soon.

The post itself struck me as odd. Maybe it’s just the result of compartmentalization in intellectual life, but I wonder how many people in literature or history might write something similar? How many of those who for whom language is a medium rather than an object would have to come a realization about such a simple communicative gesture. To my ears the post sounds as if it might be written by a chemist.

That’s not an insult, just an observation. But since most of my arguments have to do with the scientization of discourse I thought I’d toss it in.

8

harry b 04.03.06 at 7:58 pm

Yes, jayann. the thing is I’m convinced the finding is true. But I’m finding it hard to keep a straight face in thinking about the method (which is not, actually, an expression of scepticism so much as an admission that I’ve reached one of those points at which I can’t think seriously about it).

I really really disagreed with this:

I’m sure they’ll love it but the best part is that doing this will make you feel good too.

Surely not. The best part is that they’ll love it. Period.

Comments on this entry are closed.