Why Gratitude Is Wasted on Thanksgiving

As a psychologist, I’ve spent the past 15 years studying how gratitude shapes people’s lives. Research, including my own, has shown that feeling grateful has positive effects on our behavior — making us more honest, increasing our self-control, enhancing our productivity at work and our relationships at home.

Given that, you might expect me to think that Thanksgiving is one of the most important days of the year. After all, if there’s a day on which the benefits of gratitude are maximized, surely it’s the national holiday set aside for the purpose of expressing that emotion.

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But as we sit around the Thanksgiving table with family and friends, we are not typically looking to seek out other people and form new relationships. On that day, we are already among those we hold dear.

To be clear, I’m not saying that taking time to reflect on and show appreciation for the good in life isn’t worthwhile. It’s surely a noble act. But from a scientific perspective — where emotions exist to nudge our decisions and behaviors toward certain ends — the benefits that gratitude offers tend to be rendered irrelevant on the day it’s most expressed.

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