The fast track to a life well lived is feeling grateful

For the Ancient Greeks, virtue wasn’t a goal in and of itself, but rather a route to a life well lived.

By being honest and generous, embodying diligence and fortitude, showing restraint and kindness, a person would flourish – coming to live a life filled with meaning and finding an enduring, as opposed to ephemeral, happiness. Today, that view hasn’t much changed.

…

Consider honesty. Say I ask people to play a game of chance where they could flip a virtual coin to win one of two monetary prizes: a small one or a larger one. Let’s also say the flip occurs in private. All people need do to get their money is hit a computer key to indicate the result: ‘heads’ means the larger reward; ‘tails’ the smaller one. Now, let’s make one final tweak: the coin in question is rigged to come up tails.

If gratitude enhances honesty, the prediction is clear: those feeling grateful at the time of the flip should be more likely than their peers to report that they got tails, thus ensuring they’ll get the smaller reward. As it turns out, when we conducted this experiment, published in Psychological Science this May, that’s exactly what happened. 

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Big Think