Gratitude is reported frequently by many U.S. adults, while research also measures its links with happiness, optimism, coping, and social support. The figures below distinguish survey responses from intervention results and meta-analytic estimates.
Table of contents
- How often Americans report gratitude
- Gratitude across religious groups
- What gratitude research measures
- Gratitude and well-being outcomes
- Gratitude, emotions, and social support
- Evidence from workplace and health studies
How often Americans report gratitude
The Pew Research Center’s 2015 Religious Landscape Study asked U.S. adults how often they feel a strong sense of gratitude or thankfulness. The measurement refers to the 2014 survey, so these are historical survey results rather than a current estimate.
In the 2014 Pew results, 78% of the total sample reported feeling strong gratitude weekly or more often. Another 10% reported feeling it monthly, 6% several times a year, 4% seldom, and 2% never. A further 1% did not know or refused to answer. The same distribution appears in the Pew Research Center 2015 topline.
A separate Pew Research Center spiritual-experiences article published in 2025 summarized the 2014 survey differently: 62% of Americans said they felt strong gratitude weekly or more often, 29% said monthly or yearly, and 8% said seldom or never. Because the supplied figures use different groupings and report different totals for the same 2014 survey, they should not be combined into a single estimate. The detailed frequency breakdown above is labeled as the 2015 Religious Landscape Study and topline.
The detailed distribution still shows a broad pattern: the largest reported frequency category is weekly or more often, while the “never” category is comparatively small at 2%. These percentages describe how respondents answered a survey question; they do not establish why people feel grateful or whether gratitude causes any later outcome.
Gratitude across religious groups
The Pew Research Center’s 2015 Religious Landscape Study also reported the share of adults in selected religious categories who felt gratitude weekly or more often. Christians overall were at 82%, compared with 73% among adherents of non-Christian faiths and 67% among religiously unaffiliated adults.
Religious practice and importance were also associated with reported gratitude in this historical survey. Among people who attended religious services at least weekly, 90% reported weekly-or-more gratitude. Among those who said religion was very important in their lives, the figure was 88%. Regular gratitude was also reported by 67% of people who seldom or never attended services and 62% of those who said religion was not too or not at all important.
The group results varied within Christianity. Weekly-or-more gratitude was reported by 87% of evangelical Protestants, 79% of mainline Protestants, 85% of historically Black Protestants, 76% of Catholics, 89% of Mormons, 78% of Orthodox Christians, 89% of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and 87% of other Christians. These figures are from the Pew Research Center 2015 Religious Landscape Study and are not measurements of all Christians worldwide.
The same Pew source reported weekly-or-more gratitude among 70% of Jewish adults, 77% of Muslim adults, 73% of Buddhist adults, 62% of Hindu adults, 77% of other-faith adults, and 67% of unaffiliated adults. The supplied Pew 2015 topline repeats these group percentages.
The 2025 Pew spiritual-experiences article gives another summary of the 2014 survey. In that report, weekly gratitude ranged from 59% among Orthodox Christians to 78% among evangelical Protestants; Latter-day Saints were also at 78%. Muslim Americans were at 61%, Jewish Americans at 52%, Buddhists at 47%, Hindus at 47%, and religiously unaffiliated adults at 46%. These values use the 2025 article’s reported grouping and should be read separately from the detailed 2015 topline figures.
What gratitude research measures
Gratitude statistics do not all use the same definition. Survey research may ask how often someone feels gratitude or thankfulness. Intervention studies may ask participants to write or think about gratitude and then measure outcomes. Meta-analyses combine effect sizes from multiple studies. As a result, a percentage, a rating, a correlation, and a standardized effect size answer different questions.
One study of people with breast cancer, reported by Sztachanska, Krejtz and Nezlek (2019), compared an intervention group with controls using daily measures. Mean daily cognitive gratitude was 5.02 in the intervention group versus 3.82 in controls. Mean daily affective gratitude was 4.92 versus 4.12. The within-person correlation between cognitive and affective gratitude was 0.65.
The same study reported higher mean daily self-esteem in the intervention group, 5.33 versus 4.71, and higher optimism, 5.68 versus 4.68. Acceptance of illness was 3.96 versus 3.42. Perceived partner support was 4.26 versus 2.38, while perceived support from others was 3.58 versus 2.52.
The study also measured coping. Different-perspective coping was 3.33 in the intervention group versus 2.45 in controls. Denial coping was 1.47 versus 2.09. These are study-scale scores, not percentages of the population, and the supplied figures do not specify a common population-wide scale for comparison.
Gratitude and well-being outcomes
A 2023/2024 meta-analysis of expressed-gratitude interventions included 25 randomized controlled trials and 6,745 participants. Against neutral controls, the overall effect on positive indicators of psychological well-being was g=0.22. After one outlier was removed, the effect was g=0.19, with a 95% confidence interval from 0.11 to 0.26 across 24 studies.
The same meta-analysis separated several outcomes. Gratitude interventions versus neutral controls produced g=0.16 for happiness across 9 studies, with p=0.002. The estimate for life satisfaction was g=0.22 across 12 studies, with p=0.044. Positive affect had an estimate of g=0.21 across 15 studies, with p=0.001. These standardized effects indicate the size of a difference between groups on the study outcomes; they are not percentages of people who benefited.
The comparison group matters. Against bona fide controls, expressed gratitude produced g=0.12, with a 95% confidence interval from -0.02 to 0.26 across 14 studies. After one outlier was removed, the estimate was g=0.06, with a 95% confidence interval from -0.03 to 0.15 across 13 studies.
| Outcome or comparison | Estimate | Studies or participants | Source label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Positive well-being vs. neutral controls | g=0.22 | 25 RCTs; 6,745 participants | Springer meta-analysis of expressed gratitude interventions |
| Positive well-being vs. neutral controls, one outlier removed | g=0.19; 95% CI 0.11–0.26 | k=24 | Springer meta-analysis of expressed gratitude interventions |
| Happiness vs. neutral controls | g=0.16; p=0.002 | k=9 | Springer meta-analysis of expressed gratitude interventions |
| Life satisfaction vs. neutral controls | g=0.22; p=0.044 | k=12 | Springer meta-analysis of expressed gratitude interventions |
| Positive affect vs. neutral controls | g=0.21; p=0.001 | k=15 | Springer meta-analysis of expressed gratitude interventions |
| Well-being vs. bona fide controls, one outlier removed | g=0.06; 95% CI -0.03–0.15 | k=13 | Springer meta-analysis of expressed gratitude interventions |
A cross-cultural meta-analysis reported g=0.19, with SE=0.02 and a 95% confidence interval from 0.15 to 0.22, for gratitude versus control on well-being. Its weighted effect sizes were 0.17 for life satisfaction across 19 studies, 0.18 for positive affect across 19 studies, 0.25 for happiness across 9 studies, and 0.30 for well-being across 3 studies. It also reported 0.13 for depression across 9 studies and 0.05 for negative affect across 15 studies. The source label for these findings is the PMC cross-cultural meta-analysis.
A separate dispositional-gratitude meta-analysis aggregated 404 effect sizes from 158 independent samples totaling 100,099 participants. Portocarrero, Gonzalez and Ekema-Agbaw (2020) reported associations between dispositional gratitude and positive well-being indicators ranging from r=0.40 to r=0.48. These are associations involving a disposition, not evidence that a brief gratitude exercise produced the relationship.
Gratitude, emotions, and social support
The breast-cancer diary study reported several statistical relationships between cognitive or affective gratitude and daily outcomes. Affective gratitude predicted self-esteem with coefficient 0.53 and t=9.94; cognitive gratitude predicted self-esteem with coefficient 0.40 and t=9.53. For optimism, the coefficients were 0.17 and 0.15, with t values of 3.28 and 3.65 for affective and cognitive gratitude, respectively.
For acceptance of illness, affective gratitude had coefficient 0.23 with t=5.33, while cognitive gratitude had coefficient 0.18 with t=4.73. Affective gratitude predicted positive active affect with coefficient 0.71 and t=12.28, and positive deactive affect with coefficient 0.64 and t=13.93. The corresponding cognitive-gratitude coefficients were 0.52 with t=9.95 and 0.38 with t=7.23.
The negative-affect results were not identical across the two gratitude measures. Affective gratitude predicted negative active affect with coefficient -0.51 and t=4.41, while cognitive gratitude’s coefficient was -0.12 with t=1.07. For negative deactive affect, the coefficients were -0.56 with t=7.92 for affective gratitude and -0.29 with t=4.35 for cognitive gratitude.
Social outcomes also appeared in the study. Affective gratitude predicted partner support with coefficient 0.24 and t=3.86, while cognitive gratitude predicted partner support with coefficient 0.15 and t=2.96. For support from others, the coefficients were 0.19 with t=3.09 and 0.32 with t=5.96. For being-with-other-people coping, the coefficients were 0.23 with t=5.33 and 0.27 with t=6.82.
Another gratitude experiment examined whether gratitude can coexist with indebtedness. In the study by He and colleagues, gratitude to a significant other scored 5.78, compared with 5.13 for gratitude to health and 4.58 in the control condition. Appreciation scores were 5.37, 5.19, and 4.22 across those conditions. Indebtedness scores were 3.37, 3.12, and 2.73, respectively. The same three-condition order produced sadness scores of 2.31, 2.59, and 2.43; anger scores of 1.71, 1.95, and 2.09; shame scores of 2.93, 2.86, and 2.46; and guilt scores of 3.04, 3.14, and 2.69. These values show why gratitude research may measure difficult emotions alongside positive ones.
Evidence from workplace and health studies
In the work-health-care-worker study titled “Gratitude at Work,” 1,575 workers were randomized. Both study conditions improved emotional exhaustion, happiness, and work-life balance at one week. Self-focused and other-focused prompts did not differ, with P=.91. Tool engagement was high.
The study also reported that higher motivation to improve emotional exhaustion was associated with higher baseline emotional exhaustion at P<.001. Higher motivation predicted greater one-week improvement in emotional exhaustion at P=.03. More negative emotion words in letters were associated with higher baseline emotional exhaustion at P=.005. Fewer first-person words predicted an emotional-exhaustion reduction at P=.06, while fewer positive emotion words predicted a reduction at P=.09.
In a gratitude-and-work-meaningfulness study by Loi and Ng (2021), 197 participants completed the survey and 69.5% were female. Gratitude was positively associated with happiness, life satisfaction, flourishing, positive affect, spirituality, and meaningful work. The supplied results identify these relationships but do not provide a single percentage change for each outcome.
Taken together, the findings describe several layers of evidence: historical U.S. survey frequencies, group comparisons, daily ratings in a breast-cancer study, randomized workplace and gratitude interventions, and pooled meta-analytic estimates. Their numbers are most useful when the source, population, measurement period, outcome, and comparison group remain attached to each statistic.