The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

Episode: Why Being Grateful Makes Us Feel Great (A Thanksgiving Re-run)
Date: November 24, 2025
Host: Dr. Laurie Santos
Guest: Dr. David DeSteno, Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode of The Happiness Lab explores the science behind gratitude and its surprising power not only to make us feel better in the moment but to help us achieve our long-term goals. Dr. Laurie Santos welcomes Dr. David DeSteno to discuss why gratitude is more effective than willpower for attaining self-control and building a happier, healthier life. The episode features research insights, memorable experiments, and actionable tips for cultivating gratitude year-round.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Problem with Willpower and Self-Control

• Willpower Is Fragile:
  • Dr. Santos shares a relatable story about how people often sabotage their “future self” by making decisions for immediate gratification (05:30).
  • Dr. DeSteno elaborates:

    "Willpower...is a candle in the wind." (06:17)

    • Willpower often fails because our bodies are put in a perpetual state of stress when resisting temptation.
    • Evolutionarily, immediate gratification made sense in uncertain times, but our calibration hasn't caught up to today’s relative certainty (07:00).
    • Studies show that students trained in cognitive strategies for willpower perform better but may experience negative physical effects like premature aging (08:00).
  • Rationalizations (e.g., "I deserve this treat") frequently override willpower, making it unreliable (08:20).

Emotional Tools: The Power of Moral Emotions

• Moral Emotions as Evolutionary Tools:
  • Dr. DeSteno explains that self-control evolved from the need to cooperate and be fair, not just to resist primal urges (09:06).
  • Moral emotions like gratitude, compassion, and authentic pride make us more willing to forgo immediate rewards for long-term benefits and to behave generously towards others and our future selves (09:50).

  • “We are not using the emotional tools that we have in our arsenal to help us succeed in the long run. We’re relying on these weaker tools of kind of tamping down emotional responses via willpower.” (11:02)

What is Gratitude and How Does It Work?

• Definition and Effects:
  • Gratitude is the emotion felt when others give us something of value at a cost to themselves (11:31).
  • Unlike mere indebtedness, gratitude feels like a positive urge to reciprocate kindness (11:45).
  • Dr. DeSteno:

    “Gratitude is really about the future. It makes us value long-term goals more than immediate gratification.” (12:26)

Scientific Studies: Gratitude vs. Willpower

• The Money Experiment:
  • Participants choose between a smaller immediate reward ($10) and a larger delayed reward ($30 in three weeks). Most people heavily discount the future:

    “Our average subject said they would take $17 now rather than $100 in a year.” (17:36)

  • When participants are induced to feel gratitude, their patience increases:

    “These folks suddenly viewed $100 in a year not as worth $17 now, but as worth $30.” (17:36–18:28)

    • This demonstrates that gratitude makes people more willing to wait for a better future outcome—a core aspect of self-control.
  • Grateful people are more willing to exercise, save money, and pursue long-term goals (18:45).

Inducing Gratitude in the Lab

• The Computer Crash Setup:
  • Subjects are made to do a boring task on a computer, which then “crashes.” An actor comes in to fix it, and subjects feel authentic gratitude for the help (19:37).

  • “What gratitude makes you do is engage in self-control...when you’re feeling grateful, you’re willing to sacrifice for your own future self.” (20:45)

  • The effect is unique to gratitude—even general positivity doesn’t yield the same benefits (20:10).

Gratitude’s Impact Across Domains

• At Work, in Medicine, & More:
  • Adam Grant’s research shows gratitude can boost workplace productivity by 50% (22:00).
  • For doctors, gratitude leads to better diagnostic thinking and greater effort for patients.

  • “While it’s doing it, gratitude is going to solve two other problems: better for your mind and body in terms of your physical health and your mental well-being.” (22:41)

  • Benefits include better sleep, lower blood pressure, less stress, and improved cholesterol (24:50).

The Resume vs. Eulogy Virtues

• Building a Fulfilling Life:
  • Dr. DeSteno references David Brooks' idea of “resume virtues” (achievement, grit) versus “eulogy virtues” (kindness, generosity) (23:25).
  • Gratitude allows us to achieve both sets of virtues, helping us succeed and build supportive relationships at the same time (24:40).

  • “It is people who experience gratitude, who experience compassion and empathy that do really, really well in the long run.” (27:00)

Paying It Forward

• Gratitude Creates a Virtuous Cycle:
  • People who feel gratitude are more likely not only to repay those who helped them but to help strangers as well (27:45).

  • “The beautiful thing about gratitude is it makes us pay it forward and it creates kind of an ongoing cycle...gratitude is an emotion of power.” (28:00)

Memorable Quotes

• On Willpower:

  “Willpower...is a candle in the wind.” (Dr. David DeSteno, 06:17)

• On Gratitude and Future Orientation:

  “Gratitude is really about the future. It makes us value long-term goals more than immediate gratification.” (Dr. David DeSteno, 12:26)

• On Gratitude's Surprising PR Problem:

  “We have this bad intuition about what gratitude's gonna do. Like it makes us weak, you know, it's gonna make us help others rather than getting ahead in life.” (Dr. Laurie Santos, 25:45)

• On Why Gratitude Works Where Willpower Fails:

  “Just by changing the emotional state you’re in, how much you value the future changes.” (Dr. David DeSteno, 19:17)

Practical Tips: Cultivating Gratitude

Daily Practice

• Reflection and Journaling:
  • Take a few minutes each day to reflect on new things you are grateful for—small acts count (28:16).
  • Avoid focusing only on big, obvious blessings to prevent habituation (28:29).

  • “When we simply ask people, reflect on something in your life that you’re grateful [for]...those simple reflections produce the same exact effects.” (29:00)

Reciprocity Ring Exercise

• How-To:
  • In groups, have everyone write something they need help with on a sticky note.
  • Others choose whose need to help with, building a network of mutual aid and gratitude (29:30).

Making Gratitude a Habit

• Emotional Curation:

  “You can curate your own emotional life...by taking time to think about what we want to feel by paying attention to the people that help us as opposed to the people that annoy us.” (Dr. David DeSteno, 30:48)

  • With practice, gratitude becomes an everyday lens, leading to positive spillover effects in all domains of life (31:15).

  • “If I have a habit to experience gratitude, that's going to bleed over into making me better able to pursue my long-term goals in any realm.” (31:55)

Notable Segment Timestamps

• Why Willpower Is Weak: 06:17–09:06
• Defining Gratitude: 11:26–12:26
• The Gratitude Money Experiment: 17:36–19:29
• Inducing Gratitude in the Lab: 19:37–21:47
• Gratitude’s Positive Effects (Work, Health, and Beyond): 22:00–25:45
• Building a Habit of Gratitude—Practical Tips: 28:06–32:20

Summary Takeaway

Gratitude is more than a warm, fuzzy feeling—it's a powerful, science-backed tool for building self-control, accomplishment, better health, and deeper relationships. Unlike brittle willpower, gratitude helps us make better decisions for our future selves and inspires us to support others, creating a virtuous cycle of well-being. As Dr. Laurie Santos and Dr. David DeSteno highlight, making gratitude a daily habit is one of the most effective, accessible paths to a happier, more successful life.