As Thanksgiving, our national
holiday of appreciation, nears, it’s easy to become distracted by travel plans
or the search for the best sweet potato recipe and overlook the main theme of
the day. Call it gratitude or a focus on the good things you have in your life
– appreciation deserves to be noticed, celebrated and, well, appreciated.

Yet the capacity to be
appreciative is much more than a rote social nicety. Expressing or feeling
genuine appreciation can have a powerful influence on emotional outlook, psychological
well-being, interpersonal bonds and even problem-solving, according to Rutgers
psychologist Nancy Fagley, who conducts research on appreciativeness.

Real appreciativeness has two
chief characteristics: acknowledging the value and meaning of something (an
event, person, behavior or object) and feeling a positive emotional connection
to it. “It is cognitive and affective,” Fagley says. “If it’s genuine
appreciation, it involves both components.”

Appreciative feelings may
arise when someone helps you or gives you a gift, or you see a beautiful
sunset. It can be stirred by the wonder of standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon or watching an infant’s birth.

“That kind of world view,
where you focus on positive events and notice the positive aspects of our
lives, counteracts the tendency to take things for granted,” says Fagley, an associate
professor of psychology in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional
Psychology (GSAPP).

Fagley hadn’t paid much
attention to the subject of appreciativeness until one of her doctoral
students, Mitchel Adler, kept bringing it up. “I thought, ‘How could this be
important if no one is talking about it?’” she recalls.

As good scientists, she and
Adler, who is now a private practice psychotherapist and speaker in Davis, California,
first sought to define the types of appreciation and design a scale to measure
them. They identified eight aspects in which appreciation arises: A “have” focus (centering thoughts on what one has); awe; response to ritual; delight in present moment; self/social comparison; gratitute; loss/adversity; interpersonal feelings.

Because appreciation is both
a disposition and something that can be learned over time, the two saw merit in
developing a tool to measure it. The scale they built scores each aspect as a
subscale, with the total of the eight yielding the overall level of
appreciativeness. Those scores found that even after controlling for factors of
optimism, spirituality, and emotional self-awareness, feeling appreciative was
significantly related to life satisfaction and positive affect.

By paying attention to the
simplest benefits we have, such as a warm home and ample food, “people notice
those things and realize that although we have problems, we also have a lot of
things to be thankful for,” Fagley says.

Threatening events may
produce appreciation as well, such as a soldier’s safe return from war or a
near-miss traffic accident. Indeed, she notes, people who are involved in
disasters such as tornadoes or traumatic experiences often express appreciation
for what they still have rather than what they have lost. “I think one of the
strategies people use is to focus on what’s still working in their lives,” she
says. “That can help them deal with the challenges.”  

When appreciativeness is
expressed between individuals, it produces positive emotions in both
directions. “Research shows it’s important for the people hearing the
appreciation as well as for the person expressing it. It fosters a closer
bond,” Fagley says.

Why study appreciation? Fagley
notes that sustained appreciativeness produces positive emotions, which support
creative problem-solving and life satisfaction. Researching the subject is “helpful
in thinking about what thought processes or mechanisms might be responsible -- to
know exactly what we should be increasing,” she says.

One time-honored
appreciation-stirring technique -- counting your blessings -- has been shown to
work. Before bedtime for a few months, subjects listed the things they were
grateful for in their lives. “It appears to result in greater life
satisfaction,” says Fagley. “I’ve tried it myself and it does feel as if it
helps.”

In her research,Fagley is
looking more closely at the eight aspects of appreciation that she and Adler
defined, to see if the concepts should be further refined. She’s also examining
personality differences in appreciativeness.

“I wanted to investigate
whether appreciation (on its own) had value, and it did,” she says. “It made a
pretty significant contribution to predicting well-being.” Fagley has collected
data on social connections that show a correlation between appreciativeness and
life satisfaction. She envisions using her research to develop exercises in
appreciation to help increase feelings of well-being.   

Fagley discusses appreciation
with her doctoral students in a GSAPP course on “Cognitive, Affective and
Social Aspects of Behavior Through the Life Span.” Many of the students are
training to become psychotherapists.

 “They’re thinking, ‘How can we engage in
activities that generate positive emotions, to help our clients talk about more
challenging issues?’” Fagley says. Using appreciativeness to open those doors
could be a powerful tool in their future practices.