Research has shown that people benefit greatly from showing gratitude. Being grateful for what you have and expressing thanks directly to a friend or colleague has a significant and lasting effect on one’s well-being and happiness.

Studies performed by positive psychologists like Sonja Lyubomirsky (author of The How of Happiness) have empirically measured these effects and quantified how much happier it makes one feel and for how long.  It turns out that maintaining a gratitude journal for only one week makes one noticeably more happy even three months later (!) when compared to a statically-balanced control group.

These studies are remarkable and carry a valuable lesson for improving happiness.  Perhaps more interesting is the fact that people also benefit from reading and learning about the things that others are grateful for.  Scientists think that the reason for this phenomenon is that knowing about others’ gratitude inspires people to think about their own good fortune and makes them aware of the good things that others experience that could come their way too in the future.  This additional boost in happiness when learning about others’ good fortune most likely comes from the optimistic attitude that it cultivates.

The Gratitude Stream is an easy-to-use online app that we developed here at Signal Patterns Labs.   There’s also an accompanying iPhone app for those ‘on the go.’

The Gratitude Stream app’s designed to help people get the best of both worlds of gratitude: see the stream of gratitude that people all over the world share, and get inspired by others’ good fortune, and also share what you are thankful for and inspire others.

Gratitude Stream iPhone App

Here at the labs we already feel the joy!  The morning after the Gratitude iPhone application was approved by Apple, we all woke up to see people from Kyoto, Kuala Lumpur and Texas counting their blessings and sharing their gratitude with the rest of the world.

Eugene is a really nice town, no doubt. Peaceful and quiet and known for the University of Oregon. Many people think that Matt Groening (who grew up in Oregon) based the hometown of The Simpsons on Eugene and the adjacent town, Springfield. I first visited Eugene in the spring of 2006 when I met with Lew Goldberg at the Oregon Research Institute. Lew and I spent a lot of time outdoors, walking and talking. At first, it just seemed like one of many nice places you run into, but something still seemed very different; I couldn’t exactly tell what it was.

Since then, almost every time I mentioned Eugene to someone I heard some exceptional story: the friend who stayed to work in a local laundromat after getting his PhD, the guy who came to see the Oregon Country Fair and stayed in town forever. I was in town to visit Lew again earlier this year, and was determined to get to the bottom of what is so special about the town. And here’s my simple conclusion: everyone is happy. Not that just nice, or smiling or any of that. They are genuinely happy. Very happy.

Here are a few examples:

• The taxi driver who picked me up at the airport has been in the army for many years. His mother keeps scolding him every Thanksgiving and Christmas when everyone sits at the dinner table and he starts foulmouthing like in the good old army days. And he is happy. Very happy. The source of is happiness is that he got a telemarketing call last week from the local cable company, and now he is getting Internet access, phone, and TV from them, and saving about $15 a month. In fact, he is even happier because he did not enroll in the Do Not Call registry, and expecting thrilling telemarketing calls to happen in the future as well.
• The girl in a small booth selling coffee on Franklin Blvd is very happy too. The reason? It’s a nice day. And to show how happy she is she is giving me one more espresso at no extra charge.
• The owner of the Italian restaurant is also very happy. He comes to sit with us at the table, and tells us a story about an envious husband who tried to shoot his wife’s lover 30 years ago in some other restaurant that is now an ice cream parlor. There’s still a bullet hole in the ceiling there. It’s a funny story and it makes him happy! (Starting to get the idea?)
• The taxi driver on the way back to the airport is an hour and a half late and is happy because he’s sure he can get me there on time.

How can 150,00 people be so happy? Eugene’s schools are good, but not stellar, there’s some level of crime, and in many respects it’s an average American town. It’s very green and environmentally conscious, and used to be a hippie stronghold in the 60s. None of that is too special.

The locals don’t have an explanation. Maybe it is simply an old fashioned and very strong sense of community. People there talk to each other. They talk to other people in stores and in restaurants, people who ride their cab, and even telemarketers who call them. Everywhere you go people will talk to you. If you turn on your laptop two blocks away from the University of Oregon you find that there is not a single WiFi network, not one. I guess communication in Eugene is much more direct.

Whoever cracks the Eugene mystery will be a very rich person. And if it’s something in the water, I want to drink some of it too.