Narrator: This is Science Today. People who count their blessings, so to speak,
not only experience an improved state of emotional and physical well-being, but
also successfully fulfill life goals. Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at the
University of California, Davis proved this long held belief in class.

Emmons: We randomly assigned students into one of three conditions. A third of
them were instructed to write about hassles; another third of them wrote about
things that they were grateful or thankful for and a third group wrote about just major
events that were happening to them during the week, so it was a mixture of good
and bad events.

Narrator: The 'grateful group' were more positive and had fewer physical
complaints - even those who had once considered themselves grumpy

Emmons: So you're not locked into a particular way of looking at the world just
because maybe that's the way in which you typically have approached it in the past
and people can learn to focus on positive things. They can focus on things that
they're thankful for and that can affect their lives - both their mood but also their
physical health, which I think is an important contribution here.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.