Ask a room full of people whether they are grateful, and almost every hand will go up. Ask the same room when they last told someone, in plain words, exactly what that person had done for them, and the hands come down slowly.
This gap between feeling gratitude and expressing it is one of the quietest problems in family and working life. It rarely causes a crisis. It simply leaves people unsure of where they stand, and over years that uncertainty wears relationships thin.
Gratitude is an emotion built for relationships
Sara Algoe, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina, has spent much of her career studying what gratitude does between people. Her find, remind and bind theory describes three functions. Gratitude helps us find people who are likely to be good partners, friends and colleagues, because we notice who acts kindly towards us. It reminds us of the value of relationships we already have, especially when daily life makes us take them for granted. And it binds us to those people, drawing us closer and making us more willing to invest in them.
The important word in Algoe’s work is expressed. In a 2008 study with Jonathan Haidt and Shelly Gable, she followed sororities in the United States during a week when older members gave gifts to new members. The gratitude new members felt predicted how connected they felt to the older members a month later. Feeling thankful was the start. Showing it was what built the bond.
Expressing gratitude changes how you see the relationship
Nathaniel Lambert and colleagues tested this directly in 2010. They asked some participants to express gratitude to a close friend or partner over several weeks. Others were asked only to think grateful thoughts about them, or to complete control tasks. The people who expressed gratitude came to see their relationships as more communal, meaning they felt a stronger sense of mutual care and responsibility. Thinking grateful thoughts in private did not produce the same change.
This matters because it means gratitude works on the giver as well as the receiver. When you tell your spouse you noticed how patiently they handled your teenager last night, you encourage them, and you also remind yourself of who they are.
Amie Gordon and her colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley added a further piece in 2012. In couples they studied, people who felt appreciated by their partners became more appreciative in return, and those who were more appreciative were more likely to still be together nine months later. Appreciation, in other words, tends to circulate. It also tends to stop circulating when nobody starts it.
Why we stay silent
If gratitude does so much good, why do so many of us keep it to ourselves? Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago tested this in 2018. Participants wrote letters of gratitude to someone who had made a difference in their lives, then predicted how the recipient would feel. Recipients were then asked how they actually felt.
The writers consistently underestimated how surprised and how positive the recipients would feel. They also overestimated how awkward the letter would make them feel. Kumar and Epley concluded that people undervalue their own gratitude, and that this misjudgement keeps them from expressing it.
In my own work across Nigeria and the United Kingdom, I hear the same reasons again and again. “He knows I appreciate him.” “It would feel strange to say it now.” “We do not really talk like that in our family.” Each of these sounds reasonable. Each of them leaves the other person guessing.
The ratio that holds a home together
John Gottman’s research with couples in Seattle offers another lens. Watching couples discuss areas of disagreement, he found that stable couples showed about five positive interactions for every negative one, while couples heading towards separation showed something closer to one to one.
Positive interactions include humour, affection, interest and, importantly, appreciation. In many homes and teams the negative side of the ledger fills itself. Problems demand attention, so correction happens naturally. Appreciation requires intention. Without it, the ratio drifts in the wrong direction even when nobody intends any harm.
What expressed gratitude looks like in practice
I know of a family in Leeds who began a simple habit after a difficult year. Every Sunday evening, each person named one thing someone else in the family had done that week that they were grateful for. The youngest was eight. At first the children giggled through it. Within two months the parents noticed the children looking for kind things to report, and occasionally doing kind things so they could be reported.
In a small accounting practice in Abuja, the senior partner started ending each Friday by sending a two line message to each of her four staff, naming one thing she had noticed them do well. She told me that the most surprising response came from a colleague of eleven years, who said it was the first time she had felt seen at work.
Five principles make expressed gratitude effective.
Be specific. Name the person, the action and the difference it made. “Thank you for everything” is pleasant. “Thank you for calling my mother while I was travelling, it meant she was not alone on her birthday” is remembered.
Be timely. Gratitude close to the moment carries more force, though the Yoruba custom of thanking someone again the next morning shows that a second thank you has its own power.
Choose the right form. Some people treasure spoken words. Others value something written they can keep.
Notice the unseen work. Organising, remembering, checking and smoothing often hold families and teams together and are rarely thanked.
Receive gratitude well. When someone thanks you, resist the urge to wave it away. A simple “thank you for saying that” honours their effort to say it.
A small step this week
Choose one person who matters to you and write three sentences: what they did, what it made possible, and a plain thank you. Send it or say it before the week ends. Kumar and Epley’s research suggests it will mean more to them than you expect.
In the second week of November I will be writing about letters of appreciation, and the free appreciation letter guide on this website walks you through writing one in about fifteen minutes.