This time of year people often send holiday cards or letters. It got me thinking about writing letters, something that email has replaced. Other people, social researchers, have thought about this too. According to Steve Toepfer at Kent State University letter writing can benefit the author’s well-being.
He said, “As they wrote, up to three letters, results showed increasing benefits. The more letter writing people did, the more they improved significantly on happiness and life satisfaction.” *
The study he conducted was on writing letter of gratitude. Another similar study, included writing an expression of gratitude and predicted how the recipient would feel. While this study also concluded the authors had increased feelings of well-being, they also underestimated the good feeling of the recipient with predicted feelings of awkwardness that was not there.
What this all means is when writing letters, go ahead and express yourself, especially when you feel grateful. Both the receiver of your letter and yourself will feel better about it.
Getting back to holiday cards, it has me thinking that writing in a little note in each will help make the holiday season a more joyful one.
* Quoted above taken from: http://einside.kent.edu/Management%20Update%20Archive/news/announcements/success/toepferwriting.html
For details on the studies see here:
Toepfer, Steven M., Cichy, Kelly Cichy and Patti Peters. “Letters of Gratitude: Further Evidence for Author Benefits.” Journal of Happiness Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, Mar 2012, pp.187-201. doi: 10.1007/s10902-011-9257-7
Kumar, Amit and Epley, Nicholas. “Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation.” Psychological Science, vol. 29, no.9, Sept 2018, pp.1423-1435. doi: 10.1177/0956797618772506
Yay UCI Libraries, we have access!
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