Gratitude: How to Foster It and How It’s Tied to Your Big Five Personality

In case you missed it, gratitude is having a moment. Being grateful, says the science, can do wonders for all sorts of things: your happiness, your health, your relationships, your work, your stress levels, your sleep—the list is almost endless.

But let’s face it, feeling grateful can be tough. You’ve tried journaling, gratitude jars, mindfulness moments, but it all felt a bit, well, meh. Like you were just going through the motions instead of truly becoming more thankful. 

Luckily, there’s a research-backed way to get good at gratitude once and for all. It comes from learning about your Big Five personality type, and making a gratitude action plan that’s right for you. 

Do I Really Need to Feel More Grateful?

If you think practicing gratitude sounds a little woo-woo, just take a look at these stats:

• Research from the American Psychological Association shows that people who regularly practice gratitude have healthier and more satisfying romantic relationships than others. 
• One university study found that a solid gratitude practice boosts mental health, making people more optimistic and happy. 
• Grateful people even tend to be more physically healthy than others, says the University of Illinois. 

Clearly, gratitude isn’t just for yogis and self-help gurus—it’s for everyone who wants to make their life a little bit better.  

The Big Five: Your One-Way Ticket to Gratitude

The first step towards developing a gratitude practice is understanding the roadblocks that stand in your way. Are you naturally prone towards pessimism, and cannot see anything to be thankful for? Do you feel like you keep self-sabotaging your own happiness? Or do change and unpredictability send you into a spiral, making it hard to see the good in your life? 

Your answers to these questions are tied to your Big Five personality traits - Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness and Neuroticism. Your scores on each of these traits exist on a continuum, from high to low. 

For example, someone who scores high in Conscientiousness is goal-oriented, organized and on top of things. If you're on the lower end, you might be quite impulsive and even reckless. If you score high in Neuroticism, it may be harder for you to take life's ups and downs in stride due to your tendency towards negative emotions like anxiety and fear. If your score is on the lower end, you are more resilient in the face of stress and change. 

Researchers have found some interesting links between gratitude and the Big Five personality traits.

According to the Institute of Psychology, people who score high in Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness are naturally better at feeling grateful than others. On the flip side, people with high Neuroticism scores are more likely to struggle with gratitude. Extraversion doesn’t seem to have a strong correlation either way.

This makes sense when you think about how each trait plays out in real life. Here are some examples to contextualize things: 

• Low Openness: Someone who dislikes change and thinks in black-and-white may struggle to see the bright side when things don’t go to plan. They find it hard to be grateful because they can’t see beyond what they perceive as negative circumstances.
• High Neuroticism: Having a tendency towards low mood and self-doubt means you may overlook the good things in your life. Your instinct is to focus on the  things that went wrong or could go wrong. People who are more emotionally stable — non-neurotic in Big Five terms — are more likely to feel satisfied and happier with life. 
• High Agreeableness: People who have high levels of empathy and who take pleasure in helping others have an easier time feeling grateful for the people in their lives. They may also find it easier to see the good in others and appreciate their actions. 
• Low Conscientiousness: If you’re undisciplined and lack follow through, you may fail to live up to your own dreams and ambitions. This can make you feel resentful over time. 

Gratitude Action Plan Based on Your Personality Traits

Now that you know what your roadblocks are, you can start to figure out the strategies that will help you get better at gratitude. The following tips may help:

• Boost your emotional intelligence

If you scored low in Agreeableness and/or high in Neuroticism, chances are you could spend a little time training your emotional intelligence (EQ) muscle. EQ refers to a person’s ability to understand and control their own emotions, and be able to empathize with others.

You can develop your EQ in simple ways. Practicing active listening, asking questions to understand other people’s perspectives, and keeping a journal of your thoughts and feelings to understand your own emotional triggers better are great places to start. 

• Find the opportunity in unpredictability

Those with a low Openness score need predictability and stability to help them maintain a sense of calm. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work like that. Change is a constant, and if you’re resistant to it, you’ll probably end up missing out on a host of amazing experiences to be grateful for. 

If you fall into this bucket, your challenge is to learn to find the positives in change. Realize that, yes, change is going to feel uncomfortable and daunting. But that’s normal! It just means you’re stepping outside of your comfort zone, which is something to be celebrated, not feared.

• Craft some meaningful goals

People who score low on the Conscientiousness continuum will benefit from meditating on what they really want from life, and then setting goals to get there. Break these goals down into easily achievable baby steps and track your progress along the way.

When you’re making strides, it’s easier to feel grateful for what you’ve accomplished so far and, hopefully, your grand vision will act as rocket fuel to keep you motivated and focused. 

Final words

Personality is key to many things and gratitude is no exception. If you're struggling with gratitude, the silver lining is that you can work on your gratitude muscle and develop it, just like any other aspect of your personality. Through working on being more friendly, organized and open, you should start to see your feelings of gratitude grow. Being grateful may never become second nature to you, but it can become a positive habit.