It’s all over. On the web, in the news, splashed across your favorite magazine, turning up on your feed as the latest app. Gratitude, shmatitude. What are we supposed to believe?

In The Book of Joy, by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams, one lovely practice in the back is a gratitude journal (the classic: at the end of each day, write down three things you’re grateful for). I hadn’t journaled for a while but have kept a gratitude journal ever since. Journaling in general, however—not just about gratitude—has mental health benefits. And a gratitude journal just happened to work for me. More and more, I savor gratitude in the moment now: hugging a friend, reading a kind email, and feeling agile or healthy in yoga. But what about you?

Studies, or experiments of gratitude, are just that: experiments. They test what gratitude does. To do so, they use “interventions.” What’s an intervention? Not the show you watch on TV! With gratitude studies, participants are asked to conduct a gratitude practice for a certain amount of time (usually weeks), and that's the intervention. Well-being, happiness, stress, heart rate, blood pressure, or what have you are measured before and........

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