Thnx4 is a gratitude journaling platform that teaches people how to strengthen habits of gratitude and in turn enjoy the science-backed benefits of feeling and expressing gratitude.
Thnx4 was created by the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) at the University of California, Berkeley. It draws on decades of rigorous research showing that being more grateful predicts:
- better health, reduced risk of heart disease, and more restful sleep
- stronger feelings of social connection and relationship satisfaction
- more satisfaction with life, more joy and optimism, and less anxiety
- increased motivation and productivity in school and at work
How does it work?
When you create an account on Thnx4, you gain access to a self-directed online journal that teaches you how to Say Thnx in a way that measurably increases how grateful you are as a person, and in turn, how happy, resilient to stress, and socially connected you feel.
For a richer, interactive experience, you can set up a Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge to launch a 10-Day or 21-Day guided experience, where you'll be regularly prompted to Say Thnx on Thnx4 via email and text messages - and able to track your engagement as well as the impact of your gratitude practice. Think of it like a personal trainer for strengthening your gratefulness muscles! Even better, you can join a Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge to share the Thnx4 experience with colleagues or another group that you are affiliated with.
- After you first register for Thnx4, you'll receive an email confirming your registration, then you can either use the site in a self-guided way, or set up your own Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge, or Join a Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge.
- If you set up a Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge, it will start with an invitation to complete a Pre-Challenge survey, then you will receive a series of regular nudges and prompts to Say Thnx beginning on the start date that you specified.
- If you join a Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge by selecting the group that you are affiliated with on your My Thnx4 page, your Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge will begin on the Start Date indicated.
- A 10-Day Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge sends nudges daily on weekdays for two weeks; a 21-Day Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge sends nudges every other day for three weeks. Each Say Thnx that you do turns into an entry in your gratitude journal, which you can choose to share publicly, share with your group or organization, or keep private.
- Thnx4 nudges also invite you to Check In , by rating how you've been feeling over the past couple of days, as a way to track your progress over time.
- At the conclusion of your Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge, you'll be prompted to complete a Post-Challenge survey, which will gauge how your levels of gratitude and well-being have changed from before your Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge.
- Once your Challenge concludes, you can continue to use Thnx4 in a self-directed way, start a new Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge, or join another Group Thnx4 Gratitude Journal.
Why does it work?
When we intentionally reflect on and express gratitude, we start to notice the positive people and events in our lives that we might otherwise miss or take for granted.
Robert Emmons, perhaps the world's leading scientific expert on gratitude, explains that gratitude carries powerful benefits to our mental, physical, and social health because "it's an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we've received."
What's more, he says, when we experience gratitude, "we acknowledge that other people—or even higher powers, if you're of a spiritual mindset—gave us many gifts, big and small, to help us achieve the goodness in our lives."
Gratitude strengthens our relationships, he says, "because it requires us to see how we've been supported and affirmed by other people."
To learn more about how gratitude can lead to a better life—and a better world—read the GGSC's new book, The Gratitude Project.
Why did we create Thnx4?
The goal of Thnx4 is to promote the practice of gratitude and raise awareness about the research-based benefits of gratitude. In so doing, it aims to engage the public in a larger conversation about how to foster more gratitude in everyday life.
Thnx4 is based on several decades of research on the measurable benefits of gratitude and gratitude journaling , which suggest that regularly expressing thanks improves people's social, emotional, and physical well-being. Thnx4 makes it easy to keep a gratitude journal and record moments of thankfulness right when they happen.
The Thnx4 platform can also be used by researchers or organizations to see how keeping a gratitude journal can impact people on a wider scale. (More on that below.)
How will your information be used?
All of your Pre-Challenge and Post-Challenge Survey and Check In responses are kept confidential. Every time you post a Say Thnx to your gratitude journal, you can indicate whether you'd like to keep your entry private or limited to your Group; if not, it will show up in the feed of entries in the Thnx4 public gratitude journal.
Though we do collect your email address to send you reminders to journal, we will never share your contact information. Our team analyzes the Thnx4 data to see how keeping a journal impacts people over time, but we only look at this data anonymously and in the aggregate, stripping it of any details that link it to individuals.
Similarly, if you are part of a research study or participating organization, the data for your study or group will only ever be viewed in the aggregate, considering the group as a whole but not looking at any specific individuals. Thnx4 records IP addresses to improve the user experience, but again, all of this data will remain confidential. All data on the site is encrypted.
Your participation with Thnx4 is completely voluntary, and you may exit or cancel at any time. To stop receiving email reminders or delete your account, log into the site, click the "My Account" link in the upper area of the screen, and follow the instructions for Cancel account.
To view or change your cookie consent choice, access the thnx4.org Cookie Declaration.
Are you a researcher?
For researchers, Thnx4 can provide a systematic, user-friendly, highly scalable, free platform for prompting people to journal and share their gratitude—and yield anonymized data for investigating the effects of gratitude. It can provide demographic and daily use data (e.g., frequency of gratitude experiences, targets of gratitude, etc.), measure day-to-day well-being, as well as pre/post scores on measures of dispositional gratitude, life satisfaction, resilience, and loneliness.
Any use of Thnx4 for research purposes requires IRB approval from the researcher's organization. If you would like to learn more about Thnx4's scientific capabilities and how you can incorporate it into your research, please email us at thnx4@berkeley.edu.
Would you like to run a Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge in your organization?
If you would like to organize a Gratitude Challenge for your school, workplace, or other organization, please start by figuring out the following:
- Choose a date for everyone in your group to start - together. Your Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge start date must should be at least two weeks AFTER the date that you plan to announce, promote, and otherwise invite people to join the Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge within your organization (Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge participants must register and join the Group Challenge at least 2 days prior to the specified challenge start date), and four weeks AFTER you first contact thnx4@berkeley.edu to set your Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge up.
- Decide upon a Group Thnx4 challenge length, either 10-Day Intensive or 21-Day for your organization members
- Choose a name for your Thnx4 Group (Clearly identifiable to members, up to 10 characters, e.g. GGSCStaff)
- Determine whether you would like to embed a custom organizational logo into the emails for your Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge, and have it ready to share with us.
Once you have these details in hand, please email us at thnx4@berkeley.edu with Group Thnx4 Gratitude Challenge Request as the Subject Line. We will send you a brief form to fill out and set up your group challenge on the back end. A Group Thnx4 Gratitude challenge enables your group to collectively strengthen and share gratitude and see how levels of gratitude and happiness change over 10 or 21 days across the group.
Who are we?
UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center catalyzes, reports upon, and sponsors groundbreaking scientific research on social and emotional well-being—and turns this research into multimedia resources for a happier life and a better world.
It created Thnx4 as part of its Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude project, which is funded by the John Templeton Foundation and aims to deepen the scientific understanding of gratitude and promote evidence-based practices of gratitude in homes, schools, workplaces, and beyond.