Author: Ned Dymoke / Source: Big Think
You know what you’re most definitely not doing enough of? Writing thank-you notes. According to a new study out of the Booth Business School at the University of Chicago, researchers say that although most people find the practice of writing a thank-you to be awkward (more on that in a bit), the people who receive them are far more appreciative than the note-maker might ever have thought.
107 students at the University of Chicago were asked to write a letter to someone who “had touched their life in a meaningful way”, expressing gratitude or thanks (out of this group of 107, 15 didn’t allow the researchers to contact the letter recipients). The students were given a questionnaire immediately before sending the note, and recipients were emailed a follow-up questionnaire two days after receiving the letter.
Both recipients and senders were asked to rank several factors—surprise about receiving the letters, surprise about content, and so forth—on an 11-point scale (0 being disappointed, 10 being highly elated). On every metric, people’s anxieties about expressing gratitude were proved wrong. Most notably, the perceived awkwardness the students had about sending the letters was entirely self-imposed, as it turns out that the people who received the letters were…
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