A research-backed map of how readily you notice and feel thankful for the good in your life. Psychologists treat gratitude not as a passing mood but as a lasting disposition, and two validated measures anchor that view: the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6), developed by Michael McCullough, Robert Emmons and Jo-Ann Tsang in 2002, and the Gratitude, Resentment and Appreciation Test (GRAT) of Philip Watkins and colleagues in 2003, which maps the grateful disposition across three separate fronts. The first is a sense of abundance — feeling that life has treated you well, rather than that it owes you or has left you short. The second is simple appreciation — savouring small everyday pleasures, a warm drink, good weather, a quiet moment, instead of letting them pass unnoticed. The third is appreciation of others — recognising how much other people add to your life and feeling moved to thank them. You can sit high on one front and low on another, so this describes the texture of your gratitude rather than a single score.
Empirical. Gratitude as a stable disposition has been captured by two well-validated self-report instruments: the six-item Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6) of McCullough, Emmons and Tsang (2002), which measures the tendency to recognise and respond to the good one receives, and the Gratitude, Resentment and Appreciation Test (GRAT) of Watkins, Woodward, Stone and Kolts (2003), whose three-factor structure — a sense of abundance (the absence of feeling deprived), simple appreciation of everyday pleasures, and appreciation of others' contributions — is the basis for the three dimensions here. Both scales show good reliability and validity and correlate with greater wellbeing. A higher score is one tendency among many, not a measure of worth. (Gratitude, Resentment and Appreciation Test (Watkins et al., 2003))