Blessings-counting Takes Playful Shape: Development and Preliminary Evaluation of Gamified Interactive Gratitude Practice for Lasting Well-being

As a wildly used form of gratitude-based interventions (GIs), self-guided traditional blessings-counting practice (TBCP), often leads to participants’ fatigue and offers limited effectiveness due to its repetitive nature and lack of interaction. Along with the age of digitalization, TBCP has been required to adapt its format to align with people’s modern lifestyles. We proposed a digital paradigm of Gamified Interactive Gratitude Practice (GIGP) to prompt intrinsic motivation and extend the duration of mental health benefits. 150 participants were recruited in a three-arm randomized controlled trial (RCT) randomly assigned to the GIGP, TBCP, and Tom-the-Cat placebo control (TCPC) groups. These daily practices took place every day for one week, with measures of gratitude (cognitive and affective components) and several mental health indicators (anxiety, depression, and subjective well-being (SWB)) taken at baseline (T1), post-intervention (T2), and one-month follow-up (T3) stages. We also compared participants’ intrinsic motivation among three groups at T2. Results of intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis demonstrated that the GIGP significantly enhanced participants’ levels of both cognitive and affective gratitude, improved SWB, and reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety. The effects of strengthening several mental health aspects remained over a month. Participants’ intrinsic motivation in GIGP is higher than in TBCP and TCPC groups. The results highlight the potential of gamification in combination with virtual interaction to increase the engagement and efficacy of digital GIs, providing promising insights for future positive psychology practices.