Gratitude May Prompt Teens to Defend Bullied Classmates, Research Finds

When someone is getting picked on, the bystanders in the room hold quiet power, a single classmate stepping in can change everything. So what makes a young person more likely to be that classmate? Researchers explored a surprising ingredient: gratitude.

Their work suggests that a thankful heart may also be a braver one, at least when it comes to standing up for a peer.

What the researchers wanted to know

The researchers set out to examine two things among Chinese early adolescents. First, whether gratitude, the disposition to notice and feel thankful for the good in one's life, is associated with defending behavior, meaning stepping in to support a classmate who is being bullied. Second, and more practically, whether gratitude can be deliberately increased through structured programs, and whether boosting it also boosts defending behavior.

In other words, they wanted to move from simply observing a link to testing whether cultivating gratitude could actually change how teens act when they witness bullying.

How they studied it

The team ran two studies. Study 1 was a cross-sectional survey of 912 seventh- and eighth-grade students from two schools, capturing a snapshot of how gratitude and defending behavior related to each other. Study 2 was the more ambitious test: a four-armed randomized controlled trial involving 16 classes.

Students were randomly assigned to one of four conditions, a gratitude curriculum, a gratitude journal, a gratitude visit, or a control group that received no gratitude program. Comparing several distinct approaches against a control lets researchers see not just whether gratitude interventions work, but which formats work best. Gratitude and defending behavior were measured before and after the programs.

What they found

The first study confirmed the basic link: "gratitude was positively associated with defending behavior" in school bullying, meaning more grateful teens tended to be more willing to stand up for others. The trial then showed which approaches could actually build that gratitude. Both the gratitude curriculum and the gratitude journal significantly increased adolescents' gratitude from before to after the program, and left them with higher gratitude than the control group.

By contrast, "gratitude visits did not significantly enhance gratitude" overall. The same pattern held for defending behavior: the curriculum and the journal significantly improved students' willingness to defend peers, both over time and compared with the control group, while the gratitude visit produced improvement in defending behavior only from before to after, without clearly beating the control.

Notably, among the three intervention approaches, there were no significant differences in the final levels of gratitude or defending behavior, the curriculum and journal simply stood out against doing nothing.

What this means for you

For parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about kinder, safer schools, this study offers something refreshingly hopeful: gratitude is not just a nice feeling, it may be linked to the courage to do the right thing. And the approaches that worked best were pleasingly simple and doable.

A gratitude journal, regularly writing down things one is thankful for, helped, as did a structured gratitude curriculum. That is encouraging news for families and educators, because a journaling habit costs almost nothing and can be woven into a normal routine. If you want to nurture both gratitude and everyday moral courage in a young person, this research suggests that consistent practices, writing regularly or following a guided program, may do more than one-off gestures, and it points to gratitude's potential relevance for "school-based anti-bullying interventions."

It is a reminder that character traits like thankfulness and standing up for others are not fixed at birth; they can be cultivated with intention. Even for adults, a regular gratitude practice is a low-cost habit with a long track record of being linked to well-being.

The honest caveats

Some limits are worth keeping in mind. The study focused on Chinese early adolescents in specific schools, so the patterns may play out differently among students of other ages, cultures, or settings. The first study was cross-sectional, which means it captured gratitude and defending behavior at a single point in time and can show a link but not prove that gratitude causes defending.

The trial strengthens the case by testing interventions directly, yet outcomes were measured over a relatively short window, so we do not know how long the boosts in gratitude and defending behavior last. It is also striking that gratitude visits did not significantly raise gratitude in this study, a reminder that not every gratitude exercise works equally and that format matters.

Defending behavior was measured through the students' own reports rather than observed in real bullying situations. And bullying is a complex problem with many causes; gratitude is one promising lever, not a complete solution. This is not clinical advice, persistent bullying warrants involvement from schools and, where needed, trained professionals.