A lot has been written about gratitude over the past two decades and how we ought to be feeling it. There is advice for journaling and a plethora of purchasing options for gratitude notebooks and diaries. And research has consistently pointed to the health and relationship benefits of the fairly simple and cost-effective practice of cultivating gratitude.

Yet, Americans are living in a very stressful time, worried about their financial situation and the current political upheaval.

How then do we practice gratitude during such times?

I am a social psychologist who runs the Positive Emotion and Social Behavior Lab at Gonzaga University. I teach courses focused on resilience and human flourishing. I have researched and taught about gratitude for 18 years.

At the best of times, awareness of the positive may require more effort than noticing the negative, let alone in times of heightened distress. There are, however, two simple ways to work on this.

Gratitude doesn’t always come easily

Generally, negative information captures attention more readily than the positive. This disparity is so potent that it’s called the negativity bias. Researchers argue that this is an evolutionary adaptation: Being vigilant for life’s harms was essential for survival.

Yet, this means that noticing the kindnesses of others or the beauty the world has to offer may go unnoticed or forgotten by the end of the day. That is to our detriment.

Gratitude is experienced as a positive emotion. It results from noticing that others − including friends and family certainly, but also strangers, a higher power or the planet − have provided assistance or given something of value such as friendship or financial support. By definition, gratitude is focused on others’ care or on entities outside of oneself. It is not about one’s own accomplishments or luck.

When we feel gratitude toward something or someone, it can increase well-being and happiness and relationship satisfaction, as well as lower depression.

Thus, it may assist in counteracting the negativity bias by helping us find and remember the good that others are doing for us every day − the good that we may lose sight of in the best of times, let alone in times when Americans are deeply stressed.

How to practice gratitude

Research has shown that some people are naturally more grateful than others.

But it’s also clear that gratitude can be cultivated through practice. People can improve their ability to notice and feel this positive emotion.

One way to do this is to try a gratitude journal. Or, if the idea of journaling is daunting or annoying, perhaps call it a daily list instead. If you have given this a try and dislike it, skip to the second method below.

Gratitude lists are designed to create a habit in which you scan your day looking for the positive outcomes that others have brought into your life, no matter how small. Writing down several experiences each day that went well because of others may make these positive events more visible to you and more memorable by the end of the day − thus, boosting gratitude and its accompanying benefits.

While the negative news − “The stock market is down again!” “How are tariffs going to affect my financial security?” − is clearly drawing attention, a gratitude list is meant to help highlight the positive so that it doesn’t go overlooked.

The negative doesn’t need help gaining attention, but the positive might.

A second method for practicing gratitude is expressing that gratitude to others. This can look like writing a letter of gratitude and delivering it to someone who has made a positive impact in your life.

When my students do this exercise, it often results in touching interactions. For instance, my college students often write to high school mentors, and those adults are regularly moved to tears to learn of the positive impact they had. Expressing gratitude in work settings can boost employees’ sense of social worth.

In a world that may currently feel bleak, a letter of gratitude may not only help the writer recognize the good of others but also let others know that they are making a beautiful difference in the world.

Monica Y. Bartlett, Professor of Psychology, Gonzaga University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

China’s Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission is set to launch this month, May 2025, en route to the asteroid Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3). The country could join the United States and Japan, whose space agencies have both successfully retrieved a sample from an asteroid to study back on Earth.

Several space missions have flown by asteroids before and gotten a peek at their compositions, but bringing a sample back to Earth is even more helpful for scientists. The most informative analyses require having physical samples to poke and prod, shine light at, run through CT scanners and examine under electron microscopes.

These missions require detailed planning and specialized spacecraft, so to shed light on why agencies go through the trouble, we compiled four stories from The Conversation U.S.’s archive. These articles describe the ways asteroid sample return missions generate new scientific insights at every stage – from the collection process, to the container’s return to Earth, to laboratory analyses.

1. Ryugu’s colorful history

The asteroid Ryugu is made of carbon-rich rock. Japan targeted Ryugu for its sample return mission Hayabusa2 in 2020.

As planetary scientist Paul K. Byrne from Washington University in St. Louis described in his article, the Hayabusa2 team shot the asteroid with a metal projectile and collected the dusty debris that floated into space. This process allowed the Hayabusa2 craft to gather a sample to bring home and also get a close-up look at the asteroid’s surface.

One thing the collection team noticed: The material that flew off the asteroid was redder than the surface they shot at, which had a bluer tinge.

Some parts of Ryugu appear almost striped – the middle latitudes are redder, while the poles look more blue. The sample collection process gave researchers some hints about why that is.

“At some point the asteroid must have been closer to the Sun that it is now,” Byrne wrote. “That would explain the amount of reddening of the surface.”

2. Return capsules make shock waves

Similar to how researchers gained valuable data just from the Hayabusa2 collection process, atmospheric scientists didn’t even need to open the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule to learn something new.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission traveled to the carbon-rich asteroid Bennu and sent home a small capsule containing a sample in September 2023.

Released from the OSIRIS-REx craft, the sample return capsule hurtled down to Earth in a heavy box about the size of a microwave. Aside from the fact that it had been released from a spacecraft about 63,000 miles (102,000 kilometers) away, the return looked strikingly similar to that of a meteorite hitting Earth.

Scientists don’t often have the advance notice needed to study how real meteoroids – the term given to meteorites before they hit the ground – behave when they enter the atmosphere, so they jumped on the opportunity to study the capsule as it returned to Earth.

As physicists Brian Elbing from Oklahoma State University and Elizabeth A. Silber from Sandia National Laboratories discussed in their article, OSIRIS-REx’s reentry was the perfect opportunity to study what happens in the atmosphere when meteoroid-size objects fly through.

The teams set up networks of sensitive microphones and other instruments – both on the ground and attached to balloons – to log the sound wave frequencies that the capsule generated in the atmosphere. Understanding how waves travel through the atmosphere can help scientists figure out how to detect hazards such as natural disasters.

3. Building blocks of life on Bennu

Once the OSIRIS-REx return capsule was safely back on Earth, researchers across the world – including geologist Timothy J. McCoy from the Smithsonian Institution and planetary scientist Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum in the U.K. – got to work running tests on its contents, while handling the sample carefully to avoid contaminating it.

As they described in their article, McCoy and Russell found the sample was mostly water-rich clay, which they expected from a carbon-rich asteroid. But they also found a surprising amount of salty and brine-related minerals. These minerals form when water evaporates off a rock’s surface.

Because these minerals – aptly called evaporites – dissolve when they come into contact with moisture, scientists had never seen them in the meteorites that fly through Earth’s atmosphere, even ones with similar compositions to Bennu. The spacecraft’s sample container kept the Bennu sample airtight, so these evaporites stayed intact.

These results suggest that the asteroid used to be wet and muddy. And a salty, water-rich environment like Bennu may have once been a great place for organic molecules to form. Some scientists predict that Earth got its ingredients for life from a collision with an asteroid like Bennu.

4. Looking ahead: Asteroid mining

Asteroid sample return missions generate lots of scientific insights. They can also help space agencies and companies understand what exactly is out there, available to bring home from asteroids. While carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu aren’t flush with precious metals, other asteroids have more valuable contents.

Launched in 2023 and currently traveling through space, NASA’s Psyche mission will explore a metallic asteroid. The Psyche asteroid likely contains platinum, nickel, iron and possibly gold – all materials of commercial interest.

Scientists can learn about the formation and composition of Earth’s core from metallic asteroids like Psyche, which is the mission’s main goal. But as planetary scientist Valerie Payré from the University of Iowa wrote in her article, “The Psyche mission is a huge step in figuring out what sort of metals are out there.”

For now, commercial asteroid mining operations are science fiction – not to mention legally fraught. But some companies have started considering early-stage plans for how they one day might do it. Asteroid sample missions can lay some early groundwork.

This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Mary Magnuson, Associate Science Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.