So we have all been in situations that we can help but say thanks for the help. Being grateful can improve well-being, physical health, can strengthen social relationships, studies have shown that the mind takes very kindly to not only giving a thanks but receiving one as well.

I thought this was very interesting and I wanted to share this with the tori bash community.

Cool but can you link the studies you are referring to?

Like the id receiving it's desire?

I'm not sure where you want this thread to go, but we'll keep it up for the time being to see if a good discussion takes place (which I highly doubt considering how people are posting recently).

Keep things on topic guys.

Of course being thanked for things improves your mental health and subsequent mental health. Not only does it make you feel like your actions are being noticed (the brain crazes attention) and that what you do is making a difference to someone (we need to feel like we can influence the world around us because otherwise we can stop thinking we matter and fall into depression). I do not find that fact surprising.

As for the other (main) subject of this thread, yes I do find the studies results interesting. This is mostly because I am impressed they could test this reliably in realisitic situations. I am willing to believe that thanking people might be healthy for some, but I can't see why thanking people out of genuine gratitude and feeling would help. Remember that some people can be extremely thankful for things but still not express such emotions out loud. I feel like this should be enough to improve mental health without verbal expression. I can sort of understand why the automatic hastened "please and thank you"s we often find ourself doing (often without actually realising we are saying them) could reduce general stress and increase happiness in the short term. The reason why a lot of people say. "Thank you" is simply because they have been taught to as a child so they would be polite. This teaching would almost invariably been done through a reward and punishment system (as a lot of things are taught to us, both by the environment and by teachers). Congratulating a child is enough of a reward if it is from someone they respect (if mum is proud of them then they are proud of themselves). This reward releases neurotransmitters and shiz (probably something like dopamine) which makes the child feel good. The punishment will be being denied the thing being offered (food or entertainment which obviously engage the hindbrains pleasure circuits) as well as being humiliated by a telling off (the brain has been shown to remember unpleasant experiences much better than happy ones (in terms of strength and chances of recollection rather than whether you remember it in the long term).

These functions are all explainable in terms of evolution (it was more important to remember bad dangerous things than anything else back when humans were often in close proximity to danger because you need to avoid them.) or by neurology and phsycology (the whole reward system thing means we remember to eat and stay active (this is so humans would hunt for food when they weren't physically hungry because they were hungry for dopamine (to which we become addicted) as well).

So because of this automatic, hindbrain led reaction of "thank you" being rewarded as a child you are rewarded as an adult. It is the same as a dogs mouth watering when it percieves something which it often perceives before eating (you can train a dog to start drooling at the ringing of a bell if you ring the bell before they eat enough times for a mental link to form). Although you are not given am actual physical reward, you have linked thanking people to two things: firstly receiving praise and secondly avoiding being humiliated. So, since your brain has related the idea of thanking people to an experience which releases dopamine it will actually release the chemical pre-emptively to congratulate you for doing an action which it believes will be rewarded for.

What I am saying is that a meaningless thank you is good for your because it stimulates the most underdeveloped primitive part of the brain (the hindbrain, which is what causes Torettes syndrome if it is not controlled or if it is overreactive (I am not sure which of these it is, it is probably not both) and which is the predominant part of the brain in most animals I think) into believing it shall receive a reward which is never given.

I hope I haven't made any mistakes (I am not sure if dopamine is the actual chemical or if it classes as a neurotransmitter, and I am pretty certain the reward system is the hindbrain, although the fact that the reward and punishment is more social means that it probably initially involved other parts of the brain as well) and that my use of brackets isn't too annoying. I really am sorry if this is boring or badly explained but I find it quite interesting to pomtificate about things in this detail. All of what I have said is merely my own suggestion (I will try to check if I am right about any of it later) and to me it seems plausible enough to be posted on an off topic thread.

I know it is a long read but I wanted to give y'all something more to discuss than the importance of good manners.

Thank you for reading!