X good things in life: Processing fluency effects in the “Three good things in life” exercise

•We asked participants to write down good things that happened to them during the day.•Participants were randomly assigned to write 1–10 things for two weeks.•The number of things did not influence effectiveness of the exercise.•We found a reduction in negative affect after the exercise in exploratory analysis.

The present study examined whether difficulty of recollection may influence the effectiveness of the “Three good things in life” exercise that has previously been shown to increase happiness. Participants were randomly assigned to write 1–10 good things that happened to them during the day in the course of two weeks. We measured life satisfaction, positive and negative affect before the exercise and three times after the exercise. We found no effect of the number of good things participants wrote each day. Life satisfaction and positive affect of participants did not increase after the two weeks of the exercise, but we found a reduction in negative affect. We further investigated various aspects of the exercise in exploratory analyses.