When asked to pray at the family dinner table, Bart Simpson said, “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.”

Rhode Island’s unemployment rate stands at 12.9 percent (third highest in the country), so, like Bart, some of us might be struggling to think of what we’re thankful for this Thanksgiving.

But whether things are going well or poorly, gratitude is an effective approach to life, according to research by Robert A. Emmons, a professor at the University of California at Davis and the author of the 2007 book “Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier.”

“My work has led me to interview people who have suffered terrible illness and loss, including the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the destructive hurricanes that hit the southeastern United States in 2005,” Emmons wrote. “People who experience gratitude in such dire circumstances consistently report that they are happier than those who do not and are less susceptible to negative emotions and outcomes.”

He said, “It is this presence of thankfulness in trying times that enables us to conclude that gratitude is not simply a form of ‘positive thinking’ or a technique of ‘happy-ology,’ but rather a deep and abiding recognition and acknowledgment that goodness exists under even the worst that life offers.”

On the other hand, when things are going well, we sometimes assume we are responsible for all the good that comes our way, Emmons said, citing the Bart Simpson quote.

“In one sense, of course, Bart is correct,” he wrote. “The Simpson family did earn their own money. But on another level, he is missing the bigger picture. The grateful person senses that much goodness happens quite independently of his actions or even in spite of himself.”

Emmons, who worked with University of Miami Prof. Michael E. McCullough, said, “Our groundbreaking research has shown that grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness and optimism, and that the practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed and bitterness.”

He said, “We have discovered that a person who experiences gratitude is able to cope more effectively with everyday stress, may show increased resilience in the face of trauma-induced stress, and may recover more quickly from illness and benefit from greater physical health.”

While cigarette smoking can slice about six years from your life, happiness can add as much as nine years to your life expectancy, he said.

Also, gratitude leads to improved relationships and makes people feel “more loving, more forgiving and closer to God,” Emmons wrote. “Happiness is facilitated when we enjoy what we have been given, when we ‘want what we have.’ ”

The book quotes Charles Dickens, who said, “Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

And the book quotes the Rev. Peter Gomes, a professor at the Harvard University Divinity School, who believes we’ve forgotten the reason for Thanksgiving: expressing gratitude. Emmons says, “Contemporary social science research will remind us that if we overlook gratitude, it will be at our own emotional and psychological peril.”

Of course, not everyone is convinced by scientific research. As Homer Simpson said, “People can come up with statistics to prove anything — 14 percent of people know that.”

efitzpat@projo.com