I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I’ve moved more couches and spent more time making gifts for friends than I thought possible when I felt gratitude toward them and wanted to show appreciation. Or that I’ve worked longer and harder on difficult tasks when I wanted to feel proud about my abilities and contributions to a team. Or that I’ve given more support to people when moved by compassion to do so.

More than a decade’s worth of research backs up this picture. Studies from my lab, for example, show that gratitude directly increases self-control. In a version of the marshmallow test adapted for adults, we had people take a few minutes to recall an event that made them feel grateful, neutral or happy. Next, we had them answer a series of questions of the form “Would you rather have $X now or $Y in Z days?” with Y always being bigger than X, and Z varying over weeks to months. From these questions, we could calculate how much people discounted the value of the future.

Those feeling neutral or happy were pretty impatient. They were willing to forgo receiving $100 in a year if we gave them $18 today. Those who were feeling gratitude, however, showed nearly double the self-control. They required at least $30 to forgo the later reward. In a similar vein, we followed people for three weeks, measuring their levels of daily gratitude, and found the same boost to self-control. Our research also shows that when we make people feel grateful, they’ll spend more time helping anyone who asks for assistance, they’ll make financial decisions that benefit partners equally (rather than ones that allow profit at a partner’s expense), and they’ll show loyalty to those who have helped them even at costs to themselves.

What my lab, and others, found when we looked at pride was similar. Making people feel proud — not arrogant, but proud of the skills they have — makes them more willing to wait for future rewards and more willing to take on leadership roles in groups and work longer and harder to help a team solve a difficult problem. Likewise, when we make people feel compassion, they’ll take on the burdens of others, spending more time and effort to help get others out of jams and ease their distress.

What these findings show is that pride, gratitude and compassion, whether we consciously realize it or not, reduce the human mind’s tendency to discount the value of the future. In so doing, they push us not only to cooperate with other people but also to help our own future selves. Feeling pride or compassion has been shown to increase perseverance on difficult tasks by over 30 percent. Likewise, gratitude and compassion have been tied to better academic performance, a greater willingness to exercise and eat healthily, and lower levels of consumerism, impulsivity and tobacco and alcohol use.

If using willpower causes stress, using these emotions actually heals: They slow heart rate, lower blood pressure and reduce feelings of anxiety and depression. By making us value the future more, they ease the way to patience and perseverance.

Perhaps most important, while these emotions enhance self-control, they also combat another problem of modern life: loneliness. From 1985 to 2004, the percentage of people who reported having at least one friend on whom they could rely and with whom they could discuss important matters dropped to 57 percent from 80 percent. Today, more than half of all Americans report feeling lonely, especially in their professional lives. But study after study has shown that those who are seen as grateful, warm and justifiably confident draw others to them. Because these emotions automatically make us less selfish, they help ensure we can form relationships with people who will be there to support us when we need it.