Varieties of gratitude: Identifying patterns of emotional responses to positive experiences attributed to God, karma, and human benefactors.
Cindel J M White, Kathryn A Johnson, Behnam Mirbozorgi, Graziela Farias Martelli
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology September 1, 2024 DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000398 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational cohort Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 4,579 |
| Population | Religiously diverse adults from the United States and the United Kingdom |
| Citations | 4 |
| Key findings | Attributing good fortune to God elicits interpersonal gratitude, while attributing it to karma elicits pride and deservingness with less gratitude. |
Abstract
Good fortune can be attributed to many sources, including other people, personal efforts, and various theistic and nontheistic supernatural forces (e.g., God, karma). Four studies (total N = 4,579) of religiously diverse samples from the United States and the United Kingdom investigated the distinct emotional reactions to recalled positive experiences attributed to natural and supernatural benefactors. We found that the hallmarks of interpersonal gratitude (e.g., thankfulness, admiration, indebtedness) were reported when believers attributed their good fortune to a personal, benevolent God. However, a distinct emotional profile arose when participants attributed good fortune to the process of karmic payback, which was associated with relatively less gratitude but with higher scores for feelings of pride and deservingness. These results were partially explained by participants' attributions of positive experiences to an external agent (e.g., God) versus a universal law or internal factors as in the case of karma. We conclude that diverse spiritual beliefs influence causal attributions for good fortune, which, in turn, predict distinct emotional responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).