1. God of the good gaps: prevalence, eliciting situations, and demonstrations of gratitude to God as compared to interpersonal gratitude.
- Author
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Van Cappellen, Patty, Clapp, Abbie R., and Algoe, Sara B.
- Subjects
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POSITIVE psychology , *KRUSKAL-Wallis Test , *STATISTICS , *SPIRITUALITY , *HUMAN research subjects , *RESEARCH methodology , *SURVEYS , *INFORMED consent (Medical law) , *HINDUISM , *MUSLIMS , *DESCRIPTIVE statistics , *RESEARCH funding , *PSYCHOLOGY & religion , *EMOTIONS , *JEWS , *CHRISTIANS , *DATA analysis - Abstract
Gratitude for another person's actions has received exponential attention from the scientific community for its many benefits. Yet, this research is virtually silent on one key target of gratitude – god – despite billions of people believing in a personal, intervening, and benevolent god. In a large multi-method study, we sampled U.S. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians (N = 1270). First, we document the prevalence of spontaneous mentions of god as the target of a gratitude expression following a personal success. Only 16% of our religious participants did mention god but priming god increased this number to 29%. Second, we document a wider array of eliciting situations of gratitude to god (GTG) compared to gratitude to another person (GTO) and particularly for broad good things in life that don't have a clear agent. Finally, we document ways that GTG vs. GTO is demonstrated, suggesting that GTG sustains religious practice and builds morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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