New publication stemming from our grant-funded project on the scientific study of gratitude to god!

Van Cappellen, P., Clapp, A., & Algoe, S. (in press). God of the good gaps: Prevalence, eliciting situations, and demonstrations of gratitude to god as compared to interpersonal gratitude. Journal of Positive Psychology.

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 documented 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 documented ways that GTG vs. GTO is demonstrated, suggesting that GTG sustains religious practice and builds morality.