Varieties of gratitude: Identifying patterns of emotional responses to positive experiences attributed to God, karma, and human benefactors.

Attributing good fortune to God evokes gratitude, admiration, and indebtedness, similar to thanking a person. Attributing good fortune to karma instead produces less gratitude but more pride and a sense of deservingness. Across four studies with 4,579 religiously diverse participants in the US and UK, these distinct emotional profiles emerged because God is seen as a personal external agent, while karma is viewed as a universal law or internal process. The findings suggest that spiritual beliefs shape how people explain positive events and, in turn, the emotions they feel.

Study at a glance

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).