General gratitude and gratitude to God: associations with personality and well-being

ABSTRACT

A growing body of research has focused on distinguishing general forms of gratitude from gratitude to God. We contributed to this area of research by examining correlates of personality traits and meaning in life in a cross-sectional study (N = 1,398). General gratitude was more strongly positively related to honesty-humility, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and meaning in life than gratitude to God. Moreover, gratitude to God moderated the positive relationship between general gratitude and meaning in life such that the relationship was stronger at lower than higher levels of gratitude to God. The results suggest that general forms of gratitude may be more important for well-being and positive traits than gratitude to God. General forms of gratitude may be particularly beneficial among less religious people, while gratitude to God may be particularly beneficial for people’s well-being among those who are less grateful in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Gratitude
• religion
• personality
• well-being
• meaning in life

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2178958.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2178958.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation under Grant No. 61513; and the National Institute of Mental Health under Grant T32MH019391.