Gratitude, indebtedness, and God: gratitude and indebtedness to God are more strongly correlated to each other than gratitude and indebtedness to a person or an object

ABSTRACT

Four studies investigated the structural relationship between gratitude and indebtedness to God. In a longitudinal study (Study 1), gratitude and indebtedness to God (rs =.70 and .57) remained stable over 42–50 days, with a stronger correlation between gratitude and indebtedness to God than between dispositional gratitude and indebtedness. The gratitude-indebtedness to God correlation was stronger among less religious than more religious participants. A multitrait-multimethod study (Study 2) replicated Study 1 with self-reports and informant-reports. Study 3 replicated Studies 1 and 2 and found that gratitude to God was more distinct from indebtedness to God among those who see God as benevolent, mystical, and limitless. Study 4 compared gratitude and indebtedness to God, mothers, and mobile phones, and found that the gratitude-indebtedness correlation for God was much stronger than for mothers or phones. Overall, gratitude and indebtedness to God appear far more closely intertwined than gratitude and indebtedness to other entities.

KEYWORDS:

• Gratitude
• indebtedness
• gratitude to god
• moral emotion

Disclosure statement

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

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/b9ghj/,https://osf.io/b9ghj/ and https://osf.io/b9ghj/.

Notes

1. We modified the original items of the dispositional gratitude scale developed by McCullough et al. (2002) to measure dispositional indebtedness, gratitude to God, and indebtedness to God.

2. Because the high correlations among predictors suggested a potential multicollinearity issue, we inspected the variance inflation factors (VIF). The VIFs for the moderation analyses suggested multicollinearity was not a cause for concern. For Time 1 data, both our mean-centered measures of indebtedness to God (VIF = 1.75) and religiosity (VIF = 1.77) were all within an acceptable range of VIF < 5. Another inspection of the VIF statistics for the Time 2 data showed that both our mean-centered measures of indebtedness to God (VIF = 1.47) and religiosity (VIF = 1.47) had relatively small VIFs.

3. For three traits (i.e. Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism), one out of five items per each trait was omitted by mistake. So the analyses were done by aggregating the four items for those traits.

4. We also tested this using Structural Equation Modeling, in which latent factors were created using the item parceling correlational algorithm (Matsunaga, 2008). The fit of the model in which the two latent correlations (the latent gratitude to God-Indebtedness to God correlation and the latent dispositional gratitude and latent dispositional indebtedness) were constrained to be the same was significantly worse than the find of the model in which the two latent correlations were allowed to differ, ²_diff(1) = 272.28, p < .001.

5. An inspection of the VIF statistics showed that both indebtedness to God (VIF = 2.12) and religiosity (VIF = 2.22) did not have a severe collinearity issue.

6. The correlation coefficients were compared using Lenhard and Lenhard (2014).

7. An inspection of the VIF statistics showed that multicollinearity was not a major concern: indebtedness to God (VIF = 2.18) and religiosity (VIF = 2.19).

8. VIF statistics showed that, across the five different moderation analyses, multicollinearity was not a major concern: VIF values ranged from 1.04 to 2.08.

9. An inspection of the VIF statistics showed that multicollinearity was not a major concern: indebtedness to God (VIF = 1.68) and religiosity (VIF = 1.89).

10. VIF statistics showed that multicollinearity was not a major concern: Nelson et al’.s indebtedness to God (VIF = 2.58) and religiosity (VIF = 3.32).

11. It should be noted that a series of factor analysis showed that the two-factor model fit the data better than the one-factor model. Thus, gratitude to God and indebtedness to God are not exactly interchangeable, though highly correlated to each other.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, [Grant No. 61513]. We would like to thank Erin Westgate; Arsen Seitov; Johanna Asfour; Marina Albuquerque; Zumin Chen, Cynthia Zhang, Thomas Prieur, Nicole Chheng; Gurtej Gill, Sae Kim, and Anna Lu for their help with data collection and edits.