Unique cognitive and emotional profiles of interpersonal gratitude and spiritual gratitude

Gratitude is a prototypical emotional response when life’s blessings come from the intentional goodwill of other people, but many also attribute good experiences to the intervention of God, gods, a Higher Power, or other benevolent spiritual forces. This study investigated the differences between how United States participants (N = 610) experience interpersonal gratitude and spiritual gratitude. Compared to interpersonal gratitude, spiritual gratitude experiences were less often attributed to human action, more often attributed to supernatural beings and circumstances beyond human control, and elicited significantly less feelings of gratitude, indebtedness, and admiration, but greater awe. Participants reported the highest feelings of gratitude when they also believed in a personal God with a benevolent mind. These findings demonstrate the importance of perceiving benevolent agency in evoking feelings of gratitude, whereas experiences that are attributed to more abstract, less personified, or less external entities elicit a different profile of positive emotional responses.