Gratitude and indebtedness facilitate cooperative relationships and prosocial behavior. Yet, studies are needed to assess whether indebtedness and gratitude have differential prosocial effects. Study 1 (N = 659; highly religious emerging adult sample) employed a 3 × 2 experimental design with six conditions; 1) gratitude-only to humans, 2) indebtedness-only to humans, 3) gratitude and indebtedness to humans, 4) gratitude-only to God, 5) indebtedness-only to God, and 6) gratitude and indebtedness to God. Study 2 (N = 1,081; nationally representative sample) was a replication of Study 1. People prompted to experience both gratitude and indebtedness had higher prosocial relational engagement (i.e. consistent effects for relationship proximity and direct reciprocity) than those who primarily experienced gratitude or indebtedness. Transcendent indebtedness (want to repay) was related to better prosocial outcomes than transactional indebtedness (have to repay). Secure attachment to God moderated the association between receiving a favor from God (versus human) and increased prosocial behavior.

Research shows that the effects of athletics on virtue development are mixed. Religion provides people with a meaning-making system, community, and practices that can promote the cultivation of virtues and possibly enhance the impact of athletics on virtue development. Yet, little empirical research has assessed moral outcomes when religion and sport interact. The present study examines intrinsic religiosity as a moderator of the effect of athletic involvement on virtue and self-worth outcomes in collegiate student-athletes. Participants (N = 1930) were religious college students in the United States, 22% (n = 415) competing in an intercollegiate varsity sport. Moderated regression analyses revealed, contrary to predictions, that religiosity did not significantly moderate trait courage, trait patience, or goal patience. Consistent with predictions, religiosity significantly moderated goal courage, approval self-worth (i.e., the extent to which people base their worth on approval from others), and moral self-worth (i.e., the extent to which people base their worth on their own virtuousness). Whereas religiosity was associated with higher goal courage for non-athletes, the association was stronger for athletes. Religiosity was not associated with levels of approval self-worth for non-athletes, but the more religious athletes were, the less important other people’s approval was for their sense of self. Whereas religiosity was associated with higher moral self-worth contingency for athletes, the association was stronger for non-athletes. Applications for practitioners and future directions for researchers are discussed.

Acquiring gratitude and self-transcendence are critical to positive socioemotional development. Indebtedness to God may provide a pathway for this healthy development, yet it remains a largely unexplored construct. The purpose of the present work was to use two innovative qualitative methods; 1) exemplar sampling method (N = 15) and 2) cutting-edge machine learning and language models to visually describe the data (N = 5,598) and provide semantic maps. The thematic coding analyses resulted in 11 inquiry-driven themes (five describing the experience of indebtedness to God and six describing the outcomes of indebtedness to God). The experience of indebtedness to God was transcendent and positive. The machine learning language model analysis resulted in 1,920 unique tags and over 100 independent triangulated semantic themes, and several topographical views of the data to spur future research on this novel construct.

We test the effectiveness of 2 different written inductions of gratitude toward God and analyze the content and outcomes of these gratitude expressions. We recruited 1,170 predominantly Christian U.S. participants across 3 CloudResearch datasets. Participants were randomly assigned to write about gratitude to God or another benefactor, including people, parents, country, and unspecified benefactors, or to write about their daily activities. Study 2 further probed nuances related to control group instructions, and Study 3 examined outcome measures related to well-being and prosociality. The participants who wrote about gratitude toward God more frequently mentioned basic needs and self-transcendence and less frequently mentioned material items compared to other benefactors. They also showed high levels of expansive emotions and religious intentions. Our research provides methodological insights relevant to gratitude writing inductions and sheds light on the content and outcomes of gratitude toward God.

We tested whether manipulating construal level would change the experience of gratitude or other expansive emotions (gratitude, awe, compassion) and negative emotions. We also examined whether construal level was correlated with the type of gratitude benefactor that participants spontaneously listed, focusing especially on God and non-theistic intangible benefactors compared to tangible human benefactors. We manipulated construal level in 265 U.S.-based CloudResearch participants to test preregistered hypotheses that high-level construals would elicit more examples of gratitude toward intangible benefactors and increase expansive emotions. We conducted additional exploratory analyses, investigating whether attitude accessibility of God as a benefactor was correlated with increases in expansive emotions. High construal level manipulation was associated with more frequently listing non-theistic intangible benefactors. Further, trait construal level predicted expansive emotions. Additionally, attitude accessibility of God as a benefactor was positively related to expansive emotions. We discuss future research possibilities to differentiate between gratitude toward tangible and intangible benefactors and the use of attitude accessibility as an implicit measure of benefactor importance.