Varieties of gratitude: Identifying patterns of emotional responses to positive experiences attributed to God, karma, and human benefactors.
Journal of personality and social psychology September 1, 2024 Cindel J M White, Kathryn A Johnson, Behnam Mirbozorgi et al. 4 citations
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.