Gratitude is the feeling of being grateful: a positive feeling which involves a desire to thank another person. In a religious context, gratitude can also refer to a feeling of indebtedness towards a deity, e.g. God in Christianity.
Psychological research (Emmons & McCullough, 2003) has suggested that feelings of gratitude may be beneficial to subjective emotional well-being. In people who are grateful in general, life events have little influence on experienced gratitude (McCullough, Tsang & Emmons, 2004).
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References
- Emmons, R. A. & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 377-389. (electronic copy)
- McCullough, M. E., Tsang, J. & Emmons, R. A. (2004). Gratitude in intermediate affective terrain: Links of grateful moods to individual differences and daily emotional experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86,295-309. (electronic copy)
