God of the good gaps: Prevalence, eliciting situations, and demonstrations of gratitude to god as compared to interpersonal gratitude, 2023

Overview: Researchers recruited 1,270 Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim participants for this online study on how religious individuals express gratitude to God. Procedure: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two priming conditions. Participants in the God-prime condition were prompted to write about their relationship with God for two minutes; participants in the neutral-prime condition observed and wrote about their favorite colors in the surrounding environment. Participants then completed three tasks. First, they were prompted to think about an achievement in their life, write a response that expressed gratitude for that achievement, and complete self-report measures that evaluated to whom they attributed that success. Then, participants were asked to recall a time when they expressed gratitude to God, write about that time, and create a list of 1-7 strategies that they use to show gratitude to God. Finally, participants repeated the same steps in task two, but answered the prompt regarding gratitude to other people. Measures: The survey consisted of open response and multiple-choice questions. Attribution of success was measured using a nine-item assessment that included an Attribution to God scale, an Attribution to Self scale, and an Attribution to Other People scale. An existing scale by Mahoney et. Al (2003) was modified to generate the Attribution to God Scale. The Attribution to Self and Other People scales were developed for the purpose of this study. Three other variables, targets of gratitude, reasons for gratitude, and demonstrations of gratitude, were assessed by coding participants’ open responses. Other measures in the data set which were not reported on include social desirability, plans for Thanksgiving, and names of gods worshipped by Hindu participants. Sample: The sample was diverse in regards to gender and race. White/Caucasian participants accounted for 54% of the sample. Female participants accounted for 60.7% of the sample. Participants were 18 years of age and older, with the median age of the sample being 39.86. This study was approved by Duke Campus IRB and registered as Study 2021-0208.

概述：本项线上研究聚焦于宗教信众向上帝表达感恩的行为模式，研究人员共招募1270名基督教、犹太教、印度教及伊斯兰教信徒作为被试。
实验流程：被试被随机分配至两种启动条件中。上帝启动组（God-prime）的被试需用两分钟时间撰写一段关于自身与上帝关系的内容；中性启动组（neutral-prime）的被试则需观察周围环境并记录自己喜爱的颜色。随后，被试需完成三项任务：第一项任务要求被试回忆人生中的一项成就，撰写一段对该成就表达感恩的文字，并完成自我报告量表以评估其将成功归因的对象。第二项任务中，被试需回忆一次自己向上帝表达感恩的经历，撰写相关内容，并列出1至7条自身用于向上帝表达感恩的策略。第三项任务重复了第二项任务的流程，但将感恩对象替换为其他人。
测量工具：本调查包含开放式问答与选择题两类题型。成功归因情况采用包含三个分量表的9题评估工具进行测量，分别为上帝归因量表（Attribution to God scale）、自我归因量表（Attribution to Self scale）及他人归因量表（Attribution to Other People scale）。其中，上帝归因量表改编自Mahoney等人2003年已发表的量表，自我归因量表与他人归因量表则为本研究专门开发。此外，研究人员通过编码被试的开放式回答，对感恩对象、感恩原因及感恩行为表现三个变量进行了评估。数据集还包含其他未在此处报告的测量项，包括社会期望性、感恩节计划以及印度教被试所崇拜的神祇名称。
被试样本：本样本在性别与种族维度上均具有多样性。白人/高加索裔被试占总样本的54%，女性被试占60.7%。所有被试年龄均在18岁及以上，样本年龄中位数为39.86岁。本研究已获得杜克大学校园伦理审查委员会（Duke Campus IRB）批准，登记编号为Study 2021-0208。