Secular and Spiritual Gratitude: Impacts on Mood, Stress, Spirituality and Sense of Gratitude

In times of stress, the tendency for our aspects of well-being, such as happiness, to decline becomes default. To combat this, some individuals practice gratitude, and others may seek support from a Higher Power (Krause, N. & Hayward, D. R. 2012; Llenares et al., 2020; Rosmarin et al., 2012). In this study, we recruited participants via social media and tasked them with the writing of a gratitude letter in either a secular or spiritual context. We hypothesized these groups would show impacts on mood, stress levels, spirituality, and gratitude. From our analyses, we found significant results in mood and spirituality between the three groups, yet gratitude and stress did not show any significant changes.