McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson (2001) posited that gratitude prompts individuals to behave prosocially. However, research supporting the prosocial effect of gratitude has relied on scenario and self-report methodology. To address limitations of previous research, this experiment utilised a laboratory induction of gratitude, a method that is potentially more covert than scenarios and that elicits actual grateful emotion. Prosocial responses to gratitude—operationalised as the distribution of resources to another—were paired with a self-report measure of gratitude to test the prosocial effect (...) of gratitude. To investigate positive mood as an alternative explanation, this experiment compared responses of individuals receiving a favour to responses of individuals receiving a positive outcome by chance. A total of 40 participants were randomly assigned to either a Favour or Chance condition. Participants receiving a favour helped more and reported more gratitude compared to participants in the Chance condition. (shrink)

This comment explores the use of behavioral measures in the developmental study of guilt and gratitude reviewed by Vaish and Hepach. Although the use of behavioral measures in developmental...

Well-known predictors of prejudice toward Muslims include social dominance and authoritarianism. However, a gap exists for variables reflecting a rejection or mitigation of ideological motivations associated with prejudice toward Muslims. We examined if quiet ego was related to positive attitudes toward Muslims, and whether this could be explained by lower levels of authoritarianism, social dominance, and the motivation to express prejudice. We explored this possibility across two studies of adults in the United States. In Study 1, regression results showed quiet (...) ego was directly associated with positive attitudes toward Muslims. Study 2 utilized path analyses and found that the direct relationship between quiet ego and positive attitudes toward Muslims was explained by associations between quiet ego and lower endorsement of authoritarianism, social dominance, and the internal motivation to express prejudice toward Muslims. Moreover, these associations held when accounting for several correlates of intergroup attitudes. (shrink)

We present evidence for a complex relationship between religiousness and Haidt’s moral foundations, with data from four experiments, measuring 21 different dimensions of personal religiousness and utilizing six different religious primes. The more conservative dimensions of religiousness, such as intrinsic religious orientation and religious attendance, were positively related to binding moral foundations of loyalty, authority, and purity and sometimes related to the individualizing foundation of care. However, other, less conservative dimensions of religiousness, such as quest and extrinsic religious orientations, were (...) unrelated or negatively related to binding foundations. Benevolent God concept was the only religious measure that was positively related to all five moral foundations. We did not find reliable effects of religious primes on endorsement of moral foundations. Results suggest a consistent but complicated relationship between religiousness and moral foundations at a dispositional level. (shrink)