A meta-analytic review of the relationship between dispositional gratitude and well-being

Abstract

What is the impact of dispositional gratitude on well-being? By synthesizing the literature, we evaluate the association between dispositional gratitude and mental well-being as a function of its various categories (i.e., positive, negative), dimensions (i.e., subjective, psychological), and indicators (e.g., life satisfaction, happiness, stress). Our meta-analytic aggregation of 404 effect sizes from 158 independent samples (N = 100,099) provides evidence that dispositional gratitude is moderately to strongly correlated with well-being, and that the strength of these associations varies by the indicator of well-being. We also examine potential moderators (i.e., religiosity, individualistic orientation, age, gender, dispositional gratitude measure, and sample type) of the association between dispositional gratitude and well-being. We find that country-level individualistic orientation, sample mean age, and sample type (i.e., clinical vs. non-clinical) present moderating effects for several of the relationships examined. We conclude the paper by presenting avenues for future research.