Gratitude and Wellbeing: A Robust Relationship Across Individual Differences, but Moderated by Context and Culture

Gratitude is a key contributor to wellbeing, yet the roles of individual factors such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) in this relationship remain unclear. Additionally, little is known about whether this relationship varies across cultural and societal contexts. Across four studies (total N = 220,314; 67 countries) using cross-sectional and daily diary data, we show that wellbeing is closely tied to gratitude experiences, with no meaningful universal individual differences across age, gender, SES, or education. However, this connection varies across contexts and cultures: The gratitude-wellbeing link was weaker in a pandemic context (versus post-pandemic) and moderated by various country-level factors, such as national income and collectivism. As the first systematic study to examine the gratitude-wellbeing relationship across a broad range of individual, contextual, and cultural differences, these findings underscore the significant role of gratitude in wellbeing and reveal how cultural and contextual factors relate to this connection.