Gratitude and well-being: A robust relationship across individual differences, but moderated by cultural and...

Gratitude is a key contributor to well-being, yet the roles of individual factors such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status in this relationship remain unclear. In addition, little is known about whether this relationship varies across cultural and societal contexts. Across three studies (total N = 220,204; 67 countries) using cross-sectional data, we show that well-being is closely tied to gratitude experiences, with no meaningful universal individual differences across age, gender, socioeconomic status, or education. However, we did find that the strength of this connection varied across countries, which could be explained by various country-level moderators. For instance, the link was weaker in countries with lower national income and more collectivistic values. These patterns establish the strong connection between gratitude and well-being across a wide variety of cultures, but also suggest that gratitude may be less strongly associated with well-being in contexts where resources are scarce. As the first systematic study to examine the gratitude-well-being relationship across a broad range of individual and contextual differences, these findings underscore the significant role of gratitude in well-being and reveal both the universal as well as the contextually contingent aspects of this connection. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).