LAUSR

Previous research has found that gratitude, which is a central concept or practice in many religions and spiritual traditions, benefits an individual's well-being and may reduce symptoms of depression (Emmons & Stern in Journal of Clinical Psychology 69: 846–855, 2013). The current research utilized two different samples from the United States (i.e., undergraduate students at a large, public university, and a national sample of individuals formerly raised by custodial grandparents and/or through foster care obtained through Amazon Mechanical Turk) to examine the relation between religiosity and well-being. Measures used included life satisfaction (Satisfaction with Life Scale), symptoms of depression (Center for Epidemiological Studies of Depression Scale-Revised), and gratitude (the Gratitude Questionnaire-6 Item Form, GQ-6; and the Transpersonal Gratitude Scale). The relation between religiosity (the Stearns-McKinney Assessment of Religious Traits) and psychological well-being (i.e., life satisfaction and depression) was mediated by gratitude among adults formerly raised by custodial grandparents and undergraduate college students at a large Southeastern university. These results indicate that gratitude may be an important factor in understanding the relation between religiosity and depressive symptoms and life satisfaction.