“Moderating role of the gender and religiosity on the relationship between Gratitude and Stress”

Abstract

Researchers have taken a comprehensive approach to understanding stress, spirituality, and religion, etc. over the past few decades. Recently, there has been increasing interest in understanding psychological correlations involving gratitude and stress. A study (Wood et al., 2007) has shown that being spiritual or having a religious belief plays a positive role in stress reduction. This relationship may not be equally true for women and men, as women may get benefited, particularly from the social context, therefore, resulting in positive emotional effects of gratitude for them. In the current study, an attempt has been made to investigate the relationship between gratitude and stress with gender and religiosity acting as moderators. For testing the hypothesized relationships, primary data was collected using a structured questionnaire from 348 respondents residing in India. Stress perception was measured using the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen, S., et al, 1983) and gratitude perception was captured using it (GQ-6; McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002), using response type 7-point likert scale. The study used scientific research tooli.e SPSS PROCESS Macro, Model 1, developed by Hayes, Andrew F, (2013) to test the conjectured hypotheses and establish the conceptual model. There is evidence of having a significant negative relationship between gratitude and stress and there was not a significant relationship between religiosity and stress. Further, the moderating role of gender and religiosity on the relationship between gratitude and stress, too, has been found checked and found significant for Gender. From this analysis, with the conditional effect, we have also found that significantly, there was the negative relationship between gratitude and stress those who female and male have believe in religiosity. Findings of the differences between gender and religiosity and the possible consequences for further studies in psychology and social science are discussed in a wider context.