Citation: King, Pamela Ebsytne, Rebecca Ann Baer, Sean A. Noe, Stephanie Trudeau, Susan A. Mangan, and Shannon Rose Constable. 2022. Shades of Gratitude: Exploring Varieties of Transcendent Beliefs and Experience. Religions 13: 1091. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel13111091 Academic Editor: Kent Dunnington Received: 11 October 2022 Accepted: 6 November 2022 Published: 11 November 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). religions Article Shades of Gratitude: Exploring Varieties of Transcendent Beliefs and Experience Pamela Ebsytne King * , Rebecca Ann Baer , Sean A. Noe , Stephanie Trudeau , Susan A. Mangan and Shannon Rose Constable Thrive Center for Human Development, Fuller Theological Seminary, 180 N. Oakland Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91182, USA * Correspondence: pamking@fuller.edu Abstract: The study of gratitude has expanded beyond interpersonal gratitude and considers how people respond to gifts that are not caused by human agency. Given the discord between the prominent understanding of gratitude requiring the appropriate recognition of a gift to a giver and the increasing divergence of transcendent belief systems that do not acknowledge a transcendent or cosmic giver, we explored how people with different worldviews viewed and experienced gratitude. Transcendence does not hinge on metaphysical beliefs, but it can be experienced phenomenologically and subjectively. We conducted a case-study narrative analysis (N = 6) that represents participants from three different categories of belief systems: theistic, non-theistic but spiritual, and other. Our findings demonstrate how people link their transcendent narrative identity to their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors pertaining to gratitude. Although the theistic participants thanked God for gifts, others who experienced transcendence without a clear referent or source described responding to gratitude by sharing goodness forward. These narratives suggest that the recognition and appreciation of a gift stemming from beyond human cause may be enough to generate transcendent emotions and values that prompt beyond-the-self behaviors. Keywords: gratitude; transcendent gratitude; cosmic gratitude; transcendence; beliefs; virtue; spiri- tuality; religion; case study; qualitative 1. Introduction Given the mounting evidence in support of gratitude’s positive effects on well-being and social ties, it is not surprising that the study of gratitude continues to expand, moving beyond examining gratitude between and toward people to examining gratitude toward more transcendent sources. This expansion is evident in recent publications on grati- tude to less tangible benefactors (Tsang et al. 2021), transpersonal gratitude (Hlava et al. 2014; Steindl-Rast 2004), gratitude to God (Krause et al. 2014, 2015, 2017; Nelson et al. 2022; Roberts 2014; Rosmarin et al. 2011; Wilt and Exline 2022), higher-order gratitude (Lin 2014, 2017), existential gratitude (Jans-Beken and Wong 2021), and cosmic gratitude (Cohoe 2022; Manela 2019; Roberts 2014). Within this study, we were interested in how people’s transcendent beliefs are linked to their views and experiences of gratitude for gifts that are not attributed to human agency. Although people in the US are moving away from conventional religious self-identification and affiliation toward broader understand- ings of spirituality and transcendence (Ammerman 2013; Kim et al. in press; Smith 2021; Steensland et al. 2018), psychological research generally neglects nuances of transcendent construals. Consequently, we conducted an in-depth case-study analysis of six individuals with either theistic, non-theistic but spiritual, or other beliefs. 1.1. The Power of Transcendent Narratives Based on McAdams and Pals (2006) theory of personality, all persons internalize narratives that are more or less coherently integrated within their identities. These nar- Religions 2022, 13, 1091. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111091 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions