Jo-Ann Tsang

Baylor University | BU · Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

Gratitude has been studied in the context of human social relationships primarily, but relatively less is known about gratitude in relation to a deity. We extended this research by studying gratitude among Muslim American adolescents, an understudied population, by comparing feelings of gratitude to Allah with feelings of gratitude to people in the...

Using cross-sectional data from N = 4274 young adults across 16 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examined the cross-cultural measurement invariance of the perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD) scale and tested the hypothesis that the association between PVD and fear of COVID-19 is stronger under high disease threat [that is, absence of...

Using cross-sectional data from N = 4274 young adults across 16 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examined the cross-cultural measurement invariance of the perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD) scale and tested the hypothesis that the association between PVD and fear of COVID-19 is stronger under high disease threat [that is, absence of...

We test the effectiveness of 2 different written inductions of gratitude toward God and analyze the content and outcomes of these gratitude expressions. We recruited 1,170 predominantly Christian U.S. participants across 3 CloudResearch datasets. Participants were randomly assigned to write about gratitude to God or another benefactor, including pe...

Although psychologists were certainly not the first to study flourishing, virtues, spirituality, and religiousness, one of their key contributions has been to examine these constructs using the scientific method. Complex concepts such as gratitude, humility, spirituality, and religiousness present unique challenges to researchers, requiring them to...

Well-known predictors of prejudice toward Muslims include social dominance and authoritarianism. However, a gap exists for variables reflecting a rejection or mitigation of ideological motivations associated with prejudice toward Muslims. We examined if quiet ego was related to positive attitudes toward Muslims, and whether this could be explained...

Extant literature often assumes that gratitude is intrinsically positive therefore ought to be maximized. Virtue theory and social alignment theory, however, suggest gratitude is adaptive only in specific relational contexts. Drawing from find-remind-bind theory’s notion that gratitude functions to promote interactions with supportive partners in p...

Much of the recent work on prejudice emphasizes individual differences, which focuses on the strength of relations between variables on specific instances of prejudice such as racial–ethnic or sexual prejudices. However, the relations between religiosity and prejudice variables are inconsistent and sometimes even paradoxical (Allport, 1954). In thr...

**IN PRESS AT THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY** Christian Americans are on track to become a minority of the U.S. population by midcentury. Research on racial demographic shifts shows majority-group members experience status threat when reminded of similar demographic changes. Public debate about religious freedom and the role of Chri...

Attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policies are divisive issues in American politics. These attitudes are influenced by factors such as political orientation and religiousness, with religious and conservative individuals demonstrating higher prejudice toward immigrants and refugees, and endorsing stricter immigration policies. Christian na...

Although self-reports suggest that religious individuals consider themselves universally prosocial, behavioral measures suggest a more limited prosociality and priming studies suggest a small causal relationship. Recent research has uncovered new moderators, with religiousness being more strongly related to prosociality under self-image threat, and...

Two experiments ( N = 487) tested the effects of receiving an apology (absent, present) and restitution (absent, present) in imagery of a one-sided transgression and common property crime, a burglary scenario. Within a framework of accountability, apology and restitution represent relationally responsive responsibility-taking and repair efforts by...

Apology and restitution each represents wrongdoers’ accountable repair responses that have promoted victims’ self-reported empathy and forgiveness in crime scenario research. The current study measured emotional and stress-related dependent variables including physiological measures, to illuminate the links between predictors of forgiveness and hea...

Four experiments utilized experimental inductions of gratitude and behavioral measures of prosociality to explore the effects of 4 variables on gratitude and grateful prosocial outcomes: benefactor similarity (Study 1), intention (Study 2), future benefits (Study 3), and anonymity (Study 4). We consistently found that the receipt of a favor increas...

We investigated relationships between dispositional guilt-proneness, shame-proneness, and self-forgiveness. Drawing on motivational frameworks, we theorized that shame-proneness should be wholly problematic for self-forgiveness, whereas some aspects of guilt-proneness may be adaptive. Consistent with this framework, across both community (n = 502)...

We review 14 measures of forgiveness, including measures of state forgiveness, forgivingness as a disposition or trait, self-reported state self-forgiveness, and trait self-forgivingness. The state forgiveness measures include self-report measures, chemical measures of state unforgiveness and forgiveness, measures of peripheral physiology (i.e., bl...

We propose a model that explains the negative relationship between materialism and life satisfaction. We test negative affect as a mediator of the relationship between materialism and dissatisfaction with life, and gratitude and positive affect as moderators of this effect. Self-report data collected from 246 (129 female) undergraduate students gen...

Materialism has been consistently related to lower levels of life satisfaction. We suggest that one reason for this negative relationship may be that high materialists find it harder to be grateful, and lower levels of trait gratitude may be related to unmet psychological needs. 246 undergraduate marketing students (129 female) completed self-repor...

Forgiveness research has predominately focused on individual/relational outcomes such as well-being and closeness. Less research has examined group outcomes such as cohesiveness or collective action. Forgiveness studies have also emphasized the victim's or transgressor's perspective, neglecting the effects of forgiveness on ingroup members who have...

Two studies examined whether conciliatory behavior aids self-forgiveness and whether it does so in part by making it seem more morally appropriate. Participants in Study 1 (n = 269) completed an offense-recall procedure; participants in Study 2 (n = 208) imagined a social transgression under conciliatory behavior (yes, no) and receipt of forgivenes...

We built upon previous laboratory studies by examining the independent and interactive effects of restitution and apology on behavioral and self-reported measures relevant to forgiveness. Undergraduates (N = 155) received two of 10 tickets in a distribution. Some thought another participant was the distributor; others thought it was random. Later,...

Connections between humility and other prosocial qualities led us to develop a humility–helpfulness hypothesis. In three studies, humble persons were more helpful than less humble persons. In Study 1, participants (n = 117) completed self-report measures of humility, the Big Five, and helpfulness. In Study 2, participants (n = 90) completed an impl...

Although gratitude is an important component of religion, very little research exists on the relationship between religion and gratitude. Most research is correlational and relies on self-report measures. We addressed these limitations by experimentally manipulating religious salience and by including a behavioral measure of gratitude. We examined...

McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson (2001) posited that gratitude prompts individuals to behave prosocially. However, research supporting the prosocial effect of gratitude has relied on scenario and self-report methodology. To address limitations of previous research, this experiment utilised a laboratory induction of gratitude, a method tha...

An implicit measure of religiousness-spirituality (RS) was constructed and used in two studies. In Study 1, undergraduates completed a Religiousness-Spirituality Implicit Association Test (RS-IAT) and several self-report measures of RS and related constructs (e.g., religious fundamentalism, authoritarianism). Informants rated the participants’ RS....

Psychologists have devoted considerable theoretical and empirical attention to the scientific study of social attitudes and prejudice. Most of these studies were conducted with relatively small, nonrepresentative samples of college students. In this study, the authors analyzed self-report data from a random probability sample with over 1500 America...

This study extends research on the relationship between religious orientation, sexual prejudice, and antipathy toward value-violating behaviors. If intrinsic religion leads individuals to “love the sinner but hate the sin,” homosexual sexually promiscuous targets should be treated similarly to heterosexual promiscuous targets. One hundred female in...

The effect of large and small favors on gratitude was tested using a behavioral measure. Participants were 149 undergraduates (120 female, 29 male). Half received raffle tickets for a US$100 prize, and half received tickets for a US$10 prize. Some received tickets from another (fictitious) student, and others received tickets by chance. Participant...

The relationship between intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest religious orientations, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and implicit and explicit attitudes toward homosexual individuals were examined within a sample of predominantly Protestant college students in the United States. Implicit attitudes were measured with the Implicit Association Test, a...

Fritz Heider's theory of social perception is reviewed, and the close connection between attribution, balance, and unit relationship are examined, primarily through Heider's own writings. Attribution and balance have historically been considered separate theories, but the authors show how these two ideas, in conjunction with the idea of unit format...

Personality correlates of implicit and explicit attitudes toward homosexual and heterosexual individuals were examined within a sample of predominantly Protestant college students in the south-central United States. Implicit attitudes were measured with the Implicit Association Test, a computer program that recorded reaction times as participants c...

This article examines the longitudinal relationship between forgiveness and the restoration of closeness and commitment in relationships that have been damaged by transgressive behavior. Participants were 201 university students who had recently incurred painful interpersonal transgressions. The revenge and benevolence dimensions of forgiveness app...

Gratitude and indebtedness have often been equated in psychology. Emerging research, however, suggests that these emotions are experienced differently and occur in response to different situations (Gray, Emmons, & Morrison, 2001). The current set of experiments investigated the effects of helper intention on grateful and indebted reactions to a fav...

We examined victim and offender correlates of forgiveness for intimate partner violence. Participants were from couples (132 women, 75 men) in which males were convicted of intimate partner violence and court-ordered into an intervention program. In women, empathy and general religiousness positively related to forgiveness, but attributions of blam...

World events and psychological research often fail to support a relationship between religion and forgiveness. We suggest that the gap between general religious support of forgiveness and actual forgiveness by religious individuals (the religion-forgiveness discrepancy) described by McCullough and Worthington (1999) may be partly due to methodologi...

Two studies were conducted to explore gratitude in daily mood and the relationships among various affective manifestations of gratitude. In Study 1, spiritual transcendence and a variety of positive affective traits were related to higher mean levels of gratitude across 21 days. Study 2 replicated these findings and revealed that on days when peopl...

The authors examined the associations of the Big Five personality factors with religiousness in adulthood for a 19-year longitudinal sample of 492 adolescents age 12 to 18. Among the Big Five, Conscientiousness in adolescence was uniquely related to higher religiousness in early adulthood. For adolescents high in Emotional Stability, the link betwe...

The investigators proposed that transgression-related interpersonal motivations result from 3 psychological parameters: forbearance (abstinence from avoidance and revenge motivations, and maintenance of benevolence), trend forgiveness (reductions in avoidance and revenge, and increases in benevolence), and temporary forgiveness (transient reduction...

The investigators proposed that transgression-related interpersonal motivations result from 3 psychological parameters: forbearance (abstinence from avoidance and revenge motivations, and maintenance of benevolence), trend forgiveness (reductions in avoidance and revenge, and increases in benevolence), and temporary forgiveness (transient reduction...

In this chapter, we discuss important issues in the mesaurement of religion and spirituality and present a hierarchical model for conceptualizing the various aspects of religiousness that might be measured empirically. We begin by briefly distinguishing between religion and spirituality. Following the description of the hierarchical model, we use t...

A conceptual analysis is offered that differentiates four types of motivation for community involvement: egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism. Differentiation is based on identification of a unique ultimate goal for each motive. For egoism, the ultimate goal is to increase one's own welfare; for altruism, it is to increase the welfare of...

Moral rationalization is an individual's ability to reinterpret his or her immoral actions as, in fact, moral. It arises out of a conflict of motivations and a need to see the self as moral. This article presents a model of evil behavior demonstrating how situational factors that obscure moral relevance can interact with moral rationalization and l...

In four studies, the authors examined the correlates of the disposition toward gratitude. Study I revealed that self-ratings and observer ratings of the grateful disposition are associated with positive affect and well-being, prosocial behaviors and traits, and religiousness/spirituality. Study 2 replicated these findings in a large nonstudent samp...

Psychology after World War II became a science largely devoted to healing. It concentrated on repairing damage using a disease model of human functioning. This almost exclusive attention to pathology neglected the idea of a fulfilled individual and a thriving community, and it neglected the possibility that building strength is the most potent weap...

In four studies, the authors examined the correlates of the disposition toward gratitude. Study 1 revealed that self-ratings and observer ratings of the grateful disposition are associated with positive affect and well-being prosocial behaviors and traits, and religiousness/spirituality. Study 2 replicated these findings in a large nonstudent sampl...

We examine the importance of group membership in stigma and its role in the effectiveness of self-protective cognitions in three experiments. In Experiment I, men are asked to interact with an attractive female who will judge their value as a potential date, and either eat a mint or a clove of raw garlic prior to the interview. Although the stigmat...

Gilligan (1982) put forth a care moralorientation based on women's responses to moraldilemmas. We tested in 2 studies Gilligan's predictedgender differences and the effect of dilemma content onmoral orientation. We used real-life dilemmasconsisting of the Baby M surrogate motherhood case andthe Kimberly Mays case where babies were switched atbirth;...

Perhaps beginning with Cicero, who called gratitude "the parent of the virtues," scholars in the humanities have associated gratitude with morality and prosocial behavior. The limited amount of social scientific research on gratitude that has accumulated over the last century demonstrates these assertions to be generally accurate, with some qualifi...

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Kansas, Psychology, 1996. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-57).