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KINDLING THE
SCIENCE OF GRATITUDE
14, 15, and 16 October 2000
Dallas, Texas
PURPOSE
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Mother
and Child Mary Cassatt Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia
/ Superstock
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Gratitude
is a highly prized human disposition. But the concept of thankfulness
has inspired very little systematic scientific research despite its
role in our individual and collective well-being. What exactly is gratitude?
What are its psychological roots? What are its components? Can they
be measured? If so, how? Is gratitude universal in human societies?
Is there an animal equivalent? What is the relationship between gratitude
and physical and emotional health? What are the religious foundations
of gratitude? What are its moral functions and spiritual uses? How might
scientific inquiry into the profoundly important but heretofore neglected
topic of thanksgiving be stimulated? To consider such provocative questions,
the John Templeton Foundation brings together thirteen scholars in Dallas,
the Texas city that is the home of the Center for World Thanksgiving.
They explore the subject of gratitude from the perspectives of anthropology,
biology, moral philosophy, psychology, and theology. Drawing
on their own research and that of others, they examine the evidence
for the conclusions reached by wise people through the ages that, as
Sir John Marks Templeton put it, "an attitude of gratitude creates blessings."
CHAIR
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Autumn
Maggie Lambert The Grand Design, Leeds, England / Superstock
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Robert
A. Emmons is a professor of psychology at the University
of California, Davis, where he has taught for the past twelve years.
His research is focused on the measurement of personal striving as a
determinant of the subjective quality of life. In particular, he explores
how religiousness and spirituality may reflect core aspects of identity
and how these aspects of self are involved in well-being and personality
coherence and integration over time. A graduate of the University of
Maine, he received a Ph.D. in personality psychology from the University
of Illinois in 1986. Dr. Emmons taught at Illinois and Michigan State
University before joining the Davis faculty. A consulting editor of
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, he also serves
on the editorial board of the International Journal of the Psychology
of Religion. The recipient of grants from the National Institute
of Mental Health, the National Institute for Disability, and the John
Templeton Foundation, he is the author of some sixty research articles
and book chapters. His acclaimed new study of motivational theory, The
Psychology of Ultimate Concerns: Motivation and Spirituality in Personality,
was published last year by Guilford Press.
PARTICIPANTS
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Bouquet
of Roses Abbott Fuller Christie’s Images,
New York / Superstock
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A
world-renowned primatologist, Frans B. M. de
Waal is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior
at Emory University and director of the university’s Living Links Center
for the Advanced Study of Ape and Human Evolution. A native of The Netherlands,
he graduated from the University of Nijmegen and earned a Ph.D. in biology
from the University of Utrecht in 1977. His work on the response of
primates to their environment focuses on social complexity in the widest
sense. At Emory’s Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, he is currently
investigating conflict resolution, reciprocity, personality differences,
and the use of computers in testing cognitive abilities and social knowledge.
His research has been supported by grants from the National Science
Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute
of Mental Health, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Geographic
Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.
Dr. de Waal is an elected correspondent member of the Royal Dutch Academy
of Sciences. The author of numerous articles, he is the editor of three
books and the author of four others. They include the international
bestseller Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (1982),
Peacemaking Among Primates (1989), which won the Los Angeles
Times Book Award, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in
Humans and Other Animals (1996), and (with wildlife photographer
Frans Lanting) Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (1997), which has introduced
readers throughout the world to the last large mammal to become known
to science. Dr. de Waal’s most recent study, The Ape and the Sushi
Master: Cultural Reflections by a Primatologist, deals with the
possibility of culture in other animals and will be published next spring
by Basic Books.
Barbara
L. Fredrickson is a pathfinder in the fledgling field of
"positive psychology." An associate professor at the University of Michigan,
where she began teaching in 1995 and holds appointments in both psychology
and women’s studies, she was graduated summa cum laude from Carleton
College and earned her Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford University in
1990. She was subsequently a post-doctoral fellow at the University
of California, Berkeley and then an assistant professor of psychology
at Duke University. Dr. Fredrickson has won numerous academic prizes,
and earlier this year, she was awarded the first ever, first place John
Marks Templeton Positive Psychology Prize for original research on how
to cultivate and build on human strengths. She also has received research
grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the University
of Michigan, Duke University, and the Meyerhoff Foundation. Much of
her work has focused on cultivating the so-called positive emotions
— joy, interest, contentment, love — at both psychophysiological and
cognitive levels. Her research suggests they can speed recovery from
the potentially heart-damaging effects of fear and anxiety and enhance
an individual’s physical, intellectual, and social resources. Dr. Fredrickson
is the author of some thirty articles and book chapters.
A
political scientist whose research focuses on the role economic ideas
play in modern political thought and their impact on modern state institutions,
Edward J. Harpham is an associate
professor of government and political economy at The University of Texas
at Dallas. He was graduated with highest distinction from Pennsylvania
State University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received
his Ph.D. in political science from Cornell University in 1980. A visiting
professor at the University of Houston before joining the Dallas faculty
in 1981, he currently serves as both Dallas’s associate dean of undergraduate
studies and director of its honors program. Dr. Harpham is the recipient
of a number of teaching awards and has held research grants from Cornell,
The Institute for Humane Studies, the University of Houston, the University
of Texas at Dallas, and the Liberty Fund. The president-elect of the
Southwestern Political Science Association, he has published more than
thirty articles and book chapters and co-authored three books. The most
recent, The Rhythms of American Politics (with Brian J. L. Berry,
Euel Elliott, and Heja Kim), was published by University Press of America
in 1998. It is the first book to systematically explore the relationships
between macroeconomic movements and the cyclical nature of political
activity in the United States. Dr. Harpham is currently writing a book
on the economic and political thought of Adam Smith.
Aafke
Elizabeth Komter,
associate professor on the Faculty of Social Science of Utrecht University
and chair of social science at University College, Utrecht, investigates
the social and cultural meanings of gift exchange. A native of The Netherlands,
she studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam where she received
her baccalaureate degree followed by a Ph.D. in 1985. She began her
teaching career as an assistant professor at Nijmegen University and
at Leyden University then became a senior researcher at Leyden before
joining the Utrecht faculty in 1990. She has been an associate member
of Balliol College, Oxford and a visiting professor in the Graduate
School of Social Science at Amsterdam. Her research, which also includes
explorations of the phenomena of reciprocity and of solidarity, has
been supported by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research. Dr.
Komter serves on the editorial board of The Netherlands’ Journal
of Social Science. She is the author of numerous articles and the
editor of The Gift: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Amsterdam
University Press, 1996). She is currently preparing a manuscript for
publication entitled "Solidarity and the Gift."
One
of the pioneers in research on human emotions, Richard
S. Lazarus is the author of some twenty books in the fields
of personality and clinical psychology, including the hugely influential
Psychological Stress and the Coping Process (1966), which is
considered a classic, and the 1991 landmark study, Emotion and Adaptation.
He is now professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California,
Berkeley. A graduate of City College of New York, he served as an officer
with the United States Army in World War II and then obtained a Ph.D.
in psychology at the University of Pittsburgh in 1948. His first academic
appointments were at The Johns Hopkins University and Clark University,
where he was director of the clinical training program in psychology.
He joined the Berkeley faculty as an associate professor in 1957 and
was appointed a full professor two years later. Dr. Lazarus’s early
research focused on individual differences in perception, an interest
that has continued throughout his career. He believed that stress and
emotion were at the core of human adaptation, and he worked on crafting
a theoretical framework for these concepts using innovative formulations
in the tradition of leading phenomenologists. At Berkeley, he pioneered
the use of motion picture films to produce stress reactions naturalistically
in the laboratory. In an extensive program of psycho-physiological research,
he and his colleagues made a strong experimental case for the causal
role in stress of cognitive coping processes, and their work led to
Dr. Lazarus’s path-breaking book. In the late 1970s, however, he changed
his research style because he became convinced that the psychology of
stress could best be advanced by field investigations. For more than
a decade, he led the highly productive Berkeley Stress and Coping Project.
In the late 1980s, he turned his attention to a larger canvas and produced
his cognitive-motivational-relational theory of human emotions and how
they play a complex, central role in an individual’s lifelong efforts
to survive, flourish, and achieve. Dr. Lazarus’s investigations have
been supported by the United States Public Health Service (USPHS), the
National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Drug Addiction,
the National Cancer Institute, the Army Research Institute, the Guggenheim
Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. A fellow of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Psychological
Association (APA), he has received the APA’s Distinguished Scientific
Contribution Award and its Division of Health Psychology Award for Lifetime
Research Contributions to Health Psychology, the American Psychology
Society’s William James Fellow Award, and the California Psychological
Association’s Distinguished Scientific Achievement in Psychology Award.
Dr. Lazarus has been a USPHS Special Fellow at Waseda University in
Japan, Misha Strassberg Visiting Research Professor at the University
of Western Australia, and a visiting professor at the University of
Heidelberg and Auhus University in Denmark. He holds honorary degrees
from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany and Haifa University in
Israel. In addition to his monographs and textbooks, he is the author
of more than 200 scientific articles. His latest book, Stress and
Emotion: A New Synthesis, was published last year by Springer (New
York).
Dan
P. McAdams is the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of
Teaching Excellence and a professor of human development and psychology
at Northwestern University. He also directs Northwestern’s Foley Center
for the Study of Lives. A graduate of Valparaiso University, where he
received his degree with highest distinction, he earned a Ph.D. in psychology
and social relations at Harvard University in 1979. Before joining the
Northwestern faculty, he taught at the University of Minnesota and Loyola
University in Chicago. Dr. McAdams’s research on the relationship between
storytelling and personal development has put him in the forefront of
psychology’s effort to understand people in the contexts of their everyday
lives. It has been supported by grants from the Foley Family Foundation,
the Spenser Foundation, Northwestern, Loyola, and the American Lutheran
Church. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA)
and a recipient of the Henry A. Murray Award given by the APA’s Division
of Personality and Social Psychology. Dr. McAdams currently serves as
editor of The Narrative Study of Lives, associate editor of The
Encyclopedia of Psychology, consulting editor of Personality
and Social Psychology Review, and on the editorial board of Psychological
Science. He is the author of some 100 articles and the author or
editor of ten books. His most recent, The Person: An Integrative
Introduction to Personality Psychology, was published last summer
by Harcourt Brace.
An
investigator who looks at links between spirituality and health, Michael
E. McCullough joined the faculty of Southern Methodist University
this year as an associate professor of psychology. He also holds adjunct
appointments at Duke University in the Center for the Study of Aging
and Human Development and the Center for Religion/Spirituality and Health.
Dr. McCullough was formerly the director of research at the National
Institute for Healthcare Research (NIHR), where he also conducted studies
on forgiveness and gratitude. A graduate of the University of Florida,
where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he received a Ph.D. in psychology
from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1995. He taught at Virginia
Commonwealth and Louisiana Tech University before joining the NIHR staff
in 1996. Dr. McCullough has won awards from the Association for Spiritual,
Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling, the John Templeton Foundation,
and the Psychology of Religion Division of the American Psychological
Association. The author of some sixty research articles and book chapters,
he is the co-editor (with Kenneth I. Pargament and Carl E. Thoresen)
of the recently published book, Forgiveness: Theory, Research, and
Practice (Guilford Press, 2000), and the co-author of two other
books, including the forthcoming Religion and Health (with Harold
G. Koenig and David B. Larson), which will be published by Oxford University
Press later this year.
Robert
C. Roberts is Distinguished Professor of Ethics at Baylor
University. A graduate of Wichita State University, he earned a bachelor
of divinity degree from Yale University in 1970 and a Ph.D. there in
1974. After teaching at Western Kentucky University for eleven years,
he was J. Omar Good Distinguished Visiting Professor at Juniata College
for one year before accepting appointment as a professor of philosophy
and psychological studies at Wheaton College, a position he held from
1984 to 2000. Dr. Roberts’s scholarly work, which involves Christian
thought as well as philosophy more generally, has been supported by
the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
In 1998-99, he held a Distinguished Scholar Fellowship at the University
of Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion. The former president
of the Illinois Philosophical Association and a former member of the
Executive Committee of the Society of Christian Philosophers, he serves
as a contributing editor of Journal of Psychology and Theology
and as a corresponding editor of Christianity Today. In addition
to publishing some forty journal articles and twenty chapters in collected
volumes, he has edited two books and is the author of five others, including
Taking the Word to Heart: Self and Other in the Age of Therapies
(1993). Dr. Roberts is presently completing a study entitled "Shaped
Passions: An Essay in Moral Psychology," a two-volume work on emotions
and virtues.
A
social scientist who conducts research on emotion, James
A. Russell studies the structure of emotion, the development
of emotional understanding in young children, and the facial expressions
of emotion. For the past thirteen years, he has been a professor of
psychology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver.
A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), he earned
his Ph.D. in psychology there in 1974. He was a UCLA Chancellor’s Fellow
and subsequently a Killam Senior Fellow and winner of a Killam Research
Prize. Dr. Russell joined the UBC faculty in 1975. He is a recipient
of the UBC Alumni Prize for Research in the Social Sciences. His research
also has been supported by the Canada Council, UBC, and the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He has been a visitor at
the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University
of California, Berkeley and a visiting professor at Autonoma University
of Madrid. A fellow of both the American Psychological Association and
the American Psychology Society, he is a past member of the editorial
board of the Journal of Environmental Psychology and a current
member of the editorial boards of Motivation and Emotion, Review
of Personality and Social Psychology, Cognition and Emotion, Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitude and Social Cognition,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality and Individual
Differences, and Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. Dr. Russell
is the author of nearly 100 articles and book chapters and the co-editor
of four books, including most recently The Psychology of Facial Expression
Concepts of Emotion (with J.M. Fernandez-Dols), which was published
by Cambridge University Press in 1997.
Solomon
Schimmel is a professor of Jewish education and psychology
at Hebrew College in Brookline, MA, and a life member of Clare Hall
College, Cambridge University. A graduate of City College of New York,
he did graduate work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and received
a Ph.D. in psychology from Wayne State University in 1971. He subsequently
held a National Science Foundation post-doctoral research fellowship
at Harvard University. He was appointed an assistant professor of psychology
at Brandies University in 1972, a position he held for three years before
joining the Hebrew College faculty as an associate professor. Named
a full professor in 1978, Dr. Schimmel was a Fulbright Senior Research
Scholar at Cambridge University in 1998, where he also was a visiting
fellow at Clare Hall. He is the author of some twenty scholarly articles
and book chapters as well as a book hailed as a humane guide for self-transformation,
The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian and Classical Reflections
on Human Psychology (Free Press, 1992; Oxford University Press,
1997). He is currently preparing two new volumes for publication, a
study on repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation and a Jewish perspective
on communal service and social work.
A
practicing clinical psychologist and an associate professor of psychology
at Regis University in Denver, Charles M. Shelton,
S. J. is a graduate of St. Louis University, where he was
elected to Phi Beta Kappa and went on to receive a M.A. in political
science. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1982, received a master
of divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA
in 1983, and earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Loyola University
in Chicago in 1989. His research in moral development, mental health,
and social justice has been supported by the Cambridge Center for Social
Studies and Regis. The former assistant managing editor of The Modern
Schoolman, he is the author of nearly fifty articles and book chapters
and six books. His latest study, Achieving Moral Health, was
published by Crossroad earlier this year. Dr. Shelton is currently working
on a manuscript entitled "Living A Grateful Life: A Psychology of Gratitude
for Everyday Life."
Brother
David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B. is a senior member of the Benedictine
community at Mount Savior in Elmira, New York, who has deepened the
spiritual lives of people all over the world through his lectures, workshops,
and writing. A native of Austria and a graduate of the Vienna Academy
of Fine Arts, he also studied anthropology and psychology at the University
of Vienna, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1952. The next year, he followed
his family to America and joined his present order. Brother David was
subsequently a post-doctoral fellow at Cornell and the first Roman Catholic
to hold the university’s Thorpe Lectureship. After twelve years of monastic
training and studies in philosophy and theology, he was sent by his
abbot to Japan to participate in Buddhist-Christian dialogue. He studied
with Zen masters there and soon became active in monastic renewal throughout
the United States. He also has lectured extensively abroad. Brother
David’s essays have appeared in a wide range of periodicals, and he
has contributed chapters to more than thirty books and made audio and
video tapes that have been distributed on five continents. He is the
author or co-author of five books, including Gratefulness, the Heart
of Prayer (1984, 1990), which has been anthologized in a number
of collections on matters of the spirit, and (with physicist Fritjof
Capa) Belonging to the Universe (1992), a dialogue on new thinking
in science and theology. His most recent book (with Sharon Lebell),
The Music of Silence, is a meditation on liturgical devotion,
which was published by Harper-San Francisco in 1996.
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Bird
in Hand Michael Wilson Swanstock / The Image Bank
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“A
single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer.”
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
“The
invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“This
is what binds all people and all creation together—the gratuity of the
gift of being.”
—Matthew Fox
“It
is more blessed to give than to receive.”
—Acts 20:35
“An
attitude of gratitude creates blessings.”
—Sir John Marks Templeton
The
Humble Approach Initiative
Contact Mary ann Meyers, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
A
Program of the John Templeton Foundation
300 Conshohocken State Road, Suite 500
West Conshohocken, PA 19428
610.941.2828 Fax 610.825.1730
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