items of interest

with contributions from Robert Russell, Sharla Pugh

Last fall , the John Templeton Foundation brought 13 scholars to Dallas, Texas, home of the Center for World Thanksgiving [ www. thanksgiving.org]. Their purpose was to explore the nature of gratitude and its impact on individual and global life.

Among their conclusions, as reported by Dr. Robert Emmons, who organized and chaired the conference, were these points:

"Gratitude has innumerable implications for collective well-being and can be conceived of as a vital civic virtue. By experiencing gratitude, a person is motivated to carry out pro-social behavior, energized to sustain moral behaviors, and is inhibited from committing destructive interpersonal behaviors."

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