Lesley Hazleton is a former psychologist and journalist and is the author of Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother. Hazleton lives in Seattle and describes herself as having “deep roots in both Judaism and Catholicism.”

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University in California. She is also a yoga teacher and has written about yoga and gratitude.

Philip Watkins teaches psychology at Eastern Washington University in Cheney. He specializes in gratitude and has researched its relationship to spirituality.

Jan St. John is producer and host of Radio Gratitude, a San Francisco based-program that spotlights gratitude and altruism.

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor of psychology at University of California, Riverside. She studies human happiness. She has researched the effects of “counting one’s blessings” as a way of enhancing happiness.

Joan Borysenko of Colorado is an author and Harvard-trained medical scientist who specializes in mind-body topics. She has written about gratitude.

Jay Marshall wrote Thanking and Blessing: The Sacred Art. He is dean of the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Ind., and a Quaker minister.

Dan P. McAdams is a professor of psychology and director of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. McAdams’ research examines how people develop their identities, and he has studied “generativity,” adults’ concern for the next generation. His book The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, which finds personal redemption a major […]

Stephen C. Berkwitz wrote “History and Gratitude in Theravada Buddhism,” which appeared in the September 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. He heads the department of religious studies at Missouri State University in Springfield.