I just took a look at the wording again and when you hover over the "?" icon it says:

"Every time you Refresh there is a chance of Purple or Gold Heroes appearing. When they do you will gain Spirit which can be redeemed for those heroes."

When I re-read this it seems to indicate that you only gain the Spirit points if YOU refresh, not when the system refreshes the line-up for you (i.e you pay credits to refresh the line-up). It would be nice to get a concrete answer on this, but like I said, to me the wording indicates Spirits are only received for refreshes that you do.