We tend to think that our happiness is deserved, while other people’s misfortunes are the consequence of their actions. — AFP
Many people believe in karma, the idea that good deeds attract rewards and bad deeds attract punishment.
A Canadian study, published in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, has examined this belief.
It argues that the way we interpret the effects of karma varies according to whether we’re talking about our own experiences or those of others.
Cindel White, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at York University and her team set out to understand more about people’s beliefs in karma.
The researchers hypothesise that the need for justice leads us to think that others deserve their misfortunes, while the desire to see ourselves as a good person encourages us to perceive our victories as deserved.
It’s a way of looking at things that flatter our ego, while at the same time comforting us with the idea that order reigns.
To test this idea, researchers conducted several experiments involving over 2,000 particpants
In the first, 478 Americans who believed in karma were asked to recount a karmic event they or someone else had experienced.
The vast majority (86%) chose to talk about a personal experience, and of these, 59% mentioned a positive event linked, in their opinion, to a good deed.
In contrast, 92% of those who told someone else’s story mentioned a negative event.
A second experiment involved over 1,200 participants from the United States, India and Singapore.
They, too, were asked to write about a personal karmic experience or that of someone else.
Here again, these figures speak for themselves: 69% of those who wrote about themselves described a positive episode, compared to just 18% of those who wrote about someone else.
Even the vocabulary used was more positive in personal accounts.
The belief in karma allows people to see other people’s suffering as justified retribution. — Freepik
Prevalence of positive bias
The researchers note that this effect was less marked in participants from India and Singapore.
They believe this difference reflects the lesser prevalence of the self-positivity bias in these cultures.
“The positive bias in karmic self-perceptions is a bit weaker in the Indian and Singaporean samples compared with US samples, but across all countries, participants were much more likely to say that other people face karmic punishments while they receive karmic rewards,” explains White in a news release.
The study shows how supernatural beliefs can be used strategically.
“Thinking about karma allows people to take personal credit and feel pride in good things that happen to them even when it isn’t clear exactly what they did to create the good outcome, but it also allows people to see other people’s suffering as justified retribution,” says White.
“This satisfies various personal motives – to see oneself as good and deserving of good fortune, and to see justice in other people’s suffering – and supernatural beliefs like karma might be especially good at satisfying these motives when other, more secular explanations fail.”
But if karma comforts us, it also acts as a mirror for our biases.
By believing that our happiness is deserved, while the misfortunes of others are the consequence of their actions, we nurture a reassuring worldview that is sometimes blind to injustice.
This kind of belief speaks volumes about our need for order and merit in a world where chance remains difficult to accept. – AFP Relaxnews
