Summary: A recent study reveals that people treat themselves and others different under the influence of karma. While some people view their own good experiences as spiritual rewards, people frequently perceive some ‘ struggling as deserved consequence.
This structure, which can be seen in different cultures, is influenced by two internal factors: a desire to believe in a merely earth and self-positivity discrimination. Despite having a weaker bias in Eastern samples, all groups had a stronger inclination to ascribe good karma to themselves and negative karma to others.
Important Information
- People attribute consequence to others and good karma to themselves.
- Cultural Influence: Although less prevalent in India and Singapore, there is still a partiality there.
- Psychological Impacts: How karma is applied are influenced by self-positivity discrimination and just-world values.
APA as the cause
Many people all over the world hold the concept of fate, which states that divine justice will punish those who perform poor deeds and reward those who do good deeds. However, according to study released by the American Psychological Association, that opinion differs for oneself and others.
According to the study, which was published in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, people are more likely to feel that they have earned good things in their own lives through spiritual merit.
Researchers at York University, including Cindel White, PhD, and her coworkers, wanted to understand how internal motivations influence people’s perceptions of guilt.
The researchers speculated that our desire to believe in a really universe, one where poor activities are punished, makes us focus on spiritual punishment when considering how karma affects other people.
However, we are more likely to concentrate on proving good fate in our own life due to a competing internal motivation, which is self-positivity discrimination or the desire to see ourselves as good citizens.
The researchers conducted a number of experiments with more than 2, 000 participants to check this by asking them to record and publish about spiritual events that occurred in their own lives or those of others. The researchers analyzed data from 478 U.S. members, all of whom said they believed in guilt, in the first review.
The participants had a range of religious backgrounds, with 29 % being Christians, 30 % being Buddhist, 22 % Hindu, 4 % being of other faiths, and 15 % being nonreligious.
Participants were given the task of writing about a spiritual incident that either occurred to them or another. The response was then evaluated by skilled coders to determine whether it was a positive or negative karmic event, and whether it involved the participant  , or another person.
Overall, the majority of participants (86 % ) chose to write about themselves-related events.
The majority of those ( 59 % ) wrote about a positive experience that was the result of good karma.
92 percent of the participants in the survey, which included a spiritual incident that occurred on another person, wrote about something negative.
More than 1,200 participants were given the task of writing about either someone that happened to themselves or another in a minute study. Individuals in this study included Hindus from India and Monks from Singapore.
Only 18 % of those asked to write about someone else wrote about a good experience, compared to 69 % of the respondents who were given the assignment to write about themselves.
The participants ‘ stories were more likely to have a positive attitude when they were writing about spiritual events in their own lives, according to a computer evaluation of the sentiments they used.
But, among American and Taiwanese participants, these differences were a little weaker than those found in the United States. That’s in line with previous studies that showed that self-positivity discrimination is less common in those faiths than in the United States, according to White.
We discovered really similar styles across a variety of cultural settings, including samples from Asian countries where people are more likely to be critical and American samples where we know people generally think about themselves in unnaturally beneficial ways.
Participants were significantly more likely to claim that other people are subject to spiritual punishments while receiving karmic rewards across all nations, despite the fact that the karmic self-perceptions are slightly weaker in the Indian and Singaporean samples than the U.S. samples.
Nevertheless, according to White, the study demonstrates how people strategically use mystical beliefs to make sense of and feel great about everyday events.
Even when it’s unclear exactly what they did to achieve the desired result, thinking about karma allows people to take specific record and feel delight in the great things that happen to them, she said. It also makes people see the suffering of others as justifiable retribution.
This fulfills a number of specific goals, including to observe oneself as great and deserving of good fortune, and to see justice in the suffering of others, and mystical beliefs like karma may be particularly effective at satiating these goals when additional, more secular explanations fall short.
About this information from psychology research
Author: Lea Winerman
Source: APA
Contact: Lea Winerman – APA
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Classic research: Free of charge.
Cindel White and others wrote the book” Karma Rewards Me and Punishes You: Self-Own Differences in Karma Beliefs.” Religion and Spirituality: Psychology and Perspectives
