Summary: A new study finds that people apply the idea of karma differently to themselves than to others. Individuals are more likely to interpret their own positive experiences as karmic rewards, while attributing others’ misfortunes to karmic punishment.
Across multiple experiments and cultural samples, researchers identified a consistent pattern: people’s beliefs about karma are influenced by two psychological motivations — a self-positivity bias that leads individuals to see themselves in a favorable light, and a desire to believe in a just world that makes others’ suffering appear deserved. Although the tendency is somewhat weaker in some Asian samples, the overall self-versus-other divergence in applying karmic explanations emerged in every group studied.
Key Facts:
- Self vs. Other Bias: People tend to credit themselves with karmic rewards and see others as recipients of karmic punishment.
- Cultural Variation: The pattern appears across cultures but is slightly reduced in samples from India and Singapore.
- Psychological Drivers: Self-positivity bias and belief in a just world together shape how people attribute good and bad outcomes to karma.
Source: APA (American Psychological Association)
Many people worldwide hold some version of karmic belief — the notion that actions bring corresponding rewards or punishments. The new research, published in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, explores how these supernatural beliefs are used in everyday thinking to explain and emotionally manage life events.
Cindel White, PhD, of York University, and colleagues examined how motivational factors shape people’s karma beliefs. They proposed that the desire to see the world as fair encourages people to interpret others’ misfortunes as karmic punishment, while self-positivity bias prompts individuals to interpret positive events in their own lives as evidence of karmic reward.
To investigate, the team conducted multiple studies involving more than 2,000 participants. In one initial study of 478 U.S. participants who reported believing in karma, people were asked to recount a karmic event involving themselves or someone else. Participants represented a range of religious backgrounds, including Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, other faiths, and non-religious perspectives.
Trained coders evaluated the written accounts to determine whether each story described a positive or negative karmic event and whether it concerned the participant or another person. Most participants (86 percent) chose to describe a personal experience; a majority of those personal accounts (59 percent) depicted something positive attributed to good karma. By contrast, among the smaller group who described another person’s experience, a large proportion (92 percent) recounted negative events seen as karmic punishment.
In a larger follow-up experiment with more than 1,200 participants, people were randomly assigned to write about either themselves or someone else. This sample included participants from the United States and also involved Buddhist participants in Singapore and Hindu participants in India. When writing about themselves, 69 percent of participants described a positive karmic experience; when writing about others, only 18 percent described positive experiences. Automated sentiment analysis of the word choice in these narratives supported the same pattern: self-related karmic stories were more positively toned than those about others.
Although the self-favoring bias in karmic interpretation appeared across cultural contexts, it was somewhat attenuated in Indian and Singaporean samples. That finding aligns with prior research showing reduced self-positivity bias in some Asian cultures, where people are more likely to be self-critical. Still, participants from every country in the study were more likely to view others as receiving karmic punishment while crediting themselves with karmic rewards.
White and colleagues interpret these results as evidence that supernatural beliefs like karma are applied strategically: they help people make sense of events and satisfy personal motives. Attributing good outcomes to karmic merit allows people to claim credit and feel deserving, even when the connection between their actions and the positive result is unclear. Conversely, viewing others’ suffering as karmic retribution supports a sense of justice by making misfortune appear deserved.
These psychological uses of karmic belief — to maintain a favorable self-image and to impose moral order on the world — may help explain why such beliefs persist across different cultures and religious traditions. When secular explanations fall short, supernatural frameworks like karma can fill explanatory and emotional needs by linking behavior to consequences in a way that upholds personal motives for fairness and self-worth.
About this psychology research news
Author: Lea Winerman
Source: APA (American Psychological Association)
Contact: Lea Winerman – APA
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access. “Karma Rewards Me and Punishes You: Self–Other Divergences in Karma Beliefs” by Cindel White et al., Psychology of Religion and Spirituality