Our minds play fascinating tricks when it comes to karma, as new research reveals we’re far more likely to see positive karmic experiences in our own lives while noticing primarily negative ones in others’ lives.
The comprehensive study, published May 1 in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, found that karma believers across multiple cultures consistently apply supernatural justice in a self-serving way that satisfies deeper psychological needs.
“We found very similar patterns across multiple cultural contexts, including Western samples, where we know people often think about themselves in exaggeratedly positive ways, and samples from Asian countries where people are more likely to be self-critical,” said Dr. Cindel White of York University, the study’s lead author.
The research team conducted three experiments with more than 2,000 participants from diverse religious backgrounds, including Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and non-religious individuals in the United States, Singapore, and India. Participants were asked to recall and write about karmic events in their own lives or in others’ lives.
Across all experiments, the researchers found that when asked about themselves, 69% of participants described positive karmic experiences – good things happening because of their good deeds. When writing about others, however, 82% described negative karmic experiences – bad things happening as punishment for misdeeds.
While this self-serving bias appeared in all countries studied, it was strongest among American participants and slightly weaker in Singaporean and Indian samples, where cultures traditionally emphasize self-criticism and collectivism rather than individualism.
“The positive bias in karmic self-perceptions is a bit weaker in the Indian and Singaporean samples compared with U.S. samples, but across all countries, participants were much more likely to say that other people face karmic punishments while they receive karmic rewards,” White explained.
This pattern reveals something fundamental about how supernatural beliefs serve various psychological needs. While karma provides a framework where actions have consequences, our minds selectively apply this framework in ways that protect and enhance our self-image.
The research builds on previous work showing that people tend to attribute their successes to internal factors like skill and effort, while blaming failures on external circumstances – a well-documented phenomenon called self-serving bias. What’s notable is how this extends into the supernatural realm.
“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,” White said.
The findings provide insight into how ancient religious concepts like karma – common in Hindu and Buddhist traditions but increasingly adopted in Western societies – interact with basic human psychological tendencies. These patterns likely influence moral decision-making, emotional responses to life events, and how we perceive justice in everyday experiences.
As supernatural beliefs continue to shape how billions of people understand their world, this research suggests we should be mindful of our tendency to apply these beliefs in asymmetric ways that favor ourselves while potentially making us less compassionate toward others’ misfortunes.
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