How Karma Harms and Helps Generosity Toward Those in Need

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cross-Cultural Psychology
• Belief Systems

Background:

• Belief in karma is prevalent across cultures and influences social perceptions.
• Understanding how karma shapes helping behaviors and justifications for inequality is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the cross-cultural effects of belief in karma on victim blaming and helping behaviors.
• To examine how karma framing influences generosity based on recipient need and attributions for misfortune.

Main Methods:

• Three cross-cultural studies (N=6,049) conducted in India, Singapore, and the United States.
• Experimental manipulations involving reminders of karma and varying recipient characteristics.
• Measurement of system-justifying beliefs, generosity, and attributions for financial hardship.

Main Results:

• Belief in karmic causality positively predicted system-justifying beliefs but also encouraged generosity.
• Karma framing altered the importance of recipient characteristics in predicting giving.
• Experimental karma reminders reliably increased generosity towards recipients whose misfortune was not their fault.

Conclusions:

• Karmic beliefs can simultaneously legitimize social inequalities and motivate helping behaviors.
• Karma influences responses to misfortune by drawing attention to naturalistic explanations for hardship.
• The impact of karma on generosity is sensitive to the perceived reasons behind an individual's misfortune.