The study argues that the way people interpret the effects of karma varies according to whether people are talking about their 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 people to think that others deserve their misfortunes, while the desire to see themselves as a good person encourages them to perceive their victories as deserved. It’s a way of looking at things that flatters their ego, while at the same time comforting them with the idea that order reigns.

To test this idea, researchers conducted several experiments involving over 2,000 participants.

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 USA, India and Singapore. They, too, were asked to write about a personal karmic experience or that of someone else.

Here again, the 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.

Good karma for me, bad karma for you

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,” explained White in a news release.

The study showed 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,” said 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,” White added.

But if karma comforts people, it also acts as a mirror for their biases. By believing that your happiness is deserved, while the misfortunes of others are the consequence of their actions, people nurture a reassuring worldview that is sometimes blind to injustice.

This kind of belief speaks volumes about people’s need for order and merit in a world where chance remains difficult to accept.