White Cindel J M, Willard Aiyana K
York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2025 Feb 4:1461672251313829. doi: 10.1177/01461672251313829.
Three preregistered cross-cultural studies ( = 6,049 across India, Singapore, and the United States) tested how belief in karma shapes victim blaming and helping. Study 1 found that belief in karmic causality positively predicts a variety of system-justifying beliefs that legitimate social inequalities, but experimental reminders of karma also encouraged generosity toward others experiencing financial hardship. Studies 2 and 3 tested whether karma framing had different effects on generosity toward different recipients, who varied in their level of need and reason for need. Thinking about karma changed the importance of recipient characteristics, with need being less predictive and external attributions more predictive of giving when thinking about karma. Overall, experimental reminders of karma only reliably increased generosity toward recipients whose financial need was no fault of their own, showing that karmic beliefs draw attention to the reasons for people's bad fortune, and evoke responses to misfortune that are sensitive to naturalistic explanations.
三项预先注册的跨文化研究（印度、新加坡和美国共有6049名参与者）测试了对因果报应的信念如何影响对受害者的指责和帮助行为。研究1发现，对因果报应的信念能正向预测各种为社会不平等合法化的制度正当化信念，但对因果报应的实验性提醒也会促使人们对经历经济困难的他人更加慷慨。研究2和研究3测试了因果报应框架对不同受助者的慷慨程度是否有不同影响，这些受助者在需求程度和需求原因上存在差异。思考因果报应改变了受助者特征的重要性，在思考因果报应时，需求对给予行为的预测性降低，而外部归因对给予行为的预测性增强。总体而言，对因果报应的实验性提醒仅可靠地增加了对那些经济需求并非自身过错所致的受助者的慷慨程度，这表明因果报应信念会让人关注人们遭遇不幸的原因，并引发对不幸的反应，这些反应对自然主义解释较为敏感。
