Self-serving karmic beliefs: prosociality influences vicarious optimism

Abstract

Belief in karma is ubiquitous, appearing early in development and impacting prosocial behavior. Here, we tested the possibility that karmic beliefs are self-serving: are “good” people more likely to believe that good things happen to good people? Study 1 (n=170) showed stronger karmic beliefs in more prosocial individuals. Next, we tested whether self-serving karmic beliefs arose from a motivated deployment of vicarious optimism: prosocial individuals adopt karmic beliefs by prioritizing desirable (the fortunes of good people, the misfortunes of bad people) over undesirable information when predicting the future. Study 2 (n=107) showed that prosocials were more optimistic about the future of morally good (than bad) agents, while individualists were not. This was driven by prosocials’ failure to update beliefs from undesirable information about morally good agents. Together, we suggest that karmic beliefs are self-serving, and result from a failure to update beliefs from information that conflicts with a karmic worldview.