Believers in karma tend to see it working in their favour and against everyone else. When people recall karma in their own lives, they mostly think of rewards for their good deeds; when they recall karma in other people’s lives, they mostly think of punishments.
The research was led by psychologist Cindel White of York University, with Atlee Lauder and Mina Aryaie. It appeared in the November 2025 issue of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, after the American Psychological Association, which publishes the journal, released the findings online on May 1, 2025.
Rewards for me, punishment for you
The team ran three studies with 2,041 participants. People described events they believed karma had caused, in their own lives and in others’, and the stories were coded as positive or negative using human coders, automated sentiment analysis and participants’ own ratings.
In the first study, 478 US believers in karma from Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and non-religious backgrounds chose whom to write about. Most, 86%, wrote about themselves, and 59% of those described a positive karmic event. Of the 14% who wrote about someone else, 92% described something negative.
In a second study, more than 1,200 participants in the United States, along with Buddhists in Singapore and Hindus in India, were randomly assigned to write about themselves or another person. Among those writing about themselves, 69% described a positive karmic experience; among those writing about someone else, only 18% did.
Weaker, but present, outside the US
The gap was smaller among the Singaporean and Indian participants than among Americans, which the authors link to earlier evidence that self-positivity bias is weaker in those cultures. But in every country, people were more likely to see karmic rewards for themselves and karmic punishments for others.
The authors read the pattern as karma serving two motives at once: self-enhancement, by letting people credit their good fortune to their own merit, and a desire for justice, by framing other people’s misfortunes as deserved. Supernatural explanations, in this view, are applied selectively to the events where they feel best.
Study Details:
- Title: Karma rewards me and punishes you: Self-other divergences in karma beliefs
- Authors: Cindel J. M. White, Atlee C. H. Lauder, Mina Aryaie
- Journal: Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
- Publication Date: November 2025
- DOI: 10.1037/rel0000565