People believe they are `investing in Karma` by doing good deeds

Asian News International:

Waiting for an important, uncontrollable outcome in life may lead people to do good deeds with the implicit expectation that the universe will return the favour, a phenomenon they refer to as “investing in karma,” a new research suggests.

For so many important outcomes in life – applying for jobs, waiting for medical test results – there comes a point when you just have to sit back and hope for the best.

But that doesn’t mean we always behave that way.

The new research suggested that even when an outcome is out of our control we often act as though we can still get on the good side of fate by doing good deeds.

According to lead researcher Benjamin Converse, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Psychology at the University of Virginia, the research was inspired by the kinds of deals many of us seem to make in which we promise ourselves that, if we can just make it through some trying situation, we’ll be better citizens in the future.

Converse and co-authors Jane Risen and Travis Carter, both of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, wondered if these kinds of deals might be part of a more general phenomenon in which we intuitively bargain with ‘the universe,’ however we might define it.

Read the whole story: Asian News International