Do Well And Have Well? Two-System Process Theory Test Of Karma Belief

Karmic belief refers to an individual's belief that "good is rewarded with good,and evil is rewarded with evil".Karmic beliefs are widespread and are an important reason people engage in prosocial behavior(karmic investment).There is little research on karmic beliefs in China.Most of the existing studies examine characteristics of the individual karmic belief behavior under the backgrounds of western culture.Therefore,this study begins with verifying the existence of karmic belief phenomenon in Chinese subjects and further proves that karmic belief is a kind of intuitive thinking.This study consists of two experiments.Experiment 1 explored the existence of karmic beliefs in Chinese subjects.The independent variables are type of recalled events(important events vs.daily life events)and type of prosocial behavior(donation type:money VS social contact);the dependent variable is prosocial behavior intention.A total of 91 subjects(34 males and 57 females with the average age of 20.1)were recruited and randomly assigned to the experimental group and the control group.The subjects in the experimental group were asked to recall recent important events that they had been waiting for the results and write fragments about them;the subjects in the control group were asked to recall daily life events and write fragments about them;after the recollection,the subjects evaluated their sense of control by a seven-point scale.The results of 28 subjects were deleted as their senses of control were not applicable.The intuitive thinking feature of karmic belief was verified in experiment 2.The independent variable is the degree of cognitive load(high vs low);the dependent variable is the level of karmic belief.A total of 60 non-psychological college students(including graduate students)in Wuhan(24 males and 36 females with the average age of 20.5)were recruited and randomly assigned to the high cognitive load group and the low cognitive load group.The main task of the experiment was for the subjects to read seven paragraphs of material and evaluate the possibility of events in the material(karmic related events and non-karmic events).The subjects in the high cognitive load group also had to count down by one starting from 576 every three seconds while reading and making evaluations,and they needed to report the final figures at the end of the experiment.One of the seven pieces of material was the target task,on which the subjects' evaluation of their possibility represented their karmic belief level.The results showed that:1)In experiment 1,the main effect of the recalled type was significant,which indicated that the subjects were willing to invest in karma when recalling events that were important for them to wait for the results,and the interrelation between the recalled type and the donation type was significant.A further simple effect analysis showed that there was a significant level on the recalled type and social contact.That is,when recalling important life events,the subjects were more willing to carry out behavior of social contact to help others.2)In experiment 2,the effect of cognitive load was significant,which indicated that the subjects had a higher level of karmic belief under the condition of high cognitive load.Through the study,we can find that:1)Karmic beliefs also exist in the context of Chinese culture.More specifically,it exists in college students with relatively high educational level.Moreover,compared with direct pro-social behavior of money(karmic investment),individuals show more preference for behavior of social contact to help others.This is consistent with the findings of karmic investment in the West.2)Karmic belief is a kind of intuitive thinking.When the cognitive load is high,individuals tend to use automatic processing systems to process information,so it is easier to evaluate the results of events intuitively.This result is a verification and supplement to the double system theory of superstitious belief.