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

Zheng, Shuying, Xinyuan Yan, Jenifer Siegel, Vladimir Chituc, Shiyi Li, Molly Crockett, and Yina Ma. 2020. “Self-serving Karmic Beliefs: Prosociality Influences Vicarious Optimism.” PsyArXiv. January 2. doi:10.31234/osf.io/ecqgf

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.

Discussion

Karma denotes the belief that good things will happen to people who have done good deeds, while misfortunes will befall bad people in the future. In the current studies, combining the moral character learning and vicarious belief update tasks, we are able to quantify the beliefs about the future of people who have done objectively good or bad deeds. We show that individuals hold optimistic beliefs about the future of good people and discount undesirable feedback when predicting their futures. In contrast, individuals similarly incorporate desirable and undesirable feedback into their beliefs about bad people’s futures. These results suggest that vicarious optimism is one possible cognitive mechanism that gives rise to karmic beliefs. Furthermore, we show that prosocial individuals (relative to individualists) hold stronger karmic beliefs and stronger vicarious optimism for good relative to bad people, suggesting that karmic beliefs are self-serving: good people more likely to believe that good things happen to good people.

We provide evidence for a correlation between prosociality and karmic beliefs. However, the causal direction of this relationship remains open to discussion, and is likely bidirectional. Previous studies showed that priming of karmic beliefs increased generosity and prosocial behavior (White, Kelly, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2019), suggesting that karmic beliefs may be a precursor to prosocial behavior. However, studies developmental work suggests that prosocial behavior may emerge earlier than karmic beliefs; preverbal infants (6-10 months) show disapproval of antisocial behavior (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007) and infants between 12 and 24 months exhibit prosocial behaviors (Brownell, 2013), whereas karmic beliefs have only been demonstrated in 4-6-year-old children (Banerjee & Bloom, 2013, 2017). Thus, it may also be the case that prosociality promotes the development of karmic beliefs. Prosocial behavior is often costly (Crocker, Canevello, & Brown, 2017). Karmic beliefs that morally good behavior will be rewarded could provide one type of justification for these costs and serve as a psychological compensation (Bäckman & Dixon, 1992). In addition, helping others also brings positive “side effects” (Carlson & Zaki, 2018), such as positive feelings (Aknin, Van de Vondervoort, & Hamlin, 2018) and social praise (Eisenberg, Wolchik, Goldberg, & Engel, 1992). Thus over time, the beliefs that performing good deeds increases the chance of future desirable outcomes may be reinforced into a karmic worldview.

People hold karmic beliefs in both first-party and third-party contexts (Hafer & Olson, 1989). If prosocials and individualists hold karmic beliefs to a similar extent, we might expect strong optimistic belief updating for the self in prosocials, and pessimistic belief updating for the self in individualists. However, we observed that prosocials and individualists were similarly optimistic about their own futures. One potential explanation is that the wishful thinking for oneself outweighs karmic believes when there are any conflicts (Mata & Simão, 2019). Alternatively, individualists may not identify themselves as “bad people” given vast evidence that most people tend to view themselves in a positive light (Sanitioso & Wlodarski, 2004). Thus, it is possible that individualists believe in karma but view themselves as good people who deserve an optimistic future. Given that we found weaker karmic beliefs in individualists, the finding of similar optimistic beliefs for the self in individualists and prosocials would lend further support to our hypothesis that karmic beliefs are self-serving, so that strong karmic beliefs motivates prosocial individuals to believe in a bright future (possibly caused by the good deeds they did). Taken together, this suggests that the self-serving nature of karmic beliefs applies to both the self and other people.

In current study, individualists not only failed to show asymmetric vicarious optimism towards good and bad agents; they also did not show vicarious optimism at all. Consistent with previous findings that individualists maximize the differences between the self and others in allocating monetary reward (Haruno & Frith, 2010; Liu et al., 2019) or responding to painful stimuli (Singer et al., 2008), individualists also differentiate optimistic future beliefs toward the self and others (only showing optimism towards self, but not to others: t(50) = 2.35, p = 0.023, 95% CI = [0.58, 7.43], Cohen d’ = 0.33). Taken together, this suggests individualists prefer to maximize self-other differences not only in material outcomes (i.e., monetary allocation, physical pain) but also in immaterial beliefs about the future.

One limitation of our second study is that we only provide evidence for ‘half’ of the karmic worldview, i.e., that good things will happen to good people; we did not observe evidence for beliefs that bad things will happen to bad people. Even prosocials who showed stronger karmic beliefs did not express pessimistic beliefs about bad agents. This might be due to that, in prosocials’ karmic belief system, good things not happening is already a type of punishment for the bad people, given that prosocial generally care about others and prefer not to do harm to others (Penner., Dovidio., Piliavin., & Schroeder., 2005), thus prosocials do not predict bad consequence for morally bad people. Indeed, the current sample, we found evidence that prosocials showed stronger harm aversion in the moral decision task where they trade off profit for themselves against pain for another person (harm aversion: prosocials vs. individualists, t(101) = 4.39, p < 0.001, 95% CI = [0.11, 0.29], Cohen d’ = 0.43).

In conclusion, the current study provides a novel framework to decipher the cognitive processes that give rise to karmic beliefs, and further proposes that karmic beliefs may be subject to self-serving motivations. Our findings suggest that karmic beliefs – a feature of many religious traditions – may be a key component of a positive feedback loop between beliefs and behavior that together contribute to large-scale cooperation.

Sense of coherence is a health resource that moderates stress and helps limit the occurrence of overweightness and eating disorders

The Relationship between Sense of Coherence, Stress, Body Image Satisfaction and Eating Behavior in Japanese and Austrian Students. Yoshiko Kato et al. Psych 2019, 1(1), 504-514, November 14 2019. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych1010039

Abstract: Background: Restrained, emotional, and external eating are related to obesity and eating disorders. A salutogenic model has confirmed sense of coherence (SOC) as a health resource that moderates stress and helps limit the occurrence of overweightness and eating disorders. This study aimed to examine the relationship between SOC, social support, stress, body image satisfaction (BIS) and eating behaviors in different cultural environments. Methods: A total of 371 Austrian (161 men, 210 women) and 398 Japanese (226 men, 172 women) university students participated. The SOC-13 scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire, BMI-Based Silhouette Matching Test and an analogue single-stress item were used as measurements. Results: SOC negatively affected all three types of eating in Austrian students (men: β = −0.227 to −0.215; women: β = −0.262 to −0.214). In Japanese students, SOC negatively affected external eating in both sexes (men: β = −0.150; women: β = −0.198) and emotional eating (β = −0.187) in men. BIS indicated that the desire to become slim predicted restrained eating, women’s emotional eating, and men’s and Austrian women’s external eating. Stress was only predictive of emotional eating in Japanese men. Conclusions: This study found that SOC, BIS and stress might be valuable factors regulating eating behavior in a cultural context. However, the relationship between SOC, BIS, stress and eating behavior differs between cultures.

Keywords: sense of coherence; restrained eating; emotional eating; external eating; body image satisfaction; cross-culture

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emotional eating (EME), external eating (EXE), restrained eating (RE)

4. Discussion

The main findings of this study indicate that SOC and BIS pertain negatively to RE, EME, and EXE with the appearance of culture and gender differences. In particular, SOC negatively predicts RE, EME, and EXE, particularly in Austrian students. For Japanese students, the relationship between SOC and eating behaviors seems to be less pronounced.

Japanese students had higher scores for RE and EXE but did not differ in EME. Not all eating behaviors reflect disordered eating, per se, but some eating behaviors seem to be associated with occasional overeating and moderate overweightness, such as restrained and emotional eating [31]. High RE values do not differentiate between successful and unsuccessful restrained eaters [7,32]. Considering the higher percentage of underweight Japanese students, RE seems to be a highly and successfully practiced eating behavior in Japan, independent of SOC and social support. Only BIS predicts RE in Japanese students, whereas SOC seems to be a source of eating regulation, in addition to BIS, in Austrian students. However, considering the higher rate of overweight students in Austria, this regulation is less successful for Austrian students than for Japanese students. SOC predicted EME in both male and female Austrian students and in Japanese male students, but not in Japanese female students. In the Japanese student sample, BIS was a significant predictor in women but not men, and stress was another predictor of EME. EXE was related to SOC in both countries, and BIS helped predict EXE in Austrian men and women and Japanese men but not in Japanese women. Stress correlated negatively and SOC correlated positively with social support among Japanese women; however, both variables disappeared as predictors of eating behavior in Japanese women, and seemed to be coping resources.

A previous study with Dutch subjects found that being female and having a strong SOC, a flexible RE, and self-efficacy promoted healthy eating practices [33]. The work of Speirs et al. suggested that a higher SOC is expected to prevent unhealthy eating practices and foster healthy eating behaviors in children [14]. This study found that SOC tended to prevent unhealthy eating behaviors.

In this investigation of two cultures, we examined the association between SOC and eating behaviors, based on a salutogenic model. SOC indicates the extent to which an individual has a pervasive and enduring, yet dynamic, feeling of confidence that the environment is predictable and that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected. SOC contains aspects of optimism and control and represents the ability to cope with stressful events and find them meaningful [15]. A previous study reported that a strong SOC may confer some resilience against chronic diseases [34]. The results of the present study suggest that a high SOC might prevent RE, EME, and EXE in Austrian subjects. In contrast, SOC affected EXE in Japanese men and women and EME in Japanese men. SOC and stress were strongly associated in Japanese students and had a more indirect association with eating behaviors. In Austrian students, SOC, stress and social support were weakly correlated, while SOC was more strongly correlated with eating behaviors.

A higher SOC has been reported to relate to less perceived stress and a lower stress response [35]. Some studies have reported that obesity and eating disorders are caused by stressful situations [36]. Controlling stress is therefore necessary to maintain healthy eating behaviors. Because the degree of stress affected EME in Japanese men in the present study, we suggest that improving SOC might be effective in reducing EME via stress reduction. Social support, as an external health factor resource, was not directly related to the three eating behaviors but was correlated with SOC in this study. Social support seems to be associated with eating behaviors via SOC-mediated effects. This finding is in line with the results of our previous study, which showed that eating behavior was associated with interpersonal relationships [37].

Overall, as expected, the results supported the hypothesis that SOC affects eating behaviors and overweight-related eating behaviors more directly in Austrian students, whereas SOC relates to stress reduction in Japanese students and indirectly relates to eating habits.

It is important to note that cultural and gender-based differences were observed between variables in this study. The obesity rate was lower in women than in men, and the desire to become slim and RE were more prevalent in women than in men. Ideal body images are affected by cultural expectations, which often lead women to want to become thinner. Such a cultural context fosters restrained eating behaviors in women, and the degree to which women desire to become slimmer predicts RE. Conversely, the structure of the relationship between the desire to get slimmer and EME or EXE may differ by country and gender. In women, the desire to be slim was positively related to EME, while in Austrian and Japanese men, the desire to be slim was related to EXE. This result is in line with theories related to the DEBQ. Both EXE and EME are regarded as consequences of intense RE. Small positive differences between ideal and real body images were found among Japanese men, because young men are mainly concerned with gaining muscle rather than becoming slim [38]. Our results show that the highest rate of thinness was in Japanese women, and the desire to become slimmer might control EXE. These results support our previous findings [22].

A strength of this study is that it investigated a homogeneous group; all participants were university students. Additionally, all variables were investigated in their respective cultural groups using the same methodology in both Western and Asian countries [39].

However, this study had some limitations. First, we used one analogue scale to measure the degree of stress, to avoid a severe burden on the participants. A more sophisticated measure of stress should be used in future studies. A negative relationship was found between stress and resilience in Japanese students. In Austrian students, this negative relationship was weak and not significant. In Austria, the validity of the stress scale is insufficient. In the future, it is necessary to use a more validated stress scale and examine the relationship with eating behavior. Second, the national higher educational systems differ in these two cultures. For example, in Japan, approximately 50% of high school students enter a university after graduating high school, whereas Austria has a more flexible higher education system. This difference is reflected in the significant difference between the participants’ mean ages, but these small age differences did not influence our results. Third, some limitations might be a result of different effects and the importance of social support. The work of Kim et al. reported that Asians and Asian-Americans are more reluctant to ask for support from others, but are more likely to use and benefit from forms of support that do not involve explicit disclosure [40]. Japanese female students’ social support from family, friends and significant others was highly negatively correlated with stress, as with SOC, while in Austrians, this relationship was missing, although they endorsed receiving more social support. Another aspect contributing to the cultural differences might be response style differences between Japanese and Austrian students. The work of Harzing et al. showed that Asians preferred middle rather than extreme categories on rating scales, in comparison with Western respondents [41]. Using a coherent sample and harmonized measurements in both German and Japanese may have reduced this bias.

Despite these limitations, we conclude that SOC, BIS and stress are essential factors that regulate eating behavior in Japan and Austria, with a relationship to body weight. However, the relationships showed specific patterns. The relationships between SOC and eating practices in Austrian and Japanese populations must be further examined. Exploring these mechanisms will be relevant to fostering the development of programs to change eating behaviors, because culture is an important external resource for health promotion.

Intelligence and Religiosity among Dating Site Users: Large dataset of online daters (maximum n = 67k)

Intelligence and Religiosity among Dating Site Users. Emil O. W. Kirkegaard and Jordan Lasker. Psych 2020, 2(1), 25-33, December 23 2019. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych2010003

Abstract: We sought to assess whether previous findings regarding the relationship between cognitive ability and religiosity could be replicated in a large dataset of online daters (maximum n = 67k). We found that self-declared religious people had lower IQs than nonreligious people (atheists and agnostics). Furthermore, within most religious groups, a negative relationship between the strength of religious conviction and IQ was observed. This relationship was absent or reversed in nonreligious groups. A factor of religiousness based on five questions correlated at −0.38 with IQ after adjusting for reliability (−0.30 before). The relationship between IQ and religiousness was not strongly confounded by plausible demographic covariates (β = −0.24 in final model versus −0.30 without covariates).

Keywords: intelligence; religion; religious belief; atheism; agnosticism; Christianity; Catholicism; Hinduism; Judaism; Islam; OKCupid; cognitive ability

5. Discussion

Previous research has documented a negative relationship between cognitive ability and religious belief [10,11,14]. Among the religious, the strength of religiosity has also been found to be negatively associated with cognitive ability [15]. Our results replicated both of these findings. On the other hand, the relationship between cognitive ability and the strength of religious convictions was absent or reversed in nonreligious groups like atheists and agnostics. Generally speaking, these results supported the general thrust of Nyborg’s and many others’ findings with regards to religiousness and cognitive ability [10,15]. The strength of the relationship in our dataset was stronger than in the meta-analysis we cited, which found an overall mean correlation of −0.16 [11], whereas ours was −0.30. The meta-analysis did not utilize adjustments for measurement error, so the values may not be comparable. However, we suspected that the difference was mostly due to differences in the measures used and the sampled population. Many of the studies in the meta-analysis relied on cognitive ability measures such as SAT scores among college students, which are likelier to have had restricted range and which frequently feature erroneous score reporting. Consistent with this, the mean correlation found among adult noncollege samples was −0.23, which is somewhat closer to our own. A recent large, multisample study that utilized measures of science knowledge and religiousness also found correlations around −0.30, though these were reduced to about −0.20 when the questions did not include contested information (e.g., questions about global warming, and evolution) [13]. Item bias still has the potential to explain part or all of these relationships, as it did recently for the results of an actively open-minded thinking questionnaire [28]. It remains possible—though we were unable to test this—that these results may be explained by other mediators such as death salience, moral concern, conformism, attachment style, executive control, or analytical thinking style [29,30,31,32].

Limitations

There were a number of limitations to this study. First, data came from an online dating site where people answer questions in order to be better matched with potential partners. In this way, subjects had an incentive to answer truthfully insofar as this would enable them to be matched with similar people. However, the medium may also result in social desirability bias in responding; this response bias is probably more likely to be reflected in the answers to questions about one’s religion than in answers to the cognitive ability-related questions unless cheating on these questions reflects social desirability bias. A previous study using this dataset for criminal and antisocial behavior did not indicate that social desirability bias was strong enough to remove expected criterion relationships [22]. Second, as an extension of the first limitation, the data were not particularly representative of the national populations they were drawn from but instead reflected mainly younger persons looking for love online. The regressions did not indicate notable biases from this sample selection. Third, the measure of intelligence was of somewhat questionable validity since it has not been tested against a well-validated test and is quite brief (14 items total and subjects did not usually respond to all 14). Future studies should test this battery against well-known cognitive ability tests in order to ascertain its psychometric qualities and potential demographic biases. Fourth, our sample is drawn mostly from Anglophone (about 85%) and nearly entirely from Western (about 95%) countries, so it is unclear to what degree these findings should generalize to populations not covered at all or which were only inadequately covered by our study. We suggest that future studies examine the relationship between cognitive ability and religiosity in countries with markedly different cultures than Western ones such as Brazil or China. Fifth, previous reviews on the topic highlighted the possible mediating role of education [11], but we were unable to test this mediation because our sample consisted mostly of people who had not yet finished formal education and, as a result, the education data available to us were not suitable for this analysis.