Motivated by Karma

By Lawrence CHOO , Zhen LEI and Wei TANG
Forthcoming in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Abstract:

We conduct an experiment to examine how karmic reasoning—the belief that good deeds lead to favourable outcomes—affects belief formation in unrelated chance events. We motivate our design by observations from the China Family Panel Studies, which show that respondents who donated in the past 12 months are more likely to make risky choices. To investigate this further, we design a controlled laboratory experiment to evaluate the impact of real charitable donations on subjects’ beliefs about winning an even-chance lottery. Our results reveal that beliefs about winning increase with the amount donated, but this effect is significant only among those who voluntarily donated and more sensitive to karmic beliefs. This study underscores the role of karmic reasoning in shaping beliefs, contributing to the broader understanding of wishful thinking and motivated beliefs.