Attributing good fortune to God evokes gratitude, admiration, and indebtedness, similar to thanking a person. Attributing good fortune to karma instead produces less gratitude but more pride and a sense of deservingness. Across four studies with 4,579 religiously diverse participants in the US and UK, these distinct emotional profiles emerged because God is seen as a personal external agent, while karma is viewed as a universal law or internal process. The findings suggest that spiritual beliefs shape how people explain positive events and, in turn, the emotions they feel.
Attempting to suppress a thought can make it more likely to return, a phenomenon known as the ironic process theory. In two experiments, people asked not to think of a white bear for five minutes were unable to do so, ringing a bell each time the thought occurred. After the suppression period, they reported significantly more thoughts about the white bear than people who were simply asked to think about it from the start. Providing a specific distracting thought during suppression reduced this later preoccupation. The findings suggest that thought suppression can backfire as a self-control strategy, potentially intensifying the very obsession it aims to eliminate.