Karmic Investment

People are more likely to help others when they find themselves in situations of waiting for important, but personally uncontrollable outcomes. The previous research empirically supported this notion of ‘karmic investment behavior’, but did not examine motivation of helping in such specific situations. The aim of this work is to investigate motivational nature behind helping in the conditions of wanting and uncertainty by examining how social value orientation moderates the effect of uncertainty and awaiting desired outcomes on helping behavior. I conducted online between-subject quasi-experimental study to test whether people with different social value orientations vary in the amount of helping behaviors while waiting personally important, but uncontrollable outcomes. Results of binary logistic regression and two-way ANOVA show that there is only one main effect of condition on helping behaviors, but no main effect of social value orientation or the interaction effects. The results support general ‘karmic investment hypothesis’, but reveal that social value orientation does not moderate the effect of uncertainty on karmic investments: in situations of uncertainty and awaiting important outcomes people of all social value orientations tent to comply with help requests more frequently and spent more time on helping than people in control condition where no uncertainty and waiting are introduced. The results imply that social value orientation could not be a manifestation of motivational psychological mechanisms driving karmic investments. Limitations of the study and further research directions are discussed. Keywords: karmic investments, social value orientation, helping behavior