A Psychological Study Of Chinese People's Belief In Karma And Coping With Traum

The thought of karma has played an important role in the development of Chinese civilization for thousands of years.It is an important cultural concept,which deeply influenced the mind and behavior of people.Foreign studies have shown that karma,as an explanatory framework,can help individuals cope with sufferings in life.However,in the context of Chinese culture,karma belief has rich cultural connotations.What kind of influence does it have on people? Can individuals cope with life trauma or misfortune,and what psychological mechanisms are behind it?This study will explore the above issues.The research is divided into two parts,using qualitative research and quantitative research respectively to study the mental mechanism and function of karmic belief coping in traumatic experience.Study 1 is a qualitative study.It adopts the form of semi-structured interview to select 21 people with traumatic experiences,focusing on the specific psychological and behavioral changes in the process of coping with trauma,and conducts a study on the karmic belief of people with traumatic experiences.Based on the grounded theory paradigm,Nvivo12.0 analysis software was used to analyze the interview texts,and five main categories were summarized,namely,"post-traumatic response","belief generation","cognitive coping","behavioral coping" and "coping outcome",and a theoretical model was established for the process of karma coping of people with traumatic experiences.The results show that when individuals fall into negative mental states after trauma,their own karma beliefs have different effects through three different psychological mechanisms.The three paths are summarized into three types of karma,namely,self-karma,which emphasizes the attribution of events;Others’ karma,emphasizing interpersonal fairness;Common karma emphasizes the wholeness of self and others.It has both positive and negative effects on individual coping with trauma.The positive effects include gradually accepting the status quo,daring to face the trauma,obtaining psychological comfort and taking the initiative to do good,etc.The negative effects include escaping from their own problems and producing negative emotions such as guilt.Study 2 is a quantitative study,which adopts the form of questionnaire survey and scale measurement.People who have experienced at least one traumatic event are selected as the research objects,with a total of 261 people.The karmic beliefs and demographic variables of people with traumatic experiences are statistically analyzed.The results of further regression analysis shows that the karmic belief could significantly predict positive emotions and life satisfactions.In other words,the higher the level of karmic belief,the higher the level of positive emotions and life satisfactions after a traumatic event.However,there was no significant correlation between trauma victims’ belief in karma and negative emotions.Combining the results of two studies above are as follows: In the context of Chinese culture,when individuals encounter trauma or unfortunate life events,their own karma beliefs can help them cope with the trauma.The higher the level of karmic belief,the higher the level of positive emotion and life satisfaction.