Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons^™

Are There Advantages To Believing In Fate? The Belief In Negotiating With Fate When Faced With Constraints, Au, Evelyn W. M., Krishna Savani

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Is cultural knowledge unique to a culture and inaccessible to other cultures, or is it a tool that can be recruited by individuals outside of that culture when the situation renders it relevant? As one test of this idea, we explored whether the applicability and benefits of a lay belief that originated from Chinese collective wisdom extends beyond cultural boundaries: negotiating with fate. Negotiating with fate postulates that fate imposes boundaries within which people can shape their outcomes through their actions. This belief contrasts fatalism, which has been traditionally interpreted as believing that fate dictates people’s life outcomes and renders …