Why do we believe in fate

Most of us live short lives when compared to the age and movement of the universe, thus our lives exist in the brief random moments that the universe takes towards its fated end. On the one hand it gives meaning to our tragedies. On the other hand, it takes meaning away from our accomplishments. On the one hand it allows us not to take responsibility for our crimes. On the other hand, it takes away our motivation to act, and take control of our own life.

I believe that the universe is governed by a fixed set of physical laws and is deterministic. In this way, fate exists. However, I also believe that there is randomness between the start and end states of a complex system, which allows for free will. Above everything else what matters is the efforts that we put in. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Do You Believe in Fate or Destiny? Why do we believe in fate?

Using the same instructions as Experiment 4, participants were asked to recall an event in their past where they had no choice but to accept the situation. After the manipulation, we presented participants with four subscales from the COPE measure Carver et al. The positive reappraisal scale measured the extent to which individuals could identify positive aspects of the constraining event e.

Finally, the mental disengagement measure assessed the extent to which individuals used other aspects of their lives to distract themselves from the problem at hand rather than facing the situation e. Each subscale consisted of four items. Therefore, we controlled for mean levels of agreement with the biased scale items used in the manipulation in the following analyses.

To test whether levels of positive reappraisal, acceptance, denial, and mental disengagement were different in the fatalism and personal control condition compared to the negotiating with fate condition our reference group , we conducted a one regression for each dependent measure. Figure 5. Mean positive reappraisal and acceptance of constraining event in Experiment 5, by condition.

Experiment 5 explored whether negotiating with fate helped people to move forward from the event through acceptance and positive reappraisal, two strategies that have been identified as adaptive when managing circumstances that are perceived as unchangeable.

The results showed that activating this belief led participants to positively reinterpret the constraining event and accept that it has happened to a greater extent, when compared activating fatalism. To demonstrate that negotiating with fate does not simply increase the use of strategies regardless of passivity, our findings showed that activating negotiating with fate did not lead to the greater use of denial and mental disengagement.

Surprisingly, exposure to fatalism did not increase the use of either denial or mental disengagement strategies. It may be possible that individuals who believe in fate use other passive strategies that we did not capture in the current studies. Next, we explored one possible downstream consequence of positive reappraising the constraining event: finding meaning in the event by viewing it as an important part of their life story.

In Experiment 5, we found that activating negotiating with fate spontaneously led to higher levels of positive reappraisal. In Experiment 6, we investigated whether requiring individuals to actively search for a silver lining will eliminate the beneficial effects of negotiating with fate. If yes, it would suggest that the adaptive functions of negotiating with fate can be mimicked by introducing an intervention that simply requires individuals to reflect on positive consequences of the constraining event.

Such findings would call into question the usefulness of the belief in negotiating with fate. In contrast, if we observed differences on the dependent measure, we would be able to conclude that negotiating with fate has advantages that extend beyond simply positively reappraising the event. The dependent measure in Experiment 6 explored one downstream consequence of positive reappraisals: the search for meaning.

When individuals face situations that they have no choice but to face, they are likely to search for meaning behind this event. They are likely to ask: why did this event happen to me and what purpose does it serve? The search for meaning can be characterized as a process, which evolves as individuals are exposed to different perspectives on the intended consequence of the event for the individual.

Generally, research has shown that the ability to identify silver linings of a stressful event allows people to integrate the event into their identity, and consequently, giving the experience a purpose McAdams et al. It is important to note that whereas positive reappraisal focuses solely on the positive consequences this event on their lives e.

The search for purpose generally helps individuals identify ways that the experience helped them become was an important part of their lives and defined who they are today. Thus, we reasoned that neither exposure to fatalism nor personal control will help individuals find greater meaning in the event, but for different reasons. From the fatalistic perspective, events occur simply because it is how fate has decreed it; these experiences do not serve any purpose for the individual.

Therefore, it would be unlikely for a positive appraisal exercise to imbue greater meaning of a constraining event after activating fatalism. This incongruence would make it difficult for individuals to incorporate these events into their identities, even after attempting to find a silver lining. Importantly, we reasoned that engaging in positive interpretation of a constraining event would be most beneficial among those exposed to negotiating with fate.

From this perspective, individuals acknowledge the need to make the best out of unchangeable constraining circumstances. Therefore, finding a silver lining allows individuals to identify lessons learned through dealing with these situations, making it easier for them to see how these events shaped them into who they are today.

Using the same instructions as previous experiments, participants were asked to recall an event in their past where they had no choice but to accept the situation. Next, participants were further asked to reflect and think of a silver lining i. This item was used as a covariate because we wanted to investigate whether the simple act of asking participants to search for a silver lining was sufficient to eliminate the beneficial effects of negotiating with fate.

From a theoretical perspective, we wanted to test whether the mere completion of this activity was sufficient to mimic the effects of negotiating with fate, regardless of how helpful the participant found this exercise to be. Participants completed an item scale about the meaningfulness of the event.

Given the positive correlation between the helpfulness rating and ascribed meaningfulness of the event, helpfulness ratings were also included in the regression analyses as a covariate, in the regressions reported below. We then tested whether levels of ascribed meaningfulness of the event were different in the fatalism condition and personal control condition compared to the negotiating with fate condition, which was treated as the reference group.

Figure 6. Mean meaningfulness of constraining event in Experiment 6, by condition. As hypothesized, Experiment 6 demonstrated that after attempting to positively reappraise a constraining event that individuals had no choice but to face, activating negotiating with fate compared to activating fatalism led people to ascribe greater meaning to the event.

These findings indicated that acknowledging that one has to make the best out of unchangeable circumstances can help individuals incorporate experiences with constraints into their identities, making these experiences an important part of who they are today. Furthermore, Experiment 5 demonstrated that negotiating with fate led to spontaneous positive reinterpretation of the constraining event. The results from Experiment 6 demonstrated even when individuals were required to search for a positive consequence of the constraining event, the unique advantages of positive reinterpretation after activating negotiating with fate cannot be reaped after activating fatalism.

Interestingly, the effect of the silver lining task on the ascription of meaning for those exposed to personal control was midway between negotiating with fate and fatalism, and was not significantly different from either. This finding is consistent with those from Experiments 3 and 5 — whereas activating negotiating with fate consistently produces stronger advantages for coping, activating personal control did not lead to different levels of coping compared to negotiating with fate or fatalism.

These results then lead us to two questions: 1 Is activating negotiable fate more beneficial than activating personal control for helping individuals move forward from the event? And 2 Is activating personal control more beneficial than activating fatalism for helping individuals move forward from the event? To this end, we turn to a meta-analysis conducted on our experiments. Experiments 3—6 demonstrated that, compared to activating fatalism, activating negotiating with fate helped individuals ruminate less Experiment 3 , identify changeable contributory factors to explain the constraining event Experiment 4 , use positive reappraisal and acceptance strategies Experiment 5 , and ascribe more meaning to the event Experiment 6.

However, does believing that one can negotiate with fate help people cope with constraining events significantly better than personal control? Activating negotiating with fate was seen as more beneficial than activating personal control only in Experiment 4, in which those exposed to negotiating with fate were more likely to identify their behaviors as having contributed to the event.

Activating personal control did not differ from activating negotiating with fate in the other experiments. Thus, to address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis on the results of Experiments 3—6.

For each study, we first saved the residuals after controlling for any covariates. We included the primary dependent measure from each experiment: rumination Experiment 3 , behavioral attributions Experiment 4 , positive reappraisal Experiment 5 , and sense of meaning Experiment 6 , with all variables were recoded such that higher numbers indicate a more adaptive response to the constraining event. We ran a random-effects meta-analysis model assuming that the effect size of the difference between conditions are likely to vary across the different dependent measures.

Importantly, the meta-analyses showed that activating the belief in negotiating with fate provided more context-specific advantages for moving forward from a constraining event, compared to either the activation of fatalism or personal control.

Regardless of its constitution, one would expect a middle ground construct to produce effects that fall consistently between those of fatalism and personal control. Instead, the meta-analytic findings suggest that negotiating with fate was associated with a divergent pattern of results when compared to fatalism and personal control, whereas activating fatalism and personal control do not significantly differ from each other in terms of their effects on responses to the recalled constraining situations.

These findings provide support for the way we conceptualize negotiating with fate as prescribing specific roles for fate and personal control, a belief that cannot be adequately captured as simply a combination of fatalism and personal control. The belief in negotiating with fate has been found to be popular and beneficial in the Chinese cultural context Au et al. The present series of six experiments explored the context-specific applicability and advantages of the belief in negotiating with fate beyond the Chinese cultural context.

Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that: 1 the experiences of constraints activate a belief that one can negotiate with fate, which refers to acknowledging that external factors impose a boundary within which individuals can use their personal actions to shape outcomes the activation hypothesis ; and 2 when individuals face constraints in their lives, this belief is beneficial for helping them move forward from manage constraining life events that they had no choice but to fate the context-specific advantages hypothesis.

The meta-analysis of Experiments 3—6 indicated that overall, negotiating with fate provides greater context-specific advantages than fatalism or personal control alone. Cheng et al. The overarching conclusion was that such beliefs have a less detrimental effect on mental health among Easterners e.

The authors cited negotiating with fate as a hybrid belief in fate and personal control that could potentially explain this cultural difference. Indeed, Au et al. Extending these findings, we proposed that the belief that one can negotiate with fate can be similarly popular and beneficial among individuals from the West. Triangulating environmental and historical factors illuminated why different cultural practices evolved, and the purpose served by different cultural practices and beliefs Gelfand et al.

Building on past work identifying perceived constraints as the mediator for the cultural difference in the belief that one can negotiate with fate Au et al. The results from our current studies provided support for the argument that cultural beliefs have universal applicability when factors engendering these beliefs are salient in other cultures.

Indeed, past research tended to view fatalistic beliefs, defined as viewing fate as the sole determinant of outcomes, as largely irrational and maladaptive Mayo et al. First, the current studies explored the impact of constraints, defined as working with the boundaries that are imposed by external factors.

Second, Au et al. For example, winning the lottery is unpredictable because individuals do not know the winning numbers ahead of purchasing one. Distinguishing between qualitatively different experiences with external factors has important implications for advancing our understanding of how individuals remain resilient.

A nuanced examination of divergent effects of external factors will help the field refine its theories and hypotheses regarding the beliefs that foster adaptive coping under a wider range of conditions. In Experiment 5, the results suggested that activating negotiating with fate increased levels of positive appraisal. However, surprisingly, those exposed to negotiable fate in Experiment 6 did not rate the generated silver lining as being more helpful than those exposed to fatalism or personal control.

Future studies may wish to unpack the nature of this effect. For example, the instructions for Experiment 6 only asked participants to generate one silver lining and rate the helpfulness of that particular silver lining. This leaves open the possibility that those exposed to negotiating with fate were better able to positively reappraise the event in Experiment 5 because they spontaneously generated more than one silver lining, and not because they found just one silver lining more helpful.

Perhaps future studies can require participants to generate as many silver linings as possible, and explore whether the number of silver linings mediates the relationship between activating negotiating with fate and positive reappraisal or meaningfulness of the event. In Experiment 5, we asked participants the frequency with which they used four types of coping strategies. Future research may wish to simply ask individuals who they tended to cope with the past event in an open-ended manner, and thus, be able to capture differences in coping strategies beyond the ones that we have already included.

In our experiments, we asked participants to recall an event in their lives in which they had no choice but to face a particular situation, thus focusing on specific situations of constraints. Future studies can consider exploring other operationalizations of constraints, including socio-economic status Snibbe and Markus, , lack of residential mobility e. These future avenues of research also offer a chance to unpack the overlap between negotiating with fate and personal control.

Perhaps in managing unchanging structural and institutional constraints, both beliefs would lead individuals to active rather than passive in goal attainment attempts. However, those who believe in negotiable fate may be more likely to choose and find strategies that allow them to attain their goals without upending the constraints — a hypothesis consistent with acknowledging that fate has imposed unchangeable boundaries, but individuals can do the best that they can within these limitations to achieve desired outcomes.

In contrast, those who believe in personal control may be more likely to attain goals by instigating changes that will remove the constraints to bring about desired outcomes. Thus, a more nuanced investigation into how goal pursuit in the face of constraints may shed greater light onto the differences between negotiating with fate and personal control. Divergent cultural landscapes foster collective wisdom that enables individuals to survive and thrive in that particular context.

Although fate tends to be less prevalent in the West, our research showed that US Americans flexibly recruited a belief rooted in Chinese collective wisdom —negotiating with fate— to help them navigate constraints. Thus, when external factors loom large, individuals have a tendency to work with these factors rather than surrender to them. By identifying factors that shape fate beliefs, we highlighted how cultural beliefs can have pan-cultural implications.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this manuscript will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher. The protocols for all reported studies were approved by the Institutional Review Board at Singapore Management University, National University of Singapore, or Nanyang Technological University, and the studies were carried out in accordance with the policies of the university institutional review boards and national guidelines.

All participants were given written consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. EA analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript. KS made substantial edits. Both authors designed the experimental studies, collected the data, and approved the final version of the manuscript. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Chiu, C. Lay dispositionism and implicit theories of personality. Cumming, G. New York, NY: Routledge. Davis, C. Making sense of loss and benefiting from the experience: two construals of meaning. Dettenborn, L. Cancer fatalism and its demographic correlates among African American and hispanic women: effects on cancer screening adherence.

Flett, G. Depression and causal attributions for unexpected stressful situations. I wish I had something like Iron Boy when I was young and very afraid of my prospects! As a professional CEO for over twenty years, the challenges in business is that you need to equip yourself with the right information or you are dead in the water! People with my condition now do have my book to prepare for the future because there is one and it's up to the individual to believe! Being married for 35 years is a huge accomplishment, what is the secret to your success that you can share with younger couples looking to hopefully have the same success in their marriages?

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