People in a dilemma tend to blame it on their fate

New research suggests that when we deal with difficult decisions in our lives, we tend to blame it on our fate.

"Fate is a ubiquitous supernatural belief, spanning time and place," researchers Aaron Kay, Simone Tang, and Steven Shepherd of Duke University, wrote.

"It exerts a range of positive and negative effects on health, coping, and both action and inaction," they said.

Kay, Tang, and Shepherd hypothesized that people may invoke fate as a way of assuaging their own stress and fears - a way of saying "It's out of my hands now, there's nothing I can do."

"Belief in fate, defined as the belief that whatever happens was supposed to happen and that outcomes are ultimately predetermined, may be especially useful when one is facing these types of difficult decisions," they said.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.