Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition

"This is a book by Stuart Vyse, an American psychologist and skeptic. He’s looking at superstition from lots of different angles and asking, ‘Why do we have superstitions?’ Again, there are different explanations. In some cases, we might hold certain superstitions because we’ve been told about them. As children, when we’re developing, it makes sense to believe what you’re told by your parents. If your mum says, ‘Don’t touch that, it’s hot’ then you don’t touch it. If you want to put it to the test do touch it, you quickly learn that it makes sense to listen to what your parents say. You listen to your teachers, as well, and your peers in the school playground. There are so many superstitions that kids have. We can all think back to that era when we didn’t tread on the cracks in the pavement, or we made a wish when we saw a star in the night sky or blew out all the candles on a birthday cake. Those are socially transmitted. As adults, we might not actually believe any of that stuff, but we still engage in it anyway, just as a fun thing to do. There are also those widely shared traditional superstitions about breaking mirrors, walking under ladders, or the number 13 being unlucky. Those are also socially transmitted and passed on from generation to generation. We also have personal superstitions. There are certain occupational groups that tend to be more superstitious than others. It tends to be those occupations where there’s a high degree of uncertainty, like a sports person or a soldier or a sailor or—most notoriously of all—a gambler. Gamblers are incredibly superstitious. All those occupations where it doesn’t matter how well you prepare, something could go wrong and you don’t get the outcome you want, tend to display superstitions. There are a number of factors that come into play. If you’re a sports person, for example, and you perform particularly well in a competition and win overall, then wearing the same trainers the next time you’re in a competition is just an association that you make. The very first time I ever appeared on TV, I wore red socks (I was thinking of the TV presenter Jeremy Paxman, who wears red socks and is very confident). That went quite well, so the next time I was asked to go on TV, I found myself searching around in the sock drawer for the red socks. I had to make a conscious effort to say to myself, ‘No, this is silly. There’s no link between the colour socks you’re wearing and your performance.’ But it’s very easy to see how that can happen. One aspect of superstitious beliefs in situations of uncertainty is it might give people the illusion of control. Even if it’s not giving you any extra control, if you feel it is, then that’s important. It can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Say a sports person is in a rush one day and doesn’t have time to carry out the little ritual that they like to do before they go out to play. That might then make them that little bit more anxious, and they don’t perform as well. Some of those little rituals might serve the function of getting the person in the zone, getting them focused. So you can see how, even though there aren’t forces out there in the universe that are coming into play, what’s going on in your mind can have an influence. The belief in the superstition can be important. You can look for demographic or personality differences. The picture is often quite messy and mixed, but there are certain traits that seem to show up fairly reliably. Having said that, when you’re comparing one group, the believers, with another, the skeptics, and saying, ‘The believers seem to show higher levels of fantasy-proneness, or neuroticism’ it doesn’t mean that everybody in that believers group is going to show those higher levels. But some of the easy explanations that skeptics come out with—like they’re all crazy, or all stupid, or all lying—are very uninformed. There is a grain of truth to them. There are studies that show that you’re more likely to believe in traditional superstitions, if you are less well educated. But there are certain superstitions that you’re more likely to believe in if you are educated and have a professional job—like feng shui , and a lot of the New Age stuff that’s very trendy. That’s the kind of stuff that educated people with degrees and professional jobs believe, because you have to have money to be able to pay for it! So it’s a complicated, mixed picture. So you can make some generalizations, but you always need to bear in mind that you are making generalizations. One of the other people whose book I’ve recommended, Michael Shermer, wrote a very, very nice book—it’s not the one I’ve actually chosen for my five—called Why People Believe Weird Things . He subsequently wrote a follow-up chapter called ‘Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things.’ Some of the people who argue for some of these claims are very clever. And because they are so intelligent, they are very good at dealing with criticisms from the skeptics. They’ve got ready answers that sound very plausible. So you can be very, very smart and still believe weird stuff. It’s a very important factor, both at an individual and a societal level. To my mind, all forms of magical thinking—and I would include in that umbrella term paranormal beliefs, traditional superstitions, (for me, as an atheist) religion, unfounded conspiracy theories, alternative medicine—tend to increase at times of great uncertainty. If you look back, historically, you can see that when countries are going through economic and political turmoil, that’s good news for psychics and astrologers. People will go and visit those kinds of practitioners. Again, I think it’s that notion of at least having the illusion of control. If you can get some kind of insight into what might be around the next corner, then it can be psychologically comforting. Even if, in fact, the method that’s being used doesn’t really provide that information, as long as you feel it does, you feel you’ve got a bit of an edge."