If breaking a mirror actually brought bad luck, surely the government would have public service announcements regarding reflecting-glass safety. And if tossing salt over the left shoulder after spilling a shaker was truly effective, schools would host regular drills.
Superstitions don’t make sense. Yet, many logical people wince if they break a mirror. They avoid the number 13 or hold their breath when passing cemeteries.
Social scientists are learning more about the psychology behind superstitious behavior. Although superstitions may be illogical, researchers are finding they can be psychologically beneficial and might be rooted in evolutionary advantage.
Social scientists increasingly began observing and analyzing superstitious behavior in the 1800s. The inquiry was mostly related to religion, and researchers typically considered superstitions when studying foreign cultures.
In the 1950s, researchers shifted their study to superstitious behavior among members of their own cultures.
Why Are People Superstitious?
The world is an uncertain place, and psychologists find that superstitious rituals give people a needed sense of control. One author gave heart disease as an example of how people live in a world of uncertainty.
For the last century, heart disease has been the leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the American Heart Association. A person can try to eat well and exercise, but there are many uncontrollable factors like genetics or environmental factors. Crossing fingers at the mention of heart disease or knocking wood can help give people a sense of control.
Superstitious rituals can help reduce anxiety, and this type of behavior is “extremely common, if not universal.”
Even though most people have superstitious reflexes like crossing fingers, picking up a lucky penny, or knocking on wood (touching iron if you’re Italian), most people keep these rituals to themselves.
Read More: Why We Feel the Need to Knock On Wood
The Psychology of Superstitious Rituals
Many members of a sports team can describe a fellow teammate who refused to wash a pair of socks or a jersey because they associated it with a winning streak. Social scientists have found that such behavior is meant to bring good fortune, and it’s a superstitious behavior that is distinct from avoidance behaviors meant to prevent bad luck.
In a 2004 study in Personality and Individual Differences, researchers surveyed more than 4,000 participants regarding their superstitious habits. Participants answered questions like whether they considered it bad luck to walk under a ladder or if they carried a lucky charm. With a smaller subgroup, researchers had participants answer questions about both their superstitious beliefs and their life satisfaction.
The researchers found that positive and negative superstitious behaviors were distinct, meaning a person’s motivation for crossing their fingers to bring good luck is different than a person trying to ward off bad luck. The study also found that women were more likely to have superstitious behaviors, and they tended to have positive superstitions like carrying a good luck charm. The study also found that people with lower life satisfaction were more likely to have superstitions.
Who Is Superstitious?
Superstitions go beyond commonly accepted rituals like not opening an umbrella indoors or tossing a hat onto a bed. Many people have personal rituals that are intended to help them achieve a positive outcome when something important is at stake.
Ecologist Kevin Foster was interested in studying superstitions because he saw scientists in his lab going through rituals. If their experiment turned out well after they shook a test tube filled with bacteria during a particular point in the experiment, then that step would become ritualized in the hopes that future experiments would also have a positive outcome.
“A key motivation for me was noticing that lab scientists, including myself, who are expected to be the most rational of people, often develop superstitions about their experimental procedures,” says Foster, the chair of microbiology at Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford.
Read More: 20 Things You Didn't Know About... Superstition
The Evolutionary Benefits of Superstitious Behavior
In his study of superstitious behaviors, Foster finds that superstitions are causal but inaccurate associations. Walking under a ladder, for example, is inaccurately associated with bad luck. But Foster finds these associations have an evolutionary benefit because “making causal associations and acting on them is key to survival in all species.”
If an animal, for example, bolts when it hears the sound of a predator creeping on fallen leaves, it is more likely to survive than prey that fails to associate such a sound with danger. And if the association doesn’t spark an action that uses too many resources, then it contributes to survival, Foster says.
With this in mind, going around instead of under a ladder might not save a person from bad luck, but the negative association can spare the person from unintended injury that might come when walking under a work site.
Can Superstitions Enhance Performance?
In addition to possible evolutionary benefits, superstitious behaviors may improve performance. In a 2010 study in Psychological Science, researchers conducted four experiments. In the first, 28 participants (80 percent of whom believed in good luck) were tasked with making golf putts. Prior to starting, some were told the ball in use was lucky. Participants performed better when playing with the “lucky” than the neutral ball.
In another experiment, participants were given the task of putting balls into slats. Prior to starting, some were told “I press the thumbs for you,” which is the German version of “My fingers are crossed for you.” These participants performed faster than those who had no thumb-pressing well-wishes.
The other two experiments involved the use of a lucky charm, and the authors concluded there is a causal effect between performance and the sense that good luck had been activated. They also found that such performance was enhanced by the person’s sense that they could do well on the task.
Read More: The Symbolism Behind What a Black Cat Means: Are They Really Bad Luck?
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Oxford University Press. Believing in Magic
Personality and Individual Differences. Measuring superstitious belief: why lucky charms matter
Chair of microbiology at Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. Kevin Foster
The Royal Society. The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour
Psychological Science. Keep Your Fingers Crossed!: How Superstition Improves Performance
Emilie Lucchesi has written for some of the country's largest newspapers, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA from DePaul University. She also holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois-Chicago with an emphasis on media framing, message construction and stigma communication. Emilie has authored three nonfiction books. Her third, A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, releases October 3, 2023, from Chicago Review Press and is co-authored with survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin.
