2008 Spring—Oral Training for Sophomores
Jo Ho

Power of Superstition: Do You Believe in Magic?
By BENEDICT CAREY


陳淑娟報告

An application to graduate school can wrong in as many ways as a first date. The personal essay might seem too eager, the reference too casual.

Rachel Riskind nonetheless has a good feeling about her chances for admittance to the University of Michigan』s graduate program in psychology. On a recent afternoon, she went out lunch in Austin, Texas, where she lives. Walking to the restaurant, she saw a woman stroll by with a Michigan umbrella.

「I felt it was a sign; you almost never see Michigan stuff here,」 Ms. Riskind, 22, said. 「And I guess I think that has given me a kind of confidence.」

Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking – the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick – are far more common than people acknowledge.

Even a skeptic can have a lucky number.

These habits have little to do with religious faith, which is much more complex because it involves large questions of morality and history. But magical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour.

The appetite for such beliefs appears to be rooted in the brain. The sense of having special powers buoys people in threatening situations, and helps soothe everyday fears and ward off mental distress. In excess, it can lead to compulsive or delusional behavior. This emerging portrait of magical thinking helps explain why people who fashion themselves skeptics cling to add rituals that seem to make no sense.

The brain seems to have networks that are specialized to produce an explicit, magical explanation in some circumstances, said Pascal Boyer, a professor of psychology and anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. In an e-mail message, he said such thinking was 「only one domain where a relevant interpretation that connects all the dots, so to speak, is preferred to a rational one.」

Children exhibit a form of magical thinking by about 18 months, when they begin to create imaginary worlds while playing. By age 3, most know the difference between fantasy and reality, though they usually still believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy (who arrives magically during the night to leave a present under the pillow of a child who has lost a tooth). By age 8, and sometimes earlier, they mostly pruned away these beliefs, and the line between magic and reality is about as clear to them as it is for adults.

It is no coincidence, some social scientists believe, that youngsters begin learning about faith around the time they begin to give up on wishing. 「The point at which the culture withdraws support for belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy is about the same time it introduces children to prayer,」 said Jacqueline Woolley, a professor of a psychology at the University of Texas. 「The mechanism is already there, kids have already spent time believing that wishing can make things come true, and they』re just losing faith in the efficacy of that.」

If the tendency to think magically were no more than self-defeating superstition, then over the pitiless history of human evolution it should have all but disappeared in intellectually mature adults.

Yet in a series of experience published last summer, psychologists at Princeton and Harvard showed how easy it was to elicit magical thinking in well-educated young adults. In one instance, the researchers had participants watch a blindfolded person play an arcade basketball game, and visualize success for the players. The game, unknown to the subjects, was rigged: the shooter could see through the blindfold, had practiced extensively and made most of the shots.

On questionnaires, the spectators said later that they had probably had some role in the shooter』s success. A comparison group of participants, who had been instructed to visualize the player lifting dumbbells, was far less likely to claim such credit.

「The question is why do people create this illusion of magical power?」 said the lead author, Emily Pronin, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. 「I think in part it』s because we are constantly exposed to our own thoughts, they are most salient to us」 – and thus we are likely to overestimate their connection to outside events.

But reality is the most potent check on runway magical thoughts, and in the vast majority of people it prevents the beliefs from becoming anything more than comforting – and disposable – private rituals.

Tom Livatino, a basketball coach in Chicago, wears the same clothes for every game, believing it helps his team win, but he also recently became engaged. 「I can tell you she doesn』t like the clothes superstition,」 he said. 「She has made that pretty clear.」