Why even the most rational people can be superstitious and believe in absurd things

As I have heard, the Spanish actress Elsa Pataky wore different colored socks in one of her first auditions in Hollywood.

In her haste, she put on the first ones she found at home. The audition went great. At the next casting, she returned to her usual habit of wearing matching socks, and the test went terribly. From that moment on, Elsa Pataky always wears socks of different colors at her auditions.

They bring you good luck.

I have no proof of the veracity of this anecdote, but it is an excellent model of How a superstition is forged and consolidated in our minds. I hope Elsa Pataky doesn’t mind me using her as an example. Knock on wood.

Predictive trend

One of the main motivations of the human mind is the need to find partnerships between different events that allow you to anticipate reality.

Natural selection has favored the search for cause-effect relationships to discover the rules of the world and thus promote survival and reproduction.

We are compulsive connection seekers archaeologists of regularity, intuitive futurologists. Our cognitive system is allergic to ambiguity and uncertainty. The association of events is the antidote to this “mental allergic reaction”.

Las Superstitions are the dark side of this predictive tendency so useful for survival: they associate events that are not really related in any way. What does the color of socks have to do with Elsa Pataky’s acting skills?

The human tendency to predict the world invents these connections. After all, learning associations is the cornerstone of our behavioral acquisition.

With superstitions, these associative mechanisms go too far and sin by excess.

What science says

The first scientific approach to the superstitious behavior It was carried out in 1948 by the psychologist BF Skinner through a famous study with pigeons.

Skinner programmed the food dispensing to occur automatically every fifteen seconds. No matter what they did, the pigeons would receive food at that rate.

After some time, the American scientist found that most of the birds (six out of eight, specifically) had developed their own superstitious rituals to get food.

One pigeon was spinning around, others were shaking their heads from side to side, and another was pecking at the ground.

This phenomenon is called “adventitious conditioning” to differentiate it from “operant conditioning” learning, when the animal learns based on the positive or negative consequences actually caused by its behavior.

Very similar results have been found in humans using tasks in which fictitious connections are established between events.

In fact, there is an entire field of study in Psychology dedicated to the illusions of causality, which have even been linked to the proliferation of alternative pseudomedicines, such as homeopathy or reiki, or paranormal beliefs.

When we have already created a causal connection between events, one of the mechanisms that encourages its maintenance is the so-called “confirmation bias”which is part of our cognitive toolbox.

We tend to pay more attention to events that confirm our beliefs than to those that contradict them: “Whenever I wash my car, it rains”; “The Amazon delivery guy always comes when I’m not home.”

We easily forget the many times when such predictions did not come true. And at the same time, we vividly remember the moment when those uncomfortable events occurred because of the emotional impact they generate.

Another mechanism that favors the maintenance of superstitions is based on what psychologists call “self-fulfilling prophecy”. That is, one’s belief in a prediction can make it come true through one’s actions.

So, if we force Elsa Pataky to wear socks of the same color for her next audition, she will probably get very nervous about not having her amulet and her performance will be seriously affected.

The actress will come to the conclusion that her prophecy is confirmed, even though she herself has been the one who has confirmed it.

Our superstitions enslave us: If we ignore them, anxiety will make us perform worse. Just ask the athletes, compulsive hoarders of manias, rituals and superstitions.

Superstitions are absurd, but usually easy to fulfill.

They are kept alive by the “just in case” and the “what if it were true?” Knocking on wood, not walking under a ladder, not toasting with water, crossing your fingers: all of these are very easy and cheap actions to perform.

Physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962) had a horseshoe hanging on the wall of his office. When asked how one of the most analytical minds of his time could believe in amulets, Bohr replied: “I don’t believe in them, but I have been told that they bring luck even to those who don’t believe in them.”

It’s not that hard, is it? Superstitious behavior would have a harder time if we had to do a hundred push-ups to accumulate luck before an exam. We are stupid, but not stupid enough to beat laziness.

The link with culture

Superstitions are often implanted in the heritage of the traditions and customs of a societyThey allow us to identify with the values ​​of our culture, through shared habits and rituals.

It’s easy to imagine Elsa Pataky’s superstition spreading through the population and people wearing mismatched socks to their driving test or on Tinder dates.

Many cultural superstitions have roots that are centuries or even millennia old, making it very difficult to trace their origins.

It seems that touch wood comes from ancient Celtic beliefs about souls inhabiting trees.

For their part, the black cats They were associated with witches during the Middle Ages, although in Scotland they are a symbol of good luck. A nice demonstration of the arbitrariness of superstitions, by the way.

He number thirteen has a very bad reputation. According to the Otis company, around 85% of its elevators installed in buildings with more than twelve floors omit the button with the number thirteen.

It seems that the origin is related to Judas Iscariot, the thirteenth guest at the Last Supper in Christianity. The fear of Friday the 13th combines this numerical superstition with the memory of the celebration of Good Friday, the fateful day on which Jesus Christ was crucified.

From logic to intuition

We are rational beings… but the kind that take rations in bars, as the band Siniestro Total claims in one of their songs. Our natural rationality It is not logical but bio-logical or psycho-logical.

Evolution has provided us with an arsenal of cognitive shortcuts to process large amounts of information and make quick (usually successful) decisions with the partial and ambiguous data we receive from the environment.

Instead, the exercise of logical and reasoned thinking It requires the tiring task of disciplining our mind to prevent the fallacies and biases of human thought.

Both systems of thought inhabit us without apparent conflict.

On the one hand, a Intuitive and automatic system which is guided by rules of thumb and can lead to biases and fallacies of thought.

On the other hand, a analytical and reflective system but slower and more expensive, which under the right conditions can behave rationally and logically.

That’s why even the most rational and analytical minds can harbor irrational beliefs and absurd superstitions. Just ask Niels Bohr, with his lucky horseshoe.

When we take off the scientist’s lab coat or the judge’s robe, our minds are as gullible as those of our prehistoric ancestors. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that reason doesn’t abandon us entirely.