Approaches to Uncertainty:
1. Crave it. Risk-takers may gamble, take drugs, engage in extreme sports, etc.
2. Be “crippled” by it. some become dependent on reality distortions, develop phobias, become depressed, hypochondriacal, etc.
3. Most avoid those risks that we can and find ways of coping with those negative events that occur. Rituals can be one means of coping. Religious faith, personal philosophy, and superstitious beliefs and actions can be ways of coping.
Magic, Superstition, and Culture
1. Magic and Religion. In a magic act there is an implicit understanding between the performer and the audience that nothing supernatural is involved; the performance is a trick. In contrast, the magics studied by anthropologists are sorcery, witchcraft, and conjuring. For the members of these cultures, the performances are real.
2. Magic as Productive of the “Primitive” Mind. For Frazer there are two categories of magic: sorcery that aims to bring about desirable events and taboo that aims to avoid unwanted events.
Frazer described two principles of sympathetic magic: homeopathy and contagion. Homeopathy is founded on the notion that “like produces like”. Contagion holds that there is a lasting connection between things that were once in contact.
For Frazer both religion and magic are attempts at understanding and controlling life events. Magic differs from religion - magic spells and rituals are aimed directly at a specific end whereas prayer involves persuasion of an intermediary. In the magical principle of similarity, the image is the object.
3. Magic as Social Institution. Durkheim - magic and religion cannot be distinguished from other domains by their supernatural character. Not all cultures distinguish natural from supernatural. However, cultures distinguish between the sacred and the profane.
Religion is composed of beliefs (statements about the nature of sacred things) and rites (rules of conduct with respect to sacred things). Magic and religion fulfill different social functions: religion serves the group and magic serves the individual. However, profoundly religious experiences often occur in solitude.
4. Magic as Response to Uncertainty. Malinowski – magic is employed where the element of danger is conspicuous. Wherever action is certain, reliable, and under an individual’s control by rational methods and technological processes, magic is not employed. Magic is directed at future events and religion enables the community to surmount a current crisis.
By ritualizing activities, religion helps standardize emotional responses to current difficulties and provides alternatives to the typical impulses. Religious rituals regulate important changes and additions to the community.
5. Magic as Failure of Confidence. The insecurities of life prompt supernatural beliefs. Science weakened the appeal of supernatural notions of disease without providing alternative forms of treatment. Science represented the emergence of a new faith in the potentialities of human endeavors and self-help.
Magic operates according to any or all of five basic principles:
1. Frazer’s two principles of sympathetic magic: homeopathy and contagion.
2. Forces. Most peoples believe that there are forces that are separate from and operate independently of any spiritual beings or those forces identified by science. These forces are programmed to do things either alone or in concert with others.
3. Power. The forces are energized by a mystical power that exists in varying degrees in everything. Some have more of this power than others. The power is transferable through physical contact, sensory perception, or mere proximity (glory, auras, psi-energy, “holy water”). In some belief systems, forces and power merge.
4. A coherent connected cosmos. Everything is connected in both space and time and pre-programmed.
5. Symbols. Words, thoughts, things, or actions can both represent other actions and things and take on the qualities of the things they represent (e.g., national flag). Some symbols seem universal (e.g., eggs, horns, color red).
Words are powerful. Spoken words, activated by the life force and intent of speaker, carry power of their meaning to their target.
The forces and powers addressed and manipulated in magic are insentient and passively responsive (if the rite is performed correctly). This is distinct from Prayer.
Magic involves the transfer of power in nature or the human effort to manipulate natural forces along the network of cosmic connections by symbolic projection of power.
Magical principles are evident in: a) intentional magic (symbols consciously used for beneficial or harmful results); b) in taboo (avoidance of establishing an undesirable magical connection); c) in direct use of words to achieve results (a blessing or curse); d) in divination (“reading” answers to questions by tapping into the cosmic program); e) in harnessing the power of symbols for personal good fortune or protection.
Superstitions are likely to occur to gamblers, sailors, soldiers, miners, financial investors, college students, and individuals in both professional and nonprofessional sports.
1. Superstition in Sport. Uncertainty is an integral part of sports although the motivation to win or perform well is quite strong. Superstitions are attempts to alter the probabilities.
2. College Students and Exams. Superstition is associated with fear of failure.
3. Gamblers. The outcome of gambling games are random and out of the player’s control. Yet, many gamblers act as though they were games of skill. Superstitions are used to gain control of the random events of the game. Often these superstitions take the form of playing strategies. Some superstitions are aimed at maintaining successful play; others are used to end a stretch of unsuccessful play. The win-stay/lose-shift strategy is most often provoked about a superstition. Continue the superstition as long as you will, change it when you lose (a previously lucky item becomes unlucky). Superstitions among gamblers are motivated by hopes of winning rather than fears of losing.
The Prevalence of Superstitution.
In contrast to beliefs in the paranormal, superstitions are conventionally viewed negatively and are presented as being primitive and based on ignorance.
However, the New Age movement has rejected Western science, technology, and orthodox religion, given new life to old superstitions, and introduced new ones. Americans are increasingly anxious about their world and suspicious of the media and government.
Superstition and Coincidence.
We become superstitious because superstitions appear to work. Something good or bad that happens to occur coincident with having done something specific makes us either more likely to engage in similar behavior in the future in order to make the good happen again or more unlikely to do similar behavior in order to avoid the bad event.
Superstitions are acquired because of contiguity (events coming together in time). Both spatial and temporal contiguity have profound effects on human perception and learning. We are very sensitive to the alignment of objects in space and events in time.
Even professionals can misunderstand statistics and probabilities when estimating phenomena in the real world. Expectations, selective perception, and commonly accepted social notions create intuitive probabilities. Superstitious thinking emerges from misunderstanding probability, random processes, errors of logical reasoning, and cognitive short cuts that sacrifice accuracy for speed of judgment and decision-making.
If the nature of the problem is unclear, we are likely to repeat something that may produce the desired result, especially if the response costs little and the reward is great. Superstitious behavior is likely to emerge when the event is important and the cost of the superstition is minimal.
When is a Ritual Just a Routine and When is Ritual a Superstition? Personal routines may serve useful and rational purposes that can focus attention and minimize variations that may disrupt performance. Routine can regulate emotion and block intruding thoughts.
Routines become superstitious when a particular action is given magical significance. Randomness of outcome is a powerful force in the establishment of superstitious rituals.
Thus, the initial motivation for a routine may be the time-filling and stabilizing effects of adjunctive behavior (as well as the cognitive and emotional benefits described), but the eventual articulation of a superstitious ritual grows out of accidental reinforcement – or social influence combined with accidental reinforcement.
The Gamblers Fallacy. Many people believe that “things even out”. Unfortunately, random number generators do not have memory.
“Representativeness” heuristic applies when we expect smaller samples of a larger group to reflect the characteristics of the larger group. Small samples can deviate substantially from the larger group. Also, normal random processes can involve surprisingly long streaks of both “fortunate” and “unfortunate luck”.
Coincidence. We invest special significance to coincidental events. “The Law of Truly Large Numbers” means that relatively unlikely events can occur (with no more and no less than their appropriate frequency) given a very large number of opportunities. Everyday analysis of coincidence tends to be overly conservative.
Personal involvement in coincidences makes them more meaningful than when only others are involved in them.
Variability: Superstition and the Ups and Downs of Life. Continuous processes (one’s state of health, the state of the NY Stock Exchange) vary freely in a continuous fashion. This inherent variability can strengthen superstitious beliefs.
Homeopathic medicine –the greater the dilution of the substance that brings on the symptoms that one wishes to eliminate, the stronger the effect of eliminating the symptoms. Two effects (placebo and misunderstanding of variability) explain belief in homeopathy. Many ailments are chronic and fluctuate variably or have a specific time course of symptom expression.
Biases are attending to certain aspects of the problem while ignoring others. Biases simplify the processes of judgment and decision-making. These biases include:
1. Illusory Correlations. Everyday perception of relatedness is prone to bias – we fail to consider all of the information.
When we are motivated to find a relationship we focus on events that seem to confirm that a relationship exists. By attending only to when things occur together, we tend to see a relation when none exists. Believers are motivated to find something that “works” to gain them an edge over uncertainty. Failures of the belief or superstition are ignored in favor of successes.
2. Keeping the Faith. Personal investment in our beliefs influences both the way we challenge or question them and the conclusions that we reach from testing them. Alternative conclusions are not examined or even considered.
Confirmation bias is the construction of tests that are designed only to validate the prior belief. When a person receives information that is in conflict with a strongly held belief, a dissonance is created that produces heightened emotional arousal.
3. When Only Superstitious Thoughts Come to Mind. The more salient the memory of certain phenomena, the more available they are for influencing thoughts and emotions.
Since probabilistic explanations for chance occurrences are less available, the search for the cause of a particularly fortuitous or unfortunate event leads to biases.
If, because of unbalanced or deficient exposure, we lack relevant information, our judgment may suffer. Unfortunately, popular culture provides more-than-adequate exposure to superstitious and paranormal theories and less-than-adequate exposure to science and mathematics.
4. Confusing Chance and Skill. Many gambling games promote the illusion of control so that the player believes that the result is a matter of skill rather than chance.
Bettors employ many strategies for placing bets on completely random (and unaffected by any strategy that a player might employ) events. Instant tickets offer novelty and immediacy of feedback. For more sophisticated games involving random-number generators, certain betting strategies are objectively more rational than others (however, these are readily available, even at the gaming tables). The illusion of control leads bettors to forsake rational strategies.
A sense of meaning and control, even when they are illusions, can have beneficial effects.
The pervasive desire for control is an important motivation for superstitious behavior. Superstitions provide a sense of control over the uncontrollable. When superstitions are used in the context of threat or stress, the illusory control may have psychological value.
Keinan (1994) found that people with lower tolerance for ambiguity and living in a high stress area were especially superstitious.
The P.T. Barnum Effect. Requests for specific information enhanced the illusion that a general description was constructed for the recipient, especially if it is complimentary.
In our increasingly alienated society, loneliness is a growing problem, yet we are provided with few means of coping. In exchange of a fee, people can receive “personalized” attention from a caring individual, a sense of entertainment and wonder, a feeling of hope and reduced uncertainty about the future.
As long as these methods of coping with alienation are promoted, they will continue to influence the choices we make and the character of our society.
Seeing What You Believe: Placebo Effects and Superstition. Placebo effects are produced by response expectancies. Expectancies have a powerful influence on our responses. Placebo effects can produce improvement. However, more serious conditions make placebo effects and the misinterpretation of variability very troublesome. These phenomena maintain belief in useless treatments. When stakes are high, choosing magic over science holds very grave risks.