Magical contagion and seeing patterns that aren't there

PATTERNS THAT AREN’T THERE

Teigen and Jensen (2011) distinguish between two forms of luck: blind luck (random chance) and magic luck. Blind luck occurs if you survive a tsunami by being in the right place at the right time. Magic luck means that lucky events are due to hidden forces or fate. Believing in luck implies that events are not due to chance but due to some supernatural influence (Darke & Freedman, 1997). Luck, good or bad, can be passed on through a process called magical contagion. This refers to the belief that, if two objects or people come into contact, then there can be a magical link between them. Owning a guitar from famous rock star, or a dress worn by Marylin Munroe confers something of the previous owner to the new one. Otherwise, why would you do that when cheaper guitars and dresses abound? At the same time, one might feel uncomfortable wearing a swastika arm band previously worn by Heinrich Himmler (unless one is a neo-Nazi).

Another influence that can give rise to magical thinking is our ability to see patterns in the world even if they are not really there. A pattern of three or four dots can be enough to allow us to see a face. Seeing faces where none exists is known as pareidolia. Thus, people have seen faces on Mars, the Virgin Mary in window glass, Jesus’ face in an oil slick, and so on. While seeing patterns can lead to superstitious behaviour in humans, the same phenomenon has been found in pigeons. Skinner (1948) found that pigeons used for conditioning experiments that had been kept in cages developed superstitious behaviour. They were fed through a mechanism attached to the cages for a few minutes each day. When the birds had been left without food for a while, Skinner found that the birds repeated the behaviour that they were doing when the food eventually arrived, such as turning counterclockwise or bobbing their head up and down. They subsequently repeated these behaviours in the (pigeon version of) hope that food would, therefore, arrive. One could also view the pigeons' behaviour patterns as equivalent to rituals that they perform to magically produce food.

Magical thinking and cognitive style

Superstitious and supernatural beliefs, and religious thinking are universal aspects of human cognition (Boyer, 2008; Gray & Gallo, 2016). Gray and Gallo quote a Gallup poll (Gallup, 2005) showing a high level of belief in the US in psychic phenomena:

42% believe in extrasensory perception (ESP), 31% in telepathy, and 26% in clairvoyance. While sceptics outperformed believers in analytical tasks in Grey and Gallo's studies, they also found that psychic belief was associated with greater life satisfaction; thus, while there are benefits to being a sceptic, there appear to be downsides too.

While supernatural beliefs may be universal, there are individual differences in people’s susceptibility to such beliefs. For example, there is a negative correlation between superstitious beliefs and a rational cognitive style (Brankovic, 2019). There is also a positive correlation between superstitious beliefs and a belief in ESP. Swami, Pietschnig, Stieger, and Voracek (2011) also found a correlation between ESP and a range of paranormal beliefs but frequent negative correlations with education level. Even atheists have been shown to exhibit beliefs in a range of supernatural phenomena, although fewer than believers in a deity. The nature of some of these varies from culture to culture. Bullivant, Farias, Lanman, and Lee (2019) studied the beliefs of populations in Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, UK, and USA. For example, the stand-out supernatural belief among Chinese atheists and agnostics is astrology. Overall, about 18—28% of atheists and between 20% and 38% of agnostics believe that ‘significant events are meant to be'. The percentages for both groups are nevertheless considerably lower than for the populations as a whole.