Does Superstition Improve Our Chances Of Survival?
Superstition is actually just a side effect of our ability to learn. Any living thing that is capable of making connections between facts and events can be superstitious to some degree.
According to Rats (1966), if someone believes that the results of something are beyond their control (unpredictable: fate, outside forces, luck…), it means that they have a belief or expectation based on external control. Some say superstitious behavior corresponds to uncontrollable situations. That said, we all know that it is impossible to control everything around us.
As humans, we have evolved and picked up abilities that help us survive in the world. It is a world that is quite unpredictable. And therefore we all have a kind of belief or illusion that makes us feel that we are in control of our lives.
Superstition as an adaptive tool
Knocking on the table, crossing your fingers, or not walking under a ladder can be like candy for a child. According to your brain, at least. After all, young children love candy. And people use it as reinforcement all the time, without knowing exactly why it works. Well, the same thing happens with superstitious rituals.
Many people have amulets or rituals they use to help them perform certain things better. These things can give them an extra boost of motivation or more self-confidence.
Personal superstitious thinking (PST) is the tendency to think in a way that prepares you to defend yourself against disappointment, heartache and dissatisfaction. This type of thinking is also part of what Epstein (1988) defined as constructive thinking.
Confidence in yourself is absolutely crucial. This means that any factor, however irrational it may be, will improve your chances of survival. And more specifically, it means that the claim that superstition can be adaptive, in fact, is sometimes true.
Experimentation with superstition
In these two trials, participants are convinced that their behavior is reinforced. But in the Koichi Ono study, the superstitious behavior does not come entirely from random reinforcement. And Helena Matutt’s experiment confirms the theory that lack of control is what makes people behave superstitious.
The Point Counter Experiment (Koichi Ono, 1987)
Inspired by Skinner’s research with pigeons, Koichi Ono used experimental rooms with three levers and a panel. The panel registered how many points the participants had. He had twenty subjects who tried to get as many points as possible. But he did not tell them any specific actions they had to take.
He programmed the devices to release amplifiers (points on the panel) every now and then. But it went by itself. What was the result? Many participants showed superstitious behavior when they did something and a point came after. One of them even jumped up, thinking it was how they got the points.
The sound experiment (Helena Matute, 1993)
Matute performed this experiment using a negative stimulus on a computer. In this case, it was an annoying sound that was programmed to go away after a certain amount of time. She divided the subjects into two groups.
With the first group, she asked them to try to turn off the sound using the computer keyboard. With the members of the other group, she said that no matter what they did, they would not be able to control the sound.
The results were very different. The subjects in the first group established a pattern of behavior the moment they pressed the keys. These people developed an illusion of control, and it caused them to behave superstitiously.
In fact, they began to believe that if they pressed certain keys, they could control the annoying sound. On the other hand, the other group did nothing, just as she had asked them to do.
Illusion as a shield
Our brains are made up of a network of connections that try to make connections between things. We connect words, places, emotions, events, etc. When someone mistakenly sees their behavior as a possible cause, it means that their brain has been taken over by an “illusion of control”. When this happens in a more general way, by thinking that the cause or root comes from an external force, we call that phenomenon an ” illusion of causality “.
Herstein (1966) argued that it is not very likely that this behavior comes only from random reinforcement. He thought it meant that if something made someone behave superstitiously at least once, it could last longer due to random reinforcement.
There are many societies that perform rituals such as rain dances or human sacrifice. Now let’s stop and think about this for a second. Could these methods come from just random reinforcement of individual behavior, or are they a way to improve our chances of survival?
