Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition

I bought this for my brother's birthday, and he loves it. He is has a BS in Psychology, and I thought this would be a great present for him!

This is a fascinating and often downright funny book. Vyse's thesis is that superstitions are "a largely predictable outcome of the processes that control human learning and cognition". In general, superstitions tend to develop when the nature of the problem is unclear, then something random is paired with the desired result, which supplies a strong bias to repeat it. When the "cost" of the superstitious behavior is minimal and the result is important, people tend to reason that they'd "better not risk it." Humans are pattern seeking animals and tend to find patterns even where there are none. Of course, superstitious behavior can also be learned from others. Vyse writes, "superstitions often spring from reasoning errors, but these mistakes (illusions of control, misunderstandings of chance and probability, confirmation bias) are common to us all...reasoning errors are a natural feature of our humanity." (p 208) This book serves to explain various errors that lead to superstitious beliefs. Humans tend to make systematic reasoning errors in predictable ways, and Vyse touches on some of those that lead to superstitious behavior. Another fascinating book that does an excellent job at explaining those errors is How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by Cornell psychologist Thomas Gilovich. As Carl Sagan wrote in Demon Haunted World, "if we resolutely refuse to acknowledge where we are liable to fall into error, then we can confidently expect that error." Understanding the reasoning errors we are prone to make is the first step to avoiding them. I laughed out loud at the results of some of the studies. Participants in one study sat at a desk with three switches, a signal light, and a "point" counter. They were told that "they were not required to do anything in particular but that they should try to earn as many points as possible. Points appeared on the counter on different schedules...always completely independently of anything the students did." Various superstitious behaviors emerged. "As might be expected, most of these behaviors involved patterns of lever pulls. For example, one student made four rapid pulls on a single lever then held the lever for several seconds. The student used this pattern repeatedly for over thirty minutes, alternating among the three levers...of course, the students' responses had absolutely no effect on the delivery of points, but in each case, a careful analysis of the data revealed that each superstitious pattern of lever-pulling began with a coincidence: a point being given at the end of a sequence of responses." (p 73) Some participants developed superstitions unrelated to the levers; one woman's behavior was described as such: "...she climbed on the table and put her right hand on the counter. Just as she did so, another point was delivered. Thereafter she began to touch many things in turn, such as the signal light, the screen, a nail on the screen, and

Superstitution, clincially speaking, is what we resort to when chance governs outcomes. That's the message delivered by this book which thoroughly treats issues merely raised in other literature by researchers of religious ideation. What's fascinating is that studies demonstrating pidgeon and mouse behavior when sporadically rewarded with food are very similar to studies of young and adult humans when rewards are similarly sporadically given. Significantly, instead of attributing the rewards to being merely the product of chance, the subjects studied repeat the elaborate rituals they've developed which -- in their experience -- equate with being rewarded. What makes this particularly significant is that it shows that humans, pidgeons and mice alike share arguably similar mental templates for causation and how it works. And just like pidgeons and mice, we can trick our mental templates for causation to see causation where it doesn't even exist. In this way, there are great similarities to the pidgeon dance exhibited by pidgeons being sporadically rewarded food and Wade Boggs taking a practice run at 7:17 before the game. Together with Bennet's "Theory of Mind" and Boyer's speculations on religious ideation, this book goes along way toward explaining what makes humans believe in magic and superstitous generally.

A great book for everyone on this topic. It covers many aspects of superstition. It's well organized and easy to read. Although the Coda is author's personal feeling, it explains how a non-superstitious person think and feel very well.More technical detail in psychological aspects can be found in "The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making" by Scott Plous. A combination reading of these two books will give you a complete and deep understanding.

With out a doubt, one of the best books on the topic of beliefs. Mr. Vyse goes through superstition and how psychologically it makes sense in many of the instances. He goes in to the risk/sacrifice factor and applies it well here. From superstition to religion, from habits to rituals, from black cats to Wade Boggs and his chicken ritual. From research with kids to research with College students, Mr. Vyse makes this a fun read. You do not need to be a Behavior Psychologist to understand this book. As a matter of fact, this was written for the rest of us. It's a fast read, and goes in to so many (relative) areas that you are lost within his book and before you know it at the end of it.