Why do people who don’t believe in superstitious rituals intended to reverse bad luck like knocking on wood, throwing salt, or spitting often do it anyway? It’s because although the ritual won’t really change the expected outcome, doing it leads people to simulate the feelings, thoughts, and sensations they experience when they avoid something bad. In short, the ritual works because it makes people believe that it wards off jinxes or bad luck.
[ILLUSTRATION: Graphic figure of woman in floral dress]OLIMPIA ZAGNOLI - THE NEW YORK TIMESThis is the finding of Jane L. Risen, University of Chicago associate professor of behavioral science, and her research teammates Yan Zhang and Christine Hosey in a recent research study to be published soon in the
Journal of Experimental Psychology.
In “Sense and Superstition,” an article in the October 4, 20134 issue of
The New York Times, Risen and co-author A. David Nussbaum, a fellow associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago, reported that the research team induced college students to jinx themselves by asking half of them to say out loud that they would definitely not get into a car accident this winter. Compared with those who did not jinx themselves, these students, when asked about it later, thought it was more likely that they would get into an accident.
Risen and Naussbaum said: “After the ‘jinx,’ in the guise of clearing their minds, we invited some of these students to knock on the wooden table in front of them. Those who knocked on the table were no more likely to think that they would get into an accident than students who hadn’t jinxed themselves in the first place. They had reversed the effects of the jinx.”
The study’s conclusion: “Knocking on wood may not be magical, but superstition proved helpful in understanding why the ritual was effective. Across cultures, superstitions intended to reverse bad luck, like throwing salt or spitting, often share a common ingredient. In one way or another, they involve an avoidant action, one that exerts force away from oneself, as if pushing something away.”
Read Jane L. Risen and A. David Mussbaum’s “Sense and Superstition” in The New York Times now!
