Have you ever knocked on wood after saying something that you don’t want to happen? Or
avoided scheduling things for Friday the 13th? Chances are, you have participated
in superstitious behaviors like these at some point in your life. Superstitions
and belief in the supernatural are common throughout human culture. But why? Can we
psychologically explain these behaviors? Before we start, we should make it clear
that this video will not examine the validity of superstitious behaviors, belief in ghosts,
or any other such thing. Instead, we’re going to explore the science behind the ubiquity of
such beliefs. Why might we as humans be drawn towards belief in the supernatural?
One explanation is that it’s because of how our minds work. The human mind
is built to detect patterns. We like to build structure out of the chaos of life.
This results in trying to make sense out of what is in actuality just pure noise.
Take for example the law of small numbers. This ‘law’ is the belief that data drawn from small
sample sizes behaves just like data drawn from large samples. But, as you might guess,
this ‘law’ is actually a fallacy. It’s not true. Small samples don’t act at all like large samples.
Still, we are driven to see patterns in small samples even when there are none.
Let’s look at an example. Say a drug is effective in 80% of patients. If five patients are treated
with the drug, how many will respond to it? Many people will reason that 80% means four
out of five. So in this example, exactly four people should respond to the drug. But if we
were to do the math, there’s actually only a 41% chance that exactly four people would respond out
of a sample of five. The statistic that 80% of patients respond to the drug comes from a large
population. If we increased our sample from 5 patients to 5,000, the probability of the drug
causing an effect increases dramatically, and we get much closer to that 80%.
The law of small numbers leads to beliefs like the Gambler’s Fallacy. The Gambler’s Fallacy is
when we believe that an outcome that has occurred many times in the past will have fewer chances of
occurring again. For instance, pretend that you’re a gambling on a roulette wheel. Say
that this roulette wheel is half red spaces and half black spaces. The ball has landed on “black”
7 times in a row. What are the chances that it will land on “black” again? Because we know that
there’s approximately a 50% chance that the ball will land on “black” or “red” and because it’s
landed on “black” 7 times already, we assume that the ball HAS to land on “red” next. In reality,
the times the ball has landed on “black” has no impact on what it will land on in the future.
They are separate, independent events. If we played roulette one million times, yes,
the ball would land on “red” about 50% of the time. But in a small sample of just 7 plays,
there is no guarantee that the ball will land on “red” next.
A similar example of getting tricked by the law of small numbers is the Hot Hand Fallacy. There’s
a basketball player that has a 50% shooting average. They have made seven shots in a row.
Do they have a “hot hand”? Are the chances that they’ll make the next shot greater? No. Because
the sample size is small, it’s actually not surprising that they’ve made seven shots in
a row. They will only match their 50% shooting average if they take hundreds or even thousands
of shots. They’re also not more likely to make the next shot at all. Because the next shot is
independent of the previous ones, they’re just as likely to miss it as to make it.
What do these examples and the law of small numbers mean for superstitions? Well,
we create elaborate causal theories to explain the completely random phenomena we see in the world.
Take the basketball player again. Maybe they happen to be wearing a certain pair of socks
on the day they made seven shots in a row. They may continue to wear those socks in future games
because of a belief that they are lucky. Although it’s somewhat random that they made seven shots
in a row, the player tries to control their future and continue having “hot hands” through
the superstitious insistence of the socks. Another aspect of the human mind that could
cause superstitious and supernatural beliefs is our tendency to overattribute agency. We
humans tend to assume that things occur because something caused them to occur. Did the picture
fall because it wasn’t fastened to the wall well, or did something in the house make it
fall to get us to leave? Was the tree falling and blocking your driveway a simple random accident,
or did something cause the tree to fall to keep you from driving in the storm and getting
into an accident? We tend to assign agency and assume that something caused the event
to happen, and likely for some important reason. This drive to assign agency to things and events
is actually evolutionarily advantageous. Imagine you’re a prehistoric human walking through the
savanna. A bush rustles. Quick, what do you do? Maybe you say “it’s just the wind” and do nothing.
If you’re right and there’s nothing there, then you’re fine. But if you’re wrong and it was
actually a lion, you are now dinner. But what if you say “it’s not just the wind, I think there’s
something there” and start to get prepared? If you’re right and there was a lion, you’re now
more ready to defend yourself. And if you’re wrong and there’s nothing there, you’re fine and nothing
bad happens. In seeing agency in the bush, the prehistoric you could more successfully defend
against a lion attack. We’ve kept this tendency to assign agency over the centuries, and it could
drive the presence of superstitions and belief in the supernatural that we see in societies today.
Another reason that superstitions thrive is because of confirmation bias and motivated
skepticism. We talked about confirmation bias earlier when we learned about social psychology
and the power of situation and framing. As a reminder, confirmation bias is when we search for,
interpret, favor, and remember information that confirms our own preexisting beliefs and
desires. We are motivated to accept facts that are consistent with our own beliefs and desires.
If something happens that seemingly ‘proves’ our superstition, we don’t question it. But
if something goes against our superstition, then we work hard to disprove it or just count it as a
fluke. For example, say something bad happens to you on Friday the 13th. Maybe you fail all of the
tests you took that day, or trip and drop your lunch all over yourself. If you’re superstitious,
you’ll likely blame your bad luck on Friday the 13th. In addition, because bad things happened on
this Friday the 13th, your belief that it is an unlucky day is confirmed and solidified further.
But if only good things happen on Friday the 13th, your belief that the date is bad luck is unlikely
to change. Instead, you just happened to get lucky on that particular Friday the 13th and you still
need to watch out for bad luck in the future. How does the supernatural and religion fit into
all of this? One explanation for believing in the supernatural is that we are motivated to believe.
I don’t think anyone would argue against the notion that life is often difficult. There are
many challenges that we as humans have to work through in our daily lives. On top of that,
the world seems to be full of evil and evil people. Often, evil people seem to prosper
while good people suffer. We also know that we and everyone we love will one day die. Finally,
there’s no clear meaning to life. So clearly, life is hard. But one solution to this difficulty is a
belief in some hidden, supernatural order that will make things right. Believing
in the supernatural makes us feel better about the difficulties life imposes on us.
Supernatural beliefs could also just be a cognitive by-product. As I discussed earlier,
we have a tendency to see patterns even when there are none. We also find agency
and intentionality in random things and develop causal theories for events that rely on hidden
agents or forces. Combine these tendencies with the fact that we often fall to confirmation bias,
paying attention to evidence confirming our beliefs and working to disprove inconsistent
evidence, and you have a recipe for supernatural beliefs. We see supernatural agents as a way to
“explain” patterns, and confirmation bias keeps the belief persisting.
So where does superstition and religion come from? Well, we as humans are likely to over-attribute
intentionality in the natural world. This gives rise to superstitions and attributes events to
“persons” or “agents” that we can’t see. These basic features of our cognition combine with
our motivations for things like keeping evildoers in line, rewarding good people,
and a desire to live after death. In addition, these religions and supernatural beliefs are
further maintained through culture. Invisible agents maintain moral behavior in a community.
For example, one study in children found that kids were less likely to cheat on a task when they were
observed by an adult, or told that they were being observed by a watchful, invisible person.
The perceived presence of this invisible agent kept children following the rules.
Similar findings have been shown in adults as well. We also see that moralizing gods,
or those that reward people for acting morally and punish those who break the rules, tend to
appear after a complex society has arisen. This suggests that supernatural agents and the rules
they impose may be kept in favor by societies as a way to increase cooperation and moral behavior.
All of this together, our tendencies to find patterns and attribute things to invisible agents,
our motivations in response to life’s difficulties, and the fact that society
itself may favor religion as a way to enhance cooperation, gives us a recipe for creatures
who are likely to hold dear a wide variety of supernatural concepts and superstitions.
We should make one last thing clear. Just because superstitions and religion may be
strictly the result of our cognition doesn’t make them less powerful in our daily lives.
Superstitions can in fact have a soothing effect and may relieve some anxiety by giving
people a sense of control over their lives. And in some cases, superstitions may actually
improve performance on tasks. One study found that superstitious gestures and words boosted
performance in tasks like golfing, likely because they increased self-confidence. So go ahead,
wear that lucky charm. If you believe it will help you, there’s a chance that it actually will.