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[ intro ]
If you’ve ever played with a Ouija board,
you’re probably familiar with the spooky feeling
of another presence moving the planchette.
But we can say something with a bit of confidence, it’s not a ghost:
It’s just your brain playing tricks on you. In fact,
psychologists actually have
a pretty good understanding of Ouija boards.
They’ve figured out not only how the planchette moves across the board,
but also why we’re so easily convinced a spirit is the one behind it.
In a sense, the way we interact with Ouija boards
is similar to how we’ve learned to interact with most of the world:
through associations.
As infants, we begin learning to associate our behaviors with certain outcomes —
like, “If I cry, my caregiver will give me food or attention.”
So, after just a few trials, we can begin to understand
how our world works and how to survive in it.
But this also means that, generally,
our brains end up wired to think in terms of cause and effect.
It’s just that figuring out /what/ caused something can be a challenge.
And that’s especially true with Ouija boards.
Under normal circumstances,
we realize our actions caused some outcome if our behavior
is closely linked in time with the effect.
In other words, if I reach over and push a planchette and it immediately moves —
cool, my brain will totally know I did that.
But! If the outcome happens much /later/ than our action,
or if our action wasn’t voluntary to begin with,
that throws us for a loop.
And our brain normally doesn’t realize /we’re/ responsible.
And that’s exactly what happens with Ouija boards.
Overall, the mechanics here are actually pretty simple:
The planchette moves thanks to something called the ideomotor effect.
This is when a muscle moves /just/ a little bit without you noticing,
and without you actually intending to move it.
And it’s driven by your thoughts and subconscious.
So, if you’re focusing really hard on the planchette and waiting for it to move,
you might not notice that your finger /happened/
to twitch a little toward one of the letters.
And your brain won’t notice, either!
So, faced with a spooky, moving planchette,
you might just try to assign causation anywhere you can.
In other words, /you/ didn’t move it…
so maybe it was your friend. Or maybe it /could/ have been a spirit.
A key brain region in figuring this out is called the caudate nucleus,
and it deals with motor behaviors and reward-based learning.
But the other major player here is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,
or dlPFC.
This region has kind of a big job: It figures out who or what caused something to happen.
It’s just... not always great at it.
I mean, in its defense, figuring that stuff out is /hard/.
Like, something could have been caused by your actions… or by chance… or by some other factor.
So, this region needs to take in information about
/tons/ of only-possibly-relevant cues and determine which ones are /actually/ important.
And while this usually works out, sometimes, the dlPFC
is just a little overeager to assign credit /somewhere/.
And that means we might superstitiously give credit to something irrelevant,
just on accident. Like a ghost.
Admittedly, it /could/ seem like there’s a bit of a jump between
“your brain doesn’t know what caused something to move” and “there’s a ghost in the room.”
But here, a look at personality traits may help explain
why some people are more inclined to give credit to something supernatural.
Specifically, there’s an idea in personality psychology called locus of control.
A person with a strong /internal/ locus of control feels
that they’re mainly responsible for their outcomes in life,
while a person with an /external/ locus of control
will give more credit to things like fate, luck, and chance.
And maybe unsurprisingly,
where we fall on that spectrum can influence how we interact with Ouija boards.
In a 2018 study of 40 Ouija board players,
more skeptical players reported a more internal locus of control.
More specifically, this group believed the planchette was being moved by the other player
or perhaps even unconsciously by themselves.
Meanwhile, the opposite was true for those who believed the planchette
was moved by some outside force: They reported a more /external/ locus of control.
No matter which camp you fall into,
though, Ouija boards can be a lot of fun.
They’re creating an illusion driven by unconscious movement,
an overzealous brain, and our personality traits.
...but even knowing that, they can still be a little spooky.
Speaking of spooky…
2020 has been quite the year, and there’s enough going on
that it can be hard to just sit down and /learn/ something.
But Blinkist is trying to help with that.
They created an app that takes the key insights from more than 3000 nonfiction books,
then condenses them down into 15 minutes that you can read or listen to.
The books range from stories about business and history,
to self-help and psychology.
Like, one of their favorites this month is called Life in the Transitions, by Bruce Feiler.
And it’s all about navigating change and what makes it meaningful.
If you want to try Blinkist, you can head over to Blinkist.com/SciShowPsych.
The first 100 people to visit that URL will get unlimited access to Blinkist for a week —
and 25% a full membership.
You can also click the link in the description to learn more.
[ outro ]