Biggie Smalls…
[Sigh, clears throat]
Biggie Smalls... Biggie Smalls...
Biggie Smalls. K. I think...
[Poof] What the [beep] is this?!
I was just trying to make a video about superstitions.
I didn’t know that was going to happen. I mean, who would know?! Right?
[Intro music]
Whether you're talking about luck or curses, you’re talking about superstition. Some sort of supernatural or cosmic
influence that you hope to harness for yourself or avoid entirely. In psychology, we call this
magical thinking. It doesn’t always have to be religious, and in fact most of the time it’s not.
Superstitions come from the fact that our brains are natural pattern seekers. Even when
there isn’t one, our brains try to find one. We’ll dismiss coincidences, count things that are close
or good enough, and in the end we have what we believe to be the cause and effect relationship.
I used to teach about the development of superstition in my classroom and it doesn’t really
work here in the YouTube environment. But what I would do is tell my students that they had ten
minutes to earn 100 points. I wouldn’t tell them how they earned the points other than that normal
school rules applied, so no touching. Then I’d put on a pair of sunglasses and just enjoy the show.
Admittedly, I got the idea from a British television show called Trick or Treat. The episode
where they discuss this happens to guest star David Tennant. And now I’ve lost half my audience.
Anyway, once the class earned their 100 points, I asked if any of them figured out the rules.
Half the class raised their hands and said stuff like every time they picked up a piece of trash,
or every time they blinked three times in a row. I asked them if it was every
single time and they said no. They thought I was switching between them and some other
student. So they had incorporated the time they were wrong into their own rule system.
This is how superstitions are born. The students thought that their actions were
causing them to earn points. In truth, I was wearing the sunglasses because I wasn’t
watching the students at all. In fact, I was watching my screensaver and everytime
a new fish appeared on screen they were earning a point. It had nothing to do with them whatsoever.
But in that case they were being told that their actions were directly awarding them points,
which wasn’t the case. Here in the real world, we aren’t earning points and we don’t really know if
there even are rules. So we’re just all sort of figuring it out and hoping that there’s a pattern.
The theory on how superstitions are born comes from B.F. Skinner and his pigeons. Skinner is
famous for his work on operant conditioning, which plays a huge role in superstition. Some of his
pigeons were fed on a fixed ratio, which means they were fed after a certain number of actions
were performed. Or on a fixed interval, which just means they were fed on a certain time interval.
He found that the pigeons who were on the fixed interval time schedule would perform
the same actions that they were doing the last time they were fed, thinking that this
would influence when they get fed again. And eventually that was true, they would get fed,
reinforcing that superstitious behavior. Like my students, and the pigeons,
you’ll forget all of the times that you were wrong, and only remember the times that you were
right. This will happen over and over until you’ve become convinced that you know what the rule is.
Now there are two types of superstition; there’s good luck, which comes from finding
four leaf clovers, carrying around rabbits feet, throwing coins into a fountain or wishing upon
a shooting star. And then there’s bad luck, or curses, which come from breaking mirrors,
walking under a ladder, having a black cat walk across your path, or opening an umbrella indoors.
All of these are rules that we’ve constructed in order to figure out the cosmic feeding schedule.
But this is just normal everyday life. What about situations where
you purposefully need an extra boost of luck? Some athletes will wear the same pair of socks or
unmentionables over and over because they won with them once before. Other people might carry around
a lucky coin or other souvenir believing that it brings them good fortune. But this doesn’t even
come close to the king of superstition, gambling. Craps is by far the most superstitious game in
any casino. While you’re at the table, you are not allowed to say the word seven. Much
like the Scottish play, just saying the name is bad luck. Even the dealers won’t say seven.
And if you’re explaining to a new player how to play the game, like oh how do I lose,
you just say, you don’t want to see one number and you don’t see it on this layout. On the layout it
has four, five, six, eight, nine, ten. You know? So seven doesn’t even appear on the layout?
Seven not even on there. It’s the only number you don’t want
to see but you don’t even talk about it. Along with the superstition surrounding the
number seven, players will often have their own way of imbuing the dice with luck. Most
often by blowing on them. I suppose if you’re gambling, in addition to the normal gases, there
is some sort of luck molecule you can exhale. In games like blackjack, it’s usually seen as
bad luck for someone to come in in the middle of a shoe. The shoe is the current set of shuffled
cards. The idea is that the luck of the shoe has already been set up and someone coming in in the
middle will mess up the feeding schedule and now we’ll all lose. Some players will
even [slap] slap the table as their card is being dealt to them in order to cosmically
change it into the card that they need. In other card games, like poker,
people use card protectors that they believe are lucky. Card protectors are what you put on
top of your cards in order to indicate to the dealer that you haven’t folded,
even though you’re not actively holding your cards. Some people will bring multiple card
protectors because eventually the luck imbued within them runs out and they need to be replaced.
The easiest superstition to spot in a casino is called the gambler’s fallacy. As an example, let’s
pretend that a coin has a 50-50 chance of landing on heads or tails. It’s actually 51-49, but we’re
pretending, remember? [Coin drops] Anyway, I flip it four times and it lands [coin drop] on
heads all four times. What are you gonna bet next? [Coin drop] Most normal people,
including heavy gamblers, are gonna bet on tails, because it’s bound to happen eventually. But this
is the fallacy. The previous flips have no effect on the next one. It’s still a 50-50 chance.
Falling into this fallacy is easiest on games of pure chance like roulette. If
the table rolls red five times in a row, people will start placing bets on black because it’s
bound to happen. What happens in the past will not affect what’s going to happen in
the future, the table could still roll red. Another fun thing to do at the casino is to
watch the slot machines. That’s where you’ll find all the old ladies with their fanny packs.
They aren’t playing though. They’re just watching all the college kids throw away
their money. Why aren’t they playing? Because they’re waiting for the birthday girl to lose
enough money that she gives up and walks away, so that they can take their spot.
She believes that the feeding schedule of the machine has run up and it is due for a
payout. If only that naïve college girl had stuck it out just a little bit longer. But
believing the machine is due for a payout is no different that thinking red or tails is bound
to hit. Nothing the previous player did has any affect on what the next player will get.
But even people who work in casinos and know these things aren’t true eventually
find themselves believing in superstitions. Yes, I truly believe in beginner's luck.
Oh okay. Oh my god, I’ve
never seen anything like it. It’s uncanny. You may think these things are confined to
the casino or at least to the gambling or superstitious world. And you couldn’t be
further from the truth. Everyone participates in this, even you. It’s part of the psychological
theory of the illusion of control. The tendency of people to overestimate their ability to
control events. You may scoff at that idea, but you very likely participate in a ritual well.
These may be for luck or for some sort of practical purpose, like a pre-game stretching
routine, or prayer, or some sort of specific meal. But these are all rituals. Even I have a ritual
for every time I watch a new Game of Thrones episode. I watch the previous episode while making
whatever junk food I’m gonna have for dinner. I turn off the internet and silence my phone because
that’s the only way to avoid any spoilers. And then I sit back and enjoy. But that doesn’t mean I
have any control over what happens in the episode. This is where quasi-magical thinking comes
in. This is when you know your actions don’t have any effect on the outcome,
but you do them anyway. Like when you shout “no!” at the TV because your favorite character is about
to die. Again. Or when you close your eyes and wish while you open up what you hope to be an
acceptance letter to a university. You know your actions aren’t going to go back in time
and change the dean or the writer’s mind. But you do it anyway because you have some cosmic
hope that maybe your actions do have some sort of control. Or at least maybe there is someone
out there who does have control who can help you. And that’s the overarching point of superstition.
Trying to figure out the rules of this random universe so that we feel like we have some sort
of control, or at least understanding of it. But the truth is, none of us have the answers. None of
us have control. And there’s nobody out there that we can ask to change the cosmic feeding schedule
for us. So the next time you want to toss a coin into a fountain, or wish upon a falling star,
or break a mirror, don’t worry, nothing is going to happen, because now, you know better.
Hey guys, if you learned anything from this video, go ahead and give that like button a
click. If you’d like to see more from me, I put out new videos every weekend, so go
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of your TV and haunt you for the next five years. Because of all of your help, I’m about to hit 250
subscribers. So I figured along with a couple challenges, I’d give you guys the opportunity
to ask me anything you wanted about the channel or the content I’ve created down in the comments
below. I’ll do a more personal Q&A later on down the line. But in the meantime, if you’d like to
see one of my older videos, how about this one?
[Outro music]