Do Superstitions Increase Our Chances Of Survival?

Superstitions are really just a side effect of our ability to learn. Any living being capable of making connections between facts and events can be superstitious to some degree.

According to Rotter (1966), if someone thinks that the results of something are beyond his control (being unpredictable: destiny, outside forces, luck…), this means that he has a belief or expectation based on external control. Others say that superstitious behavior corresponds to uncontrollable situations. That said, we all know it’s impossible to control everything around us.

As humans, we have evolved and picked up abilities that help us survive in the world. It’s a world that’s pretty unpredictable. And that’s why we all have some kind of beliefs or illusions that make us feel like we’re in control of our lives.

Superstition as an adaptive tool

Knocking on wood, thumbs, or not walking under a ladder may work the same as candy for a child. At least according to your brain. After all, little kids love sweets. And people use it as amplification all the time, not knowing exactly why it works. Well, the same thing happens with superstitious rituals.

Many people have amulets or rituals that they use to help them perform better in certain situations. These things can give them extra motivation or more confidence.

Personal superstitious thinking is the tendency to think in a way that prepares you to defend yourself against disappointment, heartbreak, and displeasure. This kind of thinking is also part of what Epstein (1988) described as constructive thinking.

Having confidence in yourself is absolutely crucial. That means any factor, no matter how irrational, will improve your chances of survival. And to be more precise, it means that the claim that superstitions could be adaptive is sometimes actually true.

Experimenting with superstitions

In these two experiments, participants are forced to think that their behavior is reinforced. However, in the Koichi Ono study, the superstitious behavior is not entirely the result of accidental reinforcement. And Helena Matute’s experiment confirms the theory that a lack of control leads people to behave superstitiously.

The scoring experiment (Koichi Ono, 1987)

Inspired by Skinner’s research with pigeons, Koichi Ono used experimental chambers with three levers and a panel. The panel recorded how many points the participants had. The intention was that the twenty subjects tried to get as many points as possible. However, Koicho Ono didn’t tell them exactly what to do for these points.

He programmed the devices to hand out a boost (points on the counter) every now and then. But this happened randomly. The result? Many participants showed superstitious behavior when they did something and a period followed. One of them even jumped up and down thinking that’s how they got the points.

The sound experiment (Helena Matute, 1993)

Matute did this experiment by using a negative stimulus on a computer. In this case, it was an annoying sound that was programmed to go away after a certain amount of time. She divided the participants into two groups.

In the first group, she asked the participants to mute the sound by using the computer keyboard. She told the members in the second group that no matter what they did, they couldn’t control the sound.

The results were very different. The people in the first group established a behavior pattern the moment they pressed the keys. These people developed an illusion of control, and it led them to act superstitious.

They even started to believe that if they held down certain keys, they could control the annoying sound. The second group, on the other hand, did nothing, just as Helena Matute had asked them to do.

Illusion as a shield

Our brains are made up of a web of connections that try to make connections between things. We associate words, places, feelings, events, etc. When someone mistakenly sees their behavior as a possible cause, it means that their brain has been taken over by an “illusion of control.” If this is done in a more general way, by thinking that the cause or core comes from an external force, then we call this phenomenon an “illusion of causality.”

Herstein (1966) stated that it is unlikely that this behavior is caused by unintended reinforcement. He believed that if something causes someone to act superstitiously at least once, the behavior could last longer due to unintended reinforcement.

There are many societies that perform rituals such as rain dances or human sacrifices. Well, let’s think about this for a moment. Do these practices arise from an accidental reinforcement of individual behavior, or are they a way to improve our chances of survival?