Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing

The New York Times had a recent article about the processes behind magical thinking and how it's similar to religious belief systems. It's not talking about magic so much as it's talking about superstitions and various acts that they call "rituals" but that are usually performed by people who don't believe in such things.  Yet, somehow, they still do these things...

Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors, lab assistants or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge.

These habits have little to do with religious faith, which is much more complex because it involves large questions of morality, community and history. But magical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour of a day.

The appetite for such beliefs appears to be rooted in the circuitry of the brain, and for good reason. The sense of having special powers buoys people in threatening situations, and helps soothe everyday fears and ward off mental distress. In excess, it can lead to compulsive or delusional behavior. This emerging portrait of magical thinking helps explain why people who fashion themselves skeptics cling to odd rituals that seem to make no sense, and how apparently harmless superstition may become disabling. [link - may require free registration]

They go on to talk about a test where the results were rigged but people were asked to give the equivalent of "luck" and at the end, most people actually stated that they did feel the had some impact on the outcome.  They also talk about the little rituals like wearing the same pair of socks for a game or doing things the same way as that of a winning game.  It's not entirely unlike how many people have good luck charms, or lucky numbers, or other such trinkets and beliefs.  When asked, most people would easily say that they don't really believe "magic" or other paranormal effect is taking place.  Yet they'll gladly still do these things.

The main things that the article left out, though, was the power of the placebo effect.  From Wikipedia:

The term placebo effect (as distinct from the more correct term placebo response) was introduced by T. C. Graves in 1920 "because it is the subject that has the subject-centred response. It is not the administered substance that generates the observed effect." [link]

In this context, the administered substance is the "magic" of the ritual or action.  The effect of placebos is debated among many, be the observance is common enough that it is believed that a strong enough will for a body to do something can cause that effect.  For example, if you are told you are taking a very strong headache medication that has been shown to clear up headaches within an hour but you're really given a placebo, in many cases the headache may go away because the recipient believed it would which helped the body alleviate whatever stresses were causing the headache to begin with.

Also from the Wikipedia entry above:

Sometimes known as non-specific effects or subject-expectancy effects, a so-called placebo effect occurs when a patient's symptoms are altered in some way (i.e., alleviated or exacerbated) by an otherwise inert treatment, due to the individual expecting or believing that it will work. Some people consider this to be a remarkable aspect of human physiology; others consider it to be an illusion arising from the way medical experiments are conducted.

This belief is exactly the same as the belief in the effect of a ritual or trinket.  That is, if a runner truly believes that they will do better wearing sockets their significant others kisses (uh, while they're clean) then they may very well do better because the placebo effect causes physiological changes that help them focus better, be more relaxed, and reduce anxiety.  All of these changes, in fact, are true physical changes but are caused by the will of the person triggered by the strong belief in the trinket.

This is, of course, an example where the person could have also just had a strong enough will to relax themselves without the trigger and otherwise cause the changes normally. This won't work in cases of random acts and affecting their outcome.  For one, they aren't an outcome within an individuals body and for two, the person truly doesn't have any control over them.

So, my own belief is that if someone does truly believe that doing a certain thing or carrying a certain thing can help them perform a task better then, for them, it probably will.  If you try to explain logically why that's not possible and they truly believe you, you may very well ruin it for them since it will introduce doubt and nervousness the next time they try it. On the other hand, if you support them in this belief because of the reasons I've given, you will help support their own belief and possibly make it that much stronger of a trigger.  You can do this even if you don't believe it yourself although you might become a believer when you see it work with them.

Posted by Shane on January 31, 2007 7:57 AM | Permalink