BrainStuff Classics: Are Any Superstitions Universal?

Do you knock on wood or avoid particular numbers? People around the world adhere to superstitions to attempt to change their luck -- and some of those superstitions are remarkably similar. Learn more in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/superstitions-universal-across-cultures.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio HII brain Stuff.
I'm Lauren boglebamb and today's episode is another classic from
the archives. We humans are a superstitious lot. Heck, even
our distant cousins monkeys have been shown to have superstitious biases,
But in humans, those biases tend to be around certain

(00:23):
numbers or objects, which got us wondering are those objects
ever the same across cultures?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey, brain Stuff, I'm Lauren boglebomb And even if you
don't believe in the power of superstition, you may sometimes
find yourself knocking on wood, crossing your fingers, or wearing
your lucky baseball cap during the World Series. Although we
know scientifically that these things don't actually affect the outcome
of anything, we still find them comforting. A twenty fourteen
study by behavioral scientists at the University of Chicago suggested

(00:55):
that when people perform a physical action to avoid bad
luck or harm the ritual their mind. Superstitions span cultures, countries,
and centuries. Every culture has its own unique set of superstitions. However,
this raises an interesting question, are any superstitions common across cultures?
Superstitions revolving around numbers are abundant worldwide, the specific numbers

(01:19):
may vary. For example, the number thirteen is widely regarded
to bring bad luck in Western cultures. There's even a
name for this fear, Triskai decophobia. Other cultures have superstitions
about different numbers. In China and Japan, it's the number
four because the pronunciation is similar to words for death.
The number nine in Japan is feared because its pronunciation

(01:39):
sounds like a word for torture. Some Italians consider Friday
the seventeenth to be bad luck because the Roman numeral
for seventeen x VIII can be rearranged to VIXI. A vixi,
translated from Latin, means my life is over. In many
parts of the world, the appearance of a black cat
is considered bad luck. Although this isn't true across all cultures,

(02:02):
black cats still hold a place in global superstitions. In
ancient Egypt, cats were worshiped as gods and kept in
homes to bring prosperity. In Italy, if your cat sneezes,
good luck is on the way. In some parts of Europe,
a black cat crossing your path is good luck. However,
in the New World, Puritans believed black cats were related
to witches and therefore were considered a bad omen. The

(02:24):
action of knocking on wood or touching wood for good
luck goes back millennia and exists across the world. Some
people's believed fairies or spirits lived inside trees, and they
would knock on or touch the tree once to request
a wish and one more time to express thanks, or
they believed that the knocking would distract any evil spirits
living there. Similar expressions to knock on wood exist today

(02:45):
in Arabic, Brazilian, Finnish, German, Czechoslovakian, English, Greek, and Finnish.
Other superstitions across cultures include crossing your fingers for good luck,
four leaf clovers as lucky charms, and sneeze is causing
some change in luck, it good or bad. As human beings.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
In an often chaotic world, we all try to control
our destinies one knock, number or bless you at a time.
Today's episode is based on the article are any superstition's
universal across cultures? On how Stuff Works dot com, written
by Deborah Rnca. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership

(03:23):
with how stuff works dot com and is produced by
Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.