August 29, 2012 • 25 mins
Are men or women more superstitious? Why do people practice superstitious behaviors? Are positive superstitions, i.e. lucky charms, actually helpful? Listen in as Cristen and Caroline search for the science behind superstition.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we
(00:21):
are talking about superstitions and lucky charms, which you know
that might sound like a ridiculous topic for this podcast,
only it would only be ridiculous if it were cereal.
If it were cereal charms, keep going, Okay, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
like pop just horn pops. Yeah, just popcorn, roll with it. Okay,
(00:44):
lucky charms, not the cereal although now I'm kind of
craving lucky charms. Thank you. Caroline. Uh. Yes, so it's
it's a little bit of a random topic, but we
do have some gender differences to talk about and all,
so a little bit of illogical aspects of lucky charms. Yeah,
(01:09):
I mean, I never thought that carrying lucky charms would work.
Apparently apparently it can do something for you though. But
before we get down to the lucky charms research, I
have a feeling. I feel like people are listening to
this right now and they're like they've gone off the detailed.
They just say lucky charms research man. Yeah, yeah, we're
(01:31):
gonna be stocking big Foot next. That's right. But before
we get down to that, let's talk about some crazy superstition.
Let's do it. Do you haven't any musical accompaniment, Caroline,
very superstition? Yeah, we got a little Stevie Wonder in
the house, isn't it there? Is it very superstitious? Is
it crazy superstition or very super superstition? We should have
(01:52):
checked our our Stevie Wonder lyrics before. Okay, yes, superstitious.
But of your superstitious thoughts, it's not uncommon, as many
of you could probably attest. Uh this this uh two
thousand four study from the universities of Hertfordshire and Edinburgh
found that people have always had these superstitious beliefs a k. A.
(02:15):
Magical thinking, which I like better. Yeah, magical thinking it's
the belief that an object, action or circumstance not logically
related to a course of events can influence its outcome.
And just in terms of the common superstitions that a
lot of people share. There was a British psychological survey
(02:35):
that was done I believe in two thousand eleven in
honor of National Science Week, and it found that the
number one superstition across the pond. And I have a
feeling it's very popular over here as well because I
do it knocking on would oh yeah not yeah, Absolutely,
you've got a knock on? What if you say something
to potentially k chins yourself? I do that all the time.
(02:56):
I will knock on any surface, really if I catch myself,
if there's not really, if there's not wood around, I
just knock on my own head self deprecating superstitious. So
followed by crossing fingers, avoiding walking under ladders, not smashing mirrors,
And that's just a good idea in general. It's hard
to clean up on that. Carrying a lucky charm and
(03:20):
avoiding the number thirteen. Like a lot of buildings, the
building that we are sitting in right now contains known
thirteenth floor. To any buildings that the thirteenth floor, I
don't know. I mean, if you're on the fourteenth floor,
then you're technically still on the thirteenth floor. It's just
not labeled that. Well, we're technically on the fourteenth floor,
so close call for us um And actually, speaking of
(03:42):
lucky charms. I realized as we were searching this podcast.
I don't like to think. I don't tend to think
of myself is very superstitious. But then I was like,
wait a minute, conger, you are knocking on wood all
the time. And I also where what I'm wearing right
around my neck today? I have my grandmother's wedding rings,
(04:04):
and um, they are a prize possession of mine and
I'm terrified that I will lose them. But they become
like a lucky charm of sorts. Yeah, I don't know
that there hasn't been an instance when it is, you know,
where some luck is abounded when I've been wearing them.
But I just like having like her kind of close.
It's a self soothing thing. I actually have the exact
(04:26):
same story. I am my my mom. Apparently I've hit
the age where I can now inherit my grandmother's jewelry
and or maybe my mother was just drinking a lot
of wine and rated her own jewelry box whatever. Um,
but I I got my grandmother's old ring that she
got in North Africa, and it's very like spiky, the
jewelry on it or the jewels on it are kind
(04:46):
of spiky. They kind of stand up. And I remember
when I left my last job, I was so nervous
about that discussion with my boss that I was like,
I'm gonna wear I'm gonna wear the ring today. It
makes me feel a little bit luckier. And because the
spiky jewel that it comes to blows, we can it
can be a nice protective item. You can have it out.
I mean, nothing like a lucky charm that serves multiple purposes,
(05:11):
but for a little more fun. With what people believe in,
Time magazine wrote a review of a book by Christian
Christopher Bader and Carson Mankin called Paranormal America, and they
found that the people most likely to believe in out
(05:31):
of body experiences and to say that they've had an
out of body experience highly educated people that college degree
comes with an out of body experience. Who believes in
UFOs Caroline, single white men. I'm not going to say
nerdy single white men, because that would be judg I
know a lot of Caucasian male humans who who believe
(05:56):
you an alien possibly who believe an extra trustrial life.
So I kinda not a big surprise. The best though,
was there finding that the folks most likely to believe
in Bigfoot are successful professionals. Yeah, so it sounds like,
if you're a single white, highly educated professional male, you
(06:20):
have a lot of superstition. Yeah, but if you taught
like change that to highly educated, single white, successful professional female,
then you are even more superstitious. Because we are now
getting into the gender aspect of superstition. And guess what, folks,
Repeated studies have found that women tend to be more
(06:44):
superstitious than men. Right. We also are more likely to
believe in ghosts and poultergeist or just that our houses
are haunted in general, which I may have maybe been
terrified that my last apartment was haunted whatever. Yeah, I
don't don't know what would be haunting it. But yeah,
we also have trouble. We have a lot of trouble
as women. On Friday the thirteen. Oh man, this is
(07:07):
one of my favorite studies just in terms of the
ridiculous scale that I've ever run across in my history
of researching for stuff. Mom never told you. This was
published in two thousand two in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Caroline,
please share what these researchers found. Yeah, they looked at
(07:28):
I guess this must have been a pretty fun study
to do or to propose. In the first place, they
wanted to see if people got into more car accidents
on Friday the thirteenth, and they found that, yes, people do,
but specifically women. People get into more car accidents on
Friday the thirteenth, And they chalk that up to maybe
people's superstitions about the day interfering with their behavior. So
(07:50):
maybe we're so nervous that something bad is going to
happen on Friday the thirteenth that we go ahead and
just rearround the person in front of us. Yeah, and
a glaring example. It would seem of little mixed up
between correlation and causation. These study authors conclude, quote an
estimated thirty eight percent of traffic dusts involving women on
this day were attributable to Friday. So take that for
(08:18):
what you will. Maybe it's just in Finland, finished listeners,
do things get really weird on the road on Friday thirteenth?
But speaking more generally, there's a two thousand eleven study
of Rollins College that found that, again, women are more superstitious,
they are more likely to have religious beliefs, and stronger
(08:39):
religious beliefs than men, and also have significantly higher scores
in traditional superstitious beliefs, including superstitious behaviors like refraining from
something we think might jinx ourselves or engaging in rituals
like caring good luck charms, dressing a certain way, thinking
that will it will improve our performance. Yeah. I typically
(08:59):
do the inks thing, like I will avoid talking about
something or or sounding, you know, too optimistic about something
in case it jinks is it? Which is silly? I
do the same thing. And speaking of Friday, women, according
to this two thousand eleven study, were more likely to
refrain from taking an exam on that day. Stupid. I'm
(09:20):
sorry with that, judgy, that's so stupid. Why would you
not take an exam because it's Friday if you studied
for it. People? Maybe because it is clearly dangerous to
traffic that day, Carol driving to campus? Yeah, maybe you
should just say of traffic deaths. Um. Well, another thing
(09:40):
that we should touch on about superstitious behavior, not to uh,
not to offend anyone, but so there were a lot
of attempts to understand this whole magical thinking thing why
people are superstitious and in the nineteen eighties, scientists developed
the paranormal belief scale, and research around this time found
it superstitious beliefs are associated with poor psychological adjustment, such
(10:04):
as low confidence in your ability to succeed, high anxiety,
irrational beliefs, and external locus of control, etcetera, etcetera. But
that had more to do with the actual negative superstitions.
So you know you're afraid to break a mirror because
it will bring bad luck. People who have positive superstitions
like if I carry this rabbit's foot, good things are
(10:26):
going to happen to me, those people weren't as much
covered under this belief scale. Under the paranormal belief scale, yeah,
they are considered actually to be more psychologically adaptive than
their negative superstitious counterparts. And speaking of psychology, the main
explanation for why women tend to carry more superstitious beliefs
(10:48):
is because women also tend to exhibit higher trade anxiety
than men do. Because it seems like with positive and
negative superstitions, whether it's saying like my grandmother's ring are
going to make my day better, or I better not
smash this mirroralds like blood will rain down on my head.
I don't know. I don't know what happens if you
(11:09):
smash the mire, but um, either way, it's rooted in
some kind of anxiety that you need to need to
perform well, you need some you need a boost of
some sort, whether you're avoiding something or competing for something. Yeah,
and that two thousand four study, uh that I mentioned earlier,
it did confirm what Christians talking about that women do
(11:31):
have more superstitious beliefs. And they asked people, men and
women people to agree or disagree with positive and negative
superstitious statements, and women um agreed to a greater extent
with both than men did. Women were more eager, I guess,
to agree with these superstitious things. Um. And speaking now
(11:52):
into the whole lucky charms aspect of it, moving into
the positive non blood rain real of superstition, Uh, seventy
of college students exhibit superstitious beliefs or rituals before exams
or athletic performances. And this whole athletic performance thing is
(12:13):
really interesting because yeah, we have all this data saying well,
women are more superstitious. But if you get into professional athletics,
there are so many stories, especially with baseball. It seems
like detailing professional male athletes rituals before games that they
have to do, which seemed kind of weird, including who
(12:38):
was it. Let's see Jason Giambi probably saying that wrong
John by Jason Giambi. Totally cool, Okay, thank you Carolin.
He was a Rockies first baseman and he would wear
a golden thong if he found himself in a slump
at the plate. That sounds heavy. And then Moises Alou,
who was a National League outfielder, would frequently urinate on
(13:00):
his hands because he thought that it would help him
hold the bat. Yeah. And then you have Wade Bogs,
who would scrap, among so many other things that he did.
He would scratch the Hebrew word for life in the
dirt before every ad bat and made sure to eat
chicken before every game. Yes, I also wear golden thong
and eat chicken before coming into the studio. So she's
(13:22):
actually wearing the thong over her clothes. Um. Yeah, And
Michael Jordan's I feel like this is a commonly sided
thing as far as superstitions go. He wore his college
shorts under his NBA uniform. And then there's Lebron James
who performs some weird complex ritual that ends with him
throwing chalk dust into the air. Maybe we should try
(13:42):
that before the podcast. Ye. So yeah, all of these,
all these rituals that these successful athletes are performing, the
question is does it work? And one of the reasons
why we wanted to do this podcast was because we
ran across a study from two thousand ten publishing Psychological
Science saying that you know what, they actually might help. Yeah,
(14:09):
that golden thong might be worth well wearing a thong
if you're a baseball player. Um yeah. And it's not
necessarily the lucky charm itself. It's not attracting cosmic luck
from the heavens for you necessarily, it's bringing you confidence. Um.
(14:31):
Psychologist Liesan Damash I might be pronouncing her name wrong. Also,
she's from the University of Cologne and Germany found that
superstitious thinking directly before a task may boost a person's
self efficacy. In other words, they're confidence in themselves and
that actually boosts your expectations and your persistence. So if
you think like, okay, well, if I don't have this
(14:52):
lucky charm, I'm not going to do as well, you
might not have confidence, you might lose your concentration. All
of these athletes who are doing this stuff, it sounds crazy,
but if it puts them at ease and makes them
more confident in their abilities, that can actually end up
helping them perform better. Right, And the way these researchers
came to that conclusion was in the study entitled keep
(15:14):
your Fingers Crossed, How Superstition Improves Performance. Uh, they had
two groups of participants who We're going to have to
put some golf balls into a hole from like four
feet away, which, you know what, I'm gonna be honest
with you, that would be a hard task for me
to complete golf and I don't get along the hong.
(15:34):
But so half the participants were given these supposedly lucky
balls and the other half were just, you know, told hey,
just go do this. And then uh, they also repeated
these exercise where half the participants were told by the facilitator,
we have our fingers crossed for you. We want you
to do really well. And for both groups, when there
(15:55):
was some aspect of luck imbued into this experiment, uh,
they got an average of two out of ten more
balls into the whole. And then when they went back
performed another experiment with two groups again who were asked
to perform some kind of like concentration and memory task.
(16:16):
The group that was told to bring a lucky charm
with them, a personal lucky charm like my grandmother's rings.
That group also performed better on the concentration and memory
And they think, like you said, it has something to
do with that added boost of confidence, which is grounded
completely in unreality and magical thinking. There's no my grandmother's rings.
(16:39):
I mean, rest her soul. I love grandmother very very much,
but I know that she's not. You know, she's not
in these rings somehow like spirit guiding me through the world.
But it's just it's it's it's like a weight off,
like a tiny even the tiniest weight off your brain.
Sometimes when you have to perform or something big is
coming up. I can understand how that how that could help. Yeah, well,
(17:04):
that's what Ellen Langer in the nineteen seventies called the
illusion of control, where people irrationally overestimate their possibility of
success if they had a sense that they could control
the situation, even if those outcomes were random. So anything
including you know, for these athletes like we said, anything
that gives you that sense of I got this can
(17:24):
help you perform better. Yeah. In two thousand eleven, UH,
CNN covered this phenomenon and they talked to Greg Steinberg,
who is the author of the book Full Throttle and
a professor of human performance at Austin Peace State University,
and uh he talked about this aspect of you know,
the athletic rituals, and he says that when you do
(17:46):
something that's superstitious, like wearing a trinket, it gives you
that greater sense of control. And if you're an athletic trainer,
you are probably not going to discourage your uh, your
picture from eating that bucket of chicken before the game
if he's winning, even though you know, maybe nutritionally doesn't
need to eat a bucket of chicken, or hey, dude,
you know writing Hebrew on the mound. That's not going
(18:07):
to do anything for your game. But if he's doing
it and it's in his brain or her brain, uh,
you don't want to change that routine. Yeah, there's one
there's one superstition that seems to be catching on in
the athletic world, and that is this wasn't from the
same same CNN story that Christen is talking about. It
talks about these fighting necklaces, Fighting, Fighting, Fighting. They're basically like,
(18:32):
just I feel like these people are getting ripped off. Um.
They are these necklaces that are made from fabric and
have metals woven into them. But the manufacturer claims that
the jewelry gives athletes and edge with the special technology,
which apparently involves metals being broken down into microscopic particles
(18:52):
dispersed in water. Uh so this is supposedly supposed to
like fix all your electric herrns in your body that
gets screwed up when you're stressed out or exercising or something,
or you know. Connecticut College professor Stewart Vice says Fighting
has used a pseudo scientific appeal in making their products.
(19:13):
There's actually no science to back it up. But it
goes back to the whole thing of like, well, if
these athletes feel like they're performing better with it, you
shouldn't stop them from using it. However, it's you're kind
of ripping people off. We'll see. That's that's the thing
that Catch twenty two of understanding the science of superstition
(19:34):
and lucky charms, because uh, you know, the magical thinking,
the magical belief, and that illusion of control is what
actually potentially gives you some kind of edge. Um. And
also we should back this up by saying, like, these
athletes are also successful because they put the time and
the work in. Obviously it takes preparation, but you have
(19:57):
this edge given to you with this psychology of magical thinking.
But then it's like, once you understand what's going on,
doesn't that take away the potential uh magical properties of
these things that we carry around our rabbit's feet in
our pocket. It's a little ironic sciences by and got
(20:20):
to be such a buzz kill all the time. But
I think it's interesting though. I mean, like, I'm not
going to stop knocking on what would when I catch
myself like saying something that I don't want to not
be true? Or wearing my grandmother's necklaces on a day
if I'm particularly nervous, Yeah, are wearing my grandmother's ring
if I think I'm going to get in a fight. Yeah.
So I don't know. I think it's uh, it's it's
(20:43):
fun to explore and it's interesting to see how we
almost will trick ourselves too, you know, perform better. Hey,
whatever works as long as it's not steroids. Right, Yeah,
there's a message for the kids, long as it's not steroids. Um. So,
I hope you had fun with this little superstitious podcast.
(21:07):
And we want to hear from folks out there. I mean,
do you have a lucky charm that has been proven
time and again to bring you successful results? Yeah? Like
my my roommate, for instance, all through college, every U
G A game he went to, he wore the same
shirt and would only would only wash it at the
(21:27):
end of the season and he yea. We went to
a Braves game together not too long ago, and he
wore a new Brave jersey for the first time and
they won and it was fantastic and Chipper Jones had
like a bajillion home runs and he was like, I'm
never wearing another jersey to a Braves game. It's like, oh,
you might be psychologically unstable according to this research. No, well,
(21:49):
just a little magical thinking, little magical thing. Come on,
we all need a little magical thinking in our life,
right sure, Hey, the stakes are the stakes are high.
He feels like he needs to do whatever we can
to help the team at least he's not talking about Bigfoot, right,
that's true, or UFOs and at least he's not on
steroids either. Solve these things good, No, send us your
(22:10):
lucky Charms stories, mom. Stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can send them. And we have a couple
letters to share with you right now. So I've got
one here from Liz and she's writing in response to
our episode on why are Humans Helpful? And she said,
(22:31):
I'm a little disappointed you didn't mention the work of
evolutionary biologist Joan rough Garden. She's been a professor at
Stanford for over forty years and a vocal critic of
the idea that selfishness lies at the core of natural selection.
In her social selection theory, she argues that instead of
selfishness driving individuals to have as many offspring as possible
sexual selection, the main force driving evolution is cooperation between
(22:55):
members of the same species to create a stable environment
for offspring to read reproductive age. After all, it doesn't
matter how many offspring you have if they all die
before passing on their genes themselves. In her book Evolutions,
Rainbow and the Genial Gene, she also argues against the
idea proposed by sexual selection that males are naturally driven
to promiscuity and females to monogamy, and presents an exhaustive
(23:18):
list of examples from nature that refute this narrative. She
goes on to criticize sexual selection for its inability to
explain things like same sex sexuality, which has been observed
in over three hundred species. Her theory is not without
its detractors, but her ideas are, in my opinion, at least,
some of the most interesting and important to come of
evolutionary biology in a long time. So yeah, Joan Rough Garden, evolutions, rainbow,
(23:43):
and the genial gene. Okay, here's an email from Drew
in response to our Romances podcast from a couple of
months back. He said, being gay, it is probably not
surprising that my two closest friends are women. However, aside
from these two most intimate friendships, the majority of my
friends happen to be straight men. I have found that
not only are these men perfectly okay with developing a
(24:03):
close friendship with me, but they're also greatly intrigued by
gay culture. I have taken them all out to gay
clubs on several occasions, and each time they have all
thoroughly enjoyed themselves. While none of them have any sexual
interest in men, they have all told me that gay
clubs provide a much more relaxed environment in which they
can dance without the pressures they find at stray clubs.
From my own experiences, my face to face friendships are
(24:23):
primarily with women, while my side to side friendships are
with men. In this day and age, I like to
think we gays are getting the best of both worlds
when it comes to friendships. I appreciate the deep emotional
connections I share with my girlfriends just as much as
the shared bond I've developed with my rock climbing turned
gay club enthused buddies. Excellent jin thanks to everyone who
has written in mom Stuff at discovery dot com is
(24:46):
where you can send us your letters. You can also
find us on Facebook. We'll leave us a message they're
like as if you would, and follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you want to learn
more about tad news and superstitions, you can head on
over to our website at shaw stuff works dot com
(25:09):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we
(00:21):
are talking about superstitions and lucky charms, which you know
that might sound like a ridiculous topic for this podcast,
only it would only be ridiculous if it were cereal.
If it were cereal charms, keep going, Okay, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
like pop just horn pops. Yeah, just popcorn, roll with it. Okay,
(00:44):
lucky charms, not the cereal although now I'm kind of
craving lucky charms. Thank you. Caroline. Uh. Yes, so it's
it's a little bit of a random topic, but we
do have some gender differences to talk about and all,
so a little bit of illogical aspects of lucky charms. Yeah,
(01:09):
I mean, I never thought that carrying lucky charms would work.
Apparently apparently it can do something for you though. But
before we get down to the lucky charms research, I
have a feeling. I feel like people are listening to
this right now and they're like they've gone off the detailed.
They just say lucky charms research man. Yeah, yeah, we're
(01:31):
gonna be stocking big Foot next. That's right. But before
we get down to that, let's talk about some crazy superstition.
Let's do it. Do you haven't any musical accompaniment, Caroline,
very superstition? Yeah, we got a little Stevie Wonder in
the house, isn't it there? Is it very superstitious? Is
it crazy superstition or very super superstition? We should have
(01:52):
checked our our Stevie Wonder lyrics before. Okay, yes, superstitious.
But of your superstitious thoughts, it's not uncommon, as many
of you could probably attest. Uh this this uh two
thousand four study from the universities of Hertfordshire and Edinburgh
found that people have always had these superstitious beliefs a k. A.
(02:15):
Magical thinking, which I like better. Yeah, magical thinking it's
the belief that an object, action or circumstance not logically
related to a course of events can influence its outcome.
And just in terms of the common superstitions that a
lot of people share. There was a British psychological survey
(02:35):
that was done I believe in two thousand eleven in
honor of National Science Week, and it found that the
number one superstition across the pond. And I have a
feeling it's very popular over here as well because I
do it knocking on would oh yeah not yeah, Absolutely,
you've got a knock on? What if you say something
to potentially k chins yourself? I do that all the time.
(02:56):
I will knock on any surface, really if I catch myself,
if there's not really, if there's not wood around, I
just knock on my own head self deprecating superstitious. So
followed by crossing fingers, avoiding walking under ladders, not smashing mirrors,
And that's just a good idea in general. It's hard
to clean up on that. Carrying a lucky charm and
(03:20):
avoiding the number thirteen. Like a lot of buildings, the
building that we are sitting in right now contains known
thirteenth floor. To any buildings that the thirteenth floor, I
don't know. I mean, if you're on the fourteenth floor,
then you're technically still on the thirteenth floor. It's just
not labeled that. Well, we're technically on the fourteenth floor,
so close call for us um And actually, speaking of
(03:42):
lucky charms. I realized as we were searching this podcast.
I don't like to think. I don't tend to think
of myself is very superstitious. But then I was like,
wait a minute, conger, you are knocking on wood all
the time. And I also where what I'm wearing right
around my neck today? I have my grandmother's wedding rings,
(04:04):
and um, they are a prize possession of mine and
I'm terrified that I will lose them. But they become
like a lucky charm of sorts. Yeah, I don't know
that there hasn't been an instance when it is, you know,
where some luck is abounded when I've been wearing them.
But I just like having like her kind of close.
It's a self soothing thing. I actually have the exact
(04:26):
same story. I am my my mom. Apparently I've hit
the age where I can now inherit my grandmother's jewelry
and or maybe my mother was just drinking a lot
of wine and rated her own jewelry box whatever. Um,
but I I got my grandmother's old ring that she
got in North Africa, and it's very like spiky, the
jewelry on it or the jewels on it are kind
(04:46):
of spiky. They kind of stand up. And I remember
when I left my last job, I was so nervous
about that discussion with my boss that I was like,
I'm gonna wear I'm gonna wear the ring today. It
makes me feel a little bit luckier. And because the
spiky jewel that it comes to blows, we can it
can be a nice protective item. You can have it out.
I mean, nothing like a lucky charm that serves multiple purposes,
(05:11):
but for a little more fun. With what people believe in,
Time magazine wrote a review of a book by Christian
Christopher Bader and Carson Mankin called Paranormal America, and they
found that the people most likely to believe in out
(05:31):
of body experiences and to say that they've had an
out of body experience highly educated people that college degree
comes with an out of body experience. Who believes in
UFOs Caroline, single white men. I'm not going to say
nerdy single white men, because that would be judg I
know a lot of Caucasian male humans who who believe
(05:56):
you an alien possibly who believe an extra trustrial life.
So I kinda not a big surprise. The best though,
was there finding that the folks most likely to believe
in Bigfoot are successful professionals. Yeah, so it sounds like,
if you're a single white, highly educated professional male, you
(06:20):
have a lot of superstition. Yeah, but if you taught
like change that to highly educated, single white, successful professional female,
then you are even more superstitious. Because we are now
getting into the gender aspect of superstition. And guess what, folks,
Repeated studies have found that women tend to be more
(06:44):
superstitious than men. Right. We also are more likely to
believe in ghosts and poultergeist or just that our houses
are haunted in general, which I may have maybe been
terrified that my last apartment was haunted whatever. Yeah, I
don't don't know what would be haunting it. But yeah,
we also have trouble. We have a lot of trouble
as women. On Friday the thirteen. Oh man, this is
(07:07):
one of my favorite studies just in terms of the
ridiculous scale that I've ever run across in my history
of researching for stuff. Mom never told you. This was
published in two thousand two in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Caroline,
please share what these researchers found. Yeah, they looked at
(07:28):
I guess this must have been a pretty fun study
to do or to propose. In the first place, they
wanted to see if people got into more car accidents
on Friday the thirteenth, and they found that, yes, people do,
but specifically women. People get into more car accidents on
Friday the thirteenth, And they chalk that up to maybe
people's superstitions about the day interfering with their behavior. So
(07:50):
maybe we're so nervous that something bad is going to
happen on Friday the thirteenth that we go ahead and
just rearround the person in front of us. Yeah, and
a glaring example. It would seem of little mixed up
between correlation and causation. These study authors conclude, quote an
estimated thirty eight percent of traffic dusts involving women on
this day were attributable to Friday. So take that for
(08:18):
what you will. Maybe it's just in Finland, finished listeners,
do things get really weird on the road on Friday thirteenth?
But speaking more generally, there's a two thousand eleven study
of Rollins College that found that, again, women are more superstitious,
they are more likely to have religious beliefs, and stronger
(08:39):
religious beliefs than men, and also have significantly higher scores
in traditional superstitious beliefs, including superstitious behaviors like refraining from
something we think might jinx ourselves or engaging in rituals
like caring good luck charms, dressing a certain way, thinking
that will it will improve our performance. Yeah. I typically
(08:59):
do the inks thing, like I will avoid talking about
something or or sounding, you know, too optimistic about something
in case it jinks is it? Which is silly? I
do the same thing. And speaking of Friday, women, according
to this two thousand eleven study, were more likely to
refrain from taking an exam on that day. Stupid. I'm
(09:20):
sorry with that, judgy, that's so stupid. Why would you
not take an exam because it's Friday if you studied
for it. People? Maybe because it is clearly dangerous to
traffic that day, Carol driving to campus? Yeah, maybe you
should just say of traffic deaths. Um. Well, another thing
(09:40):
that we should touch on about superstitious behavior, not to uh,
not to offend anyone, but so there were a lot
of attempts to understand this whole magical thinking thing why
people are superstitious and in the nineteen eighties, scientists developed
the paranormal belief scale, and research around this time found
it superstitious beliefs are associated with poor psychological adjustment, such
(10:04):
as low confidence in your ability to succeed, high anxiety,
irrational beliefs, and external locus of control, etcetera, etcetera. But
that had more to do with the actual negative superstitions.
So you know you're afraid to break a mirror because
it will bring bad luck. People who have positive superstitions
like if I carry this rabbit's foot, good things are
(10:26):
going to happen to me, those people weren't as much
covered under this belief scale. Under the paranormal belief scale, yeah,
they are considered actually to be more psychologically adaptive than
their negative superstitious counterparts. And speaking of psychology, the main
explanation for why women tend to carry more superstitious beliefs
(10:48):
is because women also tend to exhibit higher trade anxiety
than men do. Because it seems like with positive and
negative superstitions, whether it's saying like my grandmother's ring are
going to make my day better, or I better not
smash this mirroralds like blood will rain down on my head.
I don't know. I don't know what happens if you
(11:09):
smash the mire, but um, either way, it's rooted in
some kind of anxiety that you need to need to
perform well, you need some you need a boost of
some sort, whether you're avoiding something or competing for something. Yeah,
and that two thousand four study, uh that I mentioned earlier,
it did confirm what Christians talking about that women do
(11:31):
have more superstitious beliefs. And they asked people, men and
women people to agree or disagree with positive and negative
superstitious statements, and women um agreed to a greater extent
with both than men did. Women were more eager, I guess,
to agree with these superstitious things. Um. And speaking now
(11:52):
into the whole lucky charms aspect of it, moving into
the positive non blood rain real of superstition, Uh, seventy
of college students exhibit superstitious beliefs or rituals before exams
or athletic performances. And this whole athletic performance thing is
(12:13):
really interesting because yeah, we have all this data saying well,
women are more superstitious. But if you get into professional athletics,
there are so many stories, especially with baseball. It seems
like detailing professional male athletes rituals before games that they
have to do, which seemed kind of weird, including who
(12:38):
was it. Let's see Jason Giambi probably saying that wrong
John by Jason Giambi. Totally cool, Okay, thank you Carolin.
He was a Rockies first baseman and he would wear
a golden thong if he found himself in a slump
at the plate. That sounds heavy. And then Moises Alou,
who was a National League outfielder, would frequently urinate on
(13:00):
his hands because he thought that it would help him
hold the bat. Yeah. And then you have Wade Bogs,
who would scrap, among so many other things that he did.
He would scratch the Hebrew word for life in the
dirt before every ad bat and made sure to eat
chicken before every game. Yes, I also wear golden thong
and eat chicken before coming into the studio. So she's
(13:22):
actually wearing the thong over her clothes. Um. Yeah, And
Michael Jordan's I feel like this is a commonly sided
thing as far as superstitions go. He wore his college
shorts under his NBA uniform. And then there's Lebron James
who performs some weird complex ritual that ends with him
throwing chalk dust into the air. Maybe we should try
(13:42):
that before the podcast. Ye. So yeah, all of these,
all these rituals that these successful athletes are performing, the
question is does it work? And one of the reasons
why we wanted to do this podcast was because we
ran across a study from two thousand ten publishing Psychological
Science saying that you know what, they actually might help. Yeah,
(14:09):
that golden thong might be worth well wearing a thong
if you're a baseball player. Um yeah. And it's not
necessarily the lucky charm itself. It's not attracting cosmic luck
from the heavens for you necessarily, it's bringing you confidence. Um.
(14:31):
Psychologist Liesan Damash I might be pronouncing her name wrong. Also,
she's from the University of Cologne and Germany found that
superstitious thinking directly before a task may boost a person's
self efficacy. In other words, they're confidence in themselves and
that actually boosts your expectations and your persistence. So if
you think like, okay, well, if I don't have this
(14:52):
lucky charm, I'm not going to do as well, you
might not have confidence, you might lose your concentration. All
of these athletes who are doing this stuff, it sounds crazy,
but if it puts them at ease and makes them
more confident in their abilities, that can actually end up
helping them perform better. Right, And the way these researchers
came to that conclusion was in the study entitled keep
(15:14):
your Fingers Crossed, How Superstition Improves Performance. Uh, they had
two groups of participants who We're going to have to
put some golf balls into a hole from like four
feet away, which, you know what, I'm gonna be honest
with you, that would be a hard task for me
to complete golf and I don't get along the hong.
(15:34):
But so half the participants were given these supposedly lucky
balls and the other half were just, you know, told hey,
just go do this. And then uh, they also repeated
these exercise where half the participants were told by the facilitator,
we have our fingers crossed for you. We want you
to do really well. And for both groups, when there
(15:55):
was some aspect of luck imbued into this experiment, uh,
they got an average of two out of ten more
balls into the whole. And then when they went back
performed another experiment with two groups again who were asked
to perform some kind of like concentration and memory task.
(16:16):
The group that was told to bring a lucky charm
with them, a personal lucky charm like my grandmother's rings.
That group also performed better on the concentration and memory
And they think, like you said, it has something to
do with that added boost of confidence, which is grounded
completely in unreality and magical thinking. There's no my grandmother's rings.
(16:39):
I mean, rest her soul. I love grandmother very very much,
but I know that she's not. You know, she's not
in these rings somehow like spirit guiding me through the world.
But it's just it's it's it's like a weight off,
like a tiny even the tiniest weight off your brain.
Sometimes when you have to perform or something big is
coming up. I can understand how that how that could help. Yeah, well,
(17:04):
that's what Ellen Langer in the nineteen seventies called the
illusion of control, where people irrationally overestimate their possibility of
success if they had a sense that they could control
the situation, even if those outcomes were random. So anything
including you know, for these athletes like we said, anything
that gives you that sense of I got this can
(17:24):
help you perform better. Yeah. In two thousand eleven, UH,
CNN covered this phenomenon and they talked to Greg Steinberg,
who is the author of the book Full Throttle and
a professor of human performance at Austin Peace State University,
and uh he talked about this aspect of you know,
the athletic rituals, and he says that when you do
(17:46):
something that's superstitious, like wearing a trinket, it gives you
that greater sense of control. And if you're an athletic trainer,
you are probably not going to discourage your uh, your
picture from eating that bucket of chicken before the game
if he's winning, even though you know, maybe nutritionally doesn't
need to eat a bucket of chicken, or hey, dude,
you know writing Hebrew on the mound. That's not going
(18:07):
to do anything for your game. But if he's doing
it and it's in his brain or her brain, uh,
you don't want to change that routine. Yeah, there's one
there's one superstition that seems to be catching on in
the athletic world, and that is this wasn't from the
same same CNN story that Christen is talking about. It
talks about these fighting necklaces, Fighting, Fighting, Fighting. They're basically like,
(18:32):
just I feel like these people are getting ripped off. Um.
They are these necklaces that are made from fabric and
have metals woven into them. But the manufacturer claims that
the jewelry gives athletes and edge with the special technology,
which apparently involves metals being broken down into microscopic particles
(18:52):
dispersed in water. Uh so this is supposedly supposed to
like fix all your electric herrns in your body that
gets screwed up when you're stressed out or exercising or something,
or you know. Connecticut College professor Stewart Vice says Fighting
has used a pseudo scientific appeal in making their products.
(19:13):
There's actually no science to back it up. But it
goes back to the whole thing of like, well, if
these athletes feel like they're performing better with it, you
shouldn't stop them from using it. However, it's you're kind
of ripping people off. We'll see. That's that's the thing
that Catch twenty two of understanding the science of superstition
(19:34):
and lucky charms, because uh, you know, the magical thinking,
the magical belief, and that illusion of control is what
actually potentially gives you some kind of edge. Um. And
also we should back this up by saying, like, these
athletes are also successful because they put the time and
the work in. Obviously it takes preparation, but you have
(19:57):
this edge given to you with this psychology of magical thinking.
But then it's like, once you understand what's going on,
doesn't that take away the potential uh magical properties of
these things that we carry around our rabbit's feet in
our pocket. It's a little ironic sciences by and got
(20:20):
to be such a buzz kill all the time. But
I think it's interesting though. I mean, like, I'm not
going to stop knocking on what would when I catch
myself like saying something that I don't want to not
be true? Or wearing my grandmother's necklaces on a day
if I'm particularly nervous, Yeah, are wearing my grandmother's ring
if I think I'm going to get in a fight. Yeah.
So I don't know. I think it's uh, it's it's
(20:43):
fun to explore and it's interesting to see how we
almost will trick ourselves too, you know, perform better. Hey,
whatever works as long as it's not steroids. Right, Yeah,
there's a message for the kids, long as it's not steroids. Um. So,
I hope you had fun with this little superstitious podcast.
(21:07):
And we want to hear from folks out there. I mean,
do you have a lucky charm that has been proven
time and again to bring you successful results? Yeah? Like
my my roommate, for instance, all through college, every U
G A game he went to, he wore the same
shirt and would only would only wash it at the
(21:27):
end of the season and he yea. We went to
a Braves game together not too long ago, and he
wore a new Brave jersey for the first time and
they won and it was fantastic and Chipper Jones had
like a bajillion home runs and he was like, I'm
never wearing another jersey to a Braves game. It's like, oh,
you might be psychologically unstable according to this research. No, well,
(21:49):
just a little magical thinking, little magical thing. Come on,
we all need a little magical thinking in our life,
right sure, Hey, the stakes are the stakes are high.
He feels like he needs to do whatever we can
to help the team at least he's not talking about Bigfoot, right,
that's true, or UFOs and at least he's not on
steroids either. Solve these things good, No, send us your
(22:10):
lucky Charms stories, mom. Stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can send them. And we have a couple
letters to share with you right now. So I've got
one here from Liz and she's writing in response to
our episode on why are Humans Helpful? And she said,
(22:31):
I'm a little disappointed you didn't mention the work of
evolutionary biologist Joan rough Garden. She's been a professor at
Stanford for over forty years and a vocal critic of
the idea that selfishness lies at the core of natural selection.
In her social selection theory, she argues that instead of
selfishness driving individuals to have as many offspring as possible
sexual selection, the main force driving evolution is cooperation between
(22:55):
members of the same species to create a stable environment
for offspring to read reproductive age. After all, it doesn't
matter how many offspring you have if they all die
before passing on their genes themselves. In her book Evolutions,
Rainbow and the Genial Gene, she also argues against the
idea proposed by sexual selection that males are naturally driven
to promiscuity and females to monogamy, and presents an exhaustive
(23:18):
list of examples from nature that refute this narrative. She
goes on to criticize sexual selection for its inability to
explain things like same sex sexuality, which has been observed
in over three hundred species. Her theory is not without
its detractors, but her ideas are, in my opinion, at least,
some of the most interesting and important to come of
evolutionary biology in a long time. So yeah, Joan Rough Garden, evolutions, rainbow,
(23:43):
and the genial gene. Okay, here's an email from Drew
in response to our Romances podcast from a couple of
months back. He said, being gay, it is probably not
surprising that my two closest friends are women. However, aside
from these two most intimate friendships, the majority of my
friends happen to be straight men. I have found that
not only are these men perfectly okay with developing a
(24:03):
close friendship with me, but they're also greatly intrigued by
gay culture. I have taken them all out to gay
clubs on several occasions, and each time they have all
thoroughly enjoyed themselves. While none of them have any sexual
interest in men, they have all told me that gay
clubs provide a much more relaxed environment in which they
can dance without the pressures they find at stray clubs.
From my own experiences, my face to face friendships are
(24:23):
primarily with women, while my side to side friendships are
with men. In this day and age, I like to
think we gays are getting the best of both worlds
when it comes to friendships. I appreciate the deep emotional
connections I share with my girlfriends just as much as
the shared bond I've developed with my rock climbing turned
gay club enthused buddies. Excellent jin thanks to everyone who
has written in mom Stuff at discovery dot com is
(24:46):
where you can send us your letters. You can also
find us on Facebook. We'll leave us a message they're
like as if you would, and follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you want to learn
more about tad news and superstitions, you can head on
over to our website at shaw stuff works dot com
(25:09):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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