Superstition And Behavioral Psychology Religious Views On The

Critics argue that superstition is not based on reason, but instead springs from religious feelings that are misdirected or unenlightened, which leads in some cases to rigor in religious opinions or practice, and in other cases to belief in extraordinary events or in charms, omens, and prognostications. Many superstitions can be prompted by misunderstandings of causality or statistics.

Any of the above can lead to unfounded fears, or excessive scrupulosity in outward observances.

Whatever the cause, superstition can lead to a disregard of reason under the false assumption of a divine or paranormal form of control over the universe. A gambler might credit a winning streak in pokerTrump Taj Mahal Poker is a card game, the most popular of a class of games called vying games in which players with fully or partially concealed cards make wagers into a central pot after which the pot is awarded to the remaining player or players with th to a "lucky rabbit's foot" or to sitting in a certain chair, rather than to skill or to the law of averagesThe law of averages is a lay term used to express the view that eventually, everything "evens out. For example: Two very similar people who drive similar cars in similar circumstances over a long period of time will have roughly the same number of acciden. An airline passenger might believe that it is a medal of St Christopher (traditional patron saint of travellers) that keeps him safe in the air, rather than the fact that airplanes statistically crash very rarely.

Superstition is also used to refer to folkloric belief systems, usually as juxtaposed to another religion's idea of the spiritual world, or as juxtaposed to science.

1 Superstition and behavioral psychology

The behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner placed a series of hungry pigeons in a cage attached to an automatic mechanism that delivered food to the pigeon "at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird's behavior". He discovered that the pigeons associated the delivery of the food with whatever chance actions they had been performing as it was delivered, and that they continued to perform the same actions:

One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a 'tossing' response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds developed a pendulum motion of the head and body, in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return. ("'Superstition' in the Pigeon", B.F. Skinner, Journal of Experimental Psychology #38, 1947 [1])

Skinner suggested that the pigeons believed that they were influencing the automatic mechanism with their "rituals" and that the experiment also shed light on human behavior:

The experiment might be said to demonstrate a sort of superstition. The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food, although such a relation is lacking. There are many analogies in human behavior. Rituals for changing one's luck at cards are good examples. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances. The bowler who has released a ball down the alley but continues to behave as if he were controlling it by twisting and turning his arm and shoulder is another case in point. These behaviors have, of course, no real effect upon one's luck or upon a ball half way down an alley, just as in the present case the food would appear as often if the pigeon did nothing -- or, more strictly speaking, did something else. (Ibid.)

Like the pigeons, many people associate behavior (head-turning or worship of God(s) ) with an external phenomenon (delivery of food or conquest by a foreign power) that was not necessarily connected in any way with personal behavior. Any misfortune could thus be interpreted as a sign of divine disfavor, whether or not the individuals who suffered bore direct responsibility.

2 Religious views on the subject of superstition

The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states superstition "in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion" (para. #2110).

The Catechism even appears to turn a bit of a critical eye on Catholic doctrine whenever certain practices become frivolous or scrupulous:

Superstition is a deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:16-22 (para. #2111)

1 See Also

Conspiracy theory
Folk religion
Idolatry
Mediation (culture)
Magic (paranormal) and Magic (illusion)
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Tradition, Custom, Practice, etc.
Triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13)

1.1 Books

Iona Opie & Moira Tatem - A Dictionary of Superstitions

Some of this text is from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) -- update as needed.

Superstition is also an album by Siouxsie & the Banshees in 1991 ( 1991 in music).

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