Don’t laugh. You’ll be
surprised at the answer. According to recent research (Psychology
Today), not only do people believe but our belief is hard-wired in our brain.
Our mind is made to look
for patterns in order to identify connections between life
experiences-basically putting together
cause and effect that leads to predictability. Simply stated, if we
touch a hot stove and get burned, we associate the burn with the hot stove and,
going forward, we avoid touching hot stoves. So identifying cause and effect is
good for our survival. That said there are times when we mistakenly put things together.
Did you ever give
someone ‘that look’ when they annoyed you or did you secretly curse them under
your breath or in your head? You may hope these evil thoughts/curses have an
effect but do you really think they do? They may not but sometimes we fool
ourselves to think they do. A study by Emily Pronin (Princeton University) was
designed to see if college-educated people could be tricked into believing they
had such powers.
The students were broken
in to two groups. One group met a new student (the victim) who was friendly.
The other group met a new student that was rude and obnoxious. The study
participants were given a voodoo doll which represented the victim and pins and
instructed to pierce the doll’s head.” Minutes later the two victims reported
having a headache. The participants who interacted with the rude student and had
negative thoughts of the person thought they were instrumental in causing the victim’s
pain. The control group had no such anxiety.
Bad magic isn’t the only
king. There is just as much good magic. To see if magical thinking worked on
wishes as well as curses, Pronin put together another study. Here the
participants watched someone shoot hoops. At various times the participants
were instructed to mentally cheer the shooter on or imagine them failing. The
participants reported “feeling responsible” for the shooters success when they
cheered on the shooter and the basket was made.
When the juxtaposition of
our thoughts and what we see correlate, at least to us, it leads us to the conclusion
that we had something to do with it. To the investigators, this proves “we are
hard-wired to overestimate our control over external events.”
In
addition to this intellectual explanation, there is another reason we
believe in magic. Magic makes us feel like we have more control over our lives
than we really do. Nobody likes feeling out of control. So to cope, we often
develop superstitious thinking as a way to trick ourselves into thinking we
have more control that we actually do. One such superstitious belief is
"tempting fate" for fear of jinxing themselves. For example, people
think it is more likely to rain if they wash their car.
Even
for the non-believers they too experience that sensation that tempting fate
increases the odds of a bad outcome. Paul Rozin conducted a study in which he
had participants read a series of short stories and give their immediate
response if the ending was a logical conclusion.
The
story: Jon recently finished applying to graduate school and of all the
schools he applied to, Stanford was his top choice. Typical of his mother's
optimistic nature she sent him a Stanford T-shirt and when it came in the mail,
Jon decided to wear it the next day.
The
ending: A month later, Jon received a rejection letter from Stanford.
As
expected, people who read that Jon wore the shirt his mother bought responded
quickly that this was a logical end to the story. There was a control group. The
story these participants read stated that when Jon received the shirt, he
stuffed it in the bottom of his dresser drawer. These participants took longer
to determine the story had a logical end. Rozin feels this result tells us that
not only are we hard-wired to thinking in magical terms but that we do it
quickly and automatically.
These basic instincts
give us some indication why we enjoy stories filled with fantasy and magic. It
also gives me a better understanding why magical elements in stories have to be
logical, the cause and effect kind. It also explains why magical powers are so
alluring.
Last week the magical
power I would have liked was being transported, like in “beam me up Scotty.”
The commute since Hurricane Sandy here in lower Manhattan to New Jersey has
been difficult. That said, what magical power would you like to have?
As a note, my story, Knight of Runes, which does deal with magic,
is now available in paperback at Harlequin.com
