Development of a Naïve Theory of Superstition

ABSTRACT

Superstitious behaviors persist across time, culture, and age. Although often considered irrational and even potentially harmful, superstitions have recently been shown to have positive effects on stress levels, confidence, and ultimately, performance. However, it remains unclear how people conceive of superstitious behaviors, specifically, whether people attribute apparent superstitious efficacy to magical forces or to something else, such as reduced stress or increased confidence. In two studies we asked 6- to 9-year-old children and adults from the United States to rate how causally connected superstitious behaviors were to desired outcomes. In Study 1, participants provided open-ended responses to questions probing why they believed the actions were tied to the outcomes. Participants were more likely across ages to offer natural than magical explanations to explain the connection – this became more pronounced with age. In Study 2, half the stories did not permit a plausible natural explanation, thus any perceived causal relation could only be attributable to magic. Participants were asked how connected the superstitious behaviors were to the outcomes. We found significant differences in ratings of connectedness between stories that held plausible natural explanations and those that did not in our adult sample only. Our findings suggest that people recruit their naive psychology when reasoning about the efficacy of superstitious behaviors; however, children may also believe magic to be causally relevant.

KEYWORDS:

• superstition
• explanations
• naive psychology magic
• causality

Acknowledgments

Data collection took place at the University of Texas at Austin. We thank the children who participated, their parents, the staff at the Children’s Research Center, and the following undergraduate students who helped with data collection, coding, entry, and reliability: Ruth Esther Apura, Silviya Bastola, Cameron Bates, Katherine Bos, Zachary Bricken, Emma Brunk, Ashlea Cooper, Amanda Cramer, Matthew Finch, Julia Fishkind, Avery Largent, Cloris Lu, Candice Ma, Ashley Missimo, Jacquelyn Olivarez, Ilerioluwa Olugboye, Claire Perkins, Fernanda Ramos, Muskan Shah, Madeline Young, and Jasmine Xu. Thanks are also due to Jenny Nisssel and members of the Imagination and Cognition lab for feedback on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

We have reported all measures, conditions, and data exclusions, as well as how we have determined our sample sizes.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study and the code used for analyses are openly available on OSF at https://osf.io/8q3xn/.