The team at Moorgate bought me a book on London legends for our annual exchange of books at the Christmas dinner. It’s a fascinating account of the superstitions and lore that were a major part of London life in previous eras. In an uncertain world people filled the gaps in their knowledge with false beliefs to cope with their irrational fears, many of which persist despite their obvious falsehood.
Of course, a city the age and size of London has an extraordinary volume of folklore stretching right back to its Roman origins. But then a superstitious person can also build up an extraordinary number of false beliefs. Certainly, I was brought up in a superstitious house and I’ve never quite managed to suppress my irrational side, despite its obvious nonsense. For instance, my mother would never allow pictures of elephants in the house, believing them unlucky. Meanwhile, the bronze elephant on wheels in my entrance hall – a trinket we picked up in a Rajasthan market – stares at me everyday on my way out. And, of course, God forbid (!!?), if misfortune were to ever visit the house, in whatever form, would my rational mind be strong enough, even now, to suppress the obviously nonsensical thought that the elephant was somehow responsible?
I hope so, but I doubt it. Even today – with all my aged rationality – I can find myself looking for wood to touch when I seek luck, and I still instinctively avoid walking under ladders. Thank God (!!?) I’m no longer taken in by the “predictions” of Nostradamus – an obvious snake-oil selling charlatan if ever there was one, although a man I found fascinating right into my late 20s. And my teenage obsession with the Ouija Board’s “mystic powers” has, thankfully, evolved into an interest in the mind’s propensity to deceive.
Of course, many of us are superstitious when we are young because we are struggling to make sense of a world that, ultimately, makes no sense. This makes the young favourably disposed towards luck and superstition, as well as towards conspiracy theories involving grown ups controlling destinies from secret bunkers. There MUST be forces out there shaping our lives – not least because that’s a slightly less scary thought than the notion we are spinning around on a spec of rock controlled only by the laws of physics.
Yet superstitions linger, even in the most rational of minds or the most successful of people. After the 1981 attempted assassination of US president Ronald Reagan, astrologer Joan Quigley became a fixture in the White House. President Roosevelt, meanwhile, was an acute “triskaidekaphobic” (believing the number 13 unlucky). And footballers are so renowned for their ritualistic behaviour – such as being last on the pitch or dressing in a particular order (which must make for some bizarre sights in any pre-match changing room) – that no soccer-star interview is complete without listing them.
Given my recent research for What’s Stopping You? (TBP in March 2011 by Capstone/Wiley) my own superstitions should have surely been rationalised out of existence. Certainly, science can explain it away. Behaviourists such as Burrhus Frederic Skinner of Indiana University have examined ritualistic practices (the root of superstition) as far back as 1948. His experiments involved pigeons being fed at regular intervals regardless of their actions, although noticed they repeated idiosyncratic movements prior to each feeding, clearly fearing that any failure to repeat the movements would prevent the food appearing.
Superstitious humans are doing the same. Even once confronted with the behaviourist's "truth" we continue touching wood or kissing the lucky charm because it costs us nothing, is a comforting gesture, and makes us feel we have some control over our destiny. And it might just be effective. In religious terms this is known as Pascal’s Wager, in which the French philosopher stated we should behave as if God exists simply because we have nothing to lose by doing so.
Pascal’s recommendations can perhaps be labelled “rational irrationalism” – i.e. the active partaking in irrational behaviour having calculated the cost (which is zero) and the benefits (also likely to be zero, but you never know…). Unfortunately, many more vulnerable people are unable to philosophically escape the trap of superstition because of their poor self beliefs. In What’s Stopping You? I examine fear of failure and, early on, deal with the notion that many people with fear of failure have self-beliefs that involve ceding control over their lives to external forces – something known as “attribution theory”.
Attribution theory’s best-known proponent is Bernard Weiner. Working at the University of California in the 1980s, Weiner published a paper to explain the emotional and motivational aspects of academic success and failure. Superstition plays an important role because, as Weiner states, our frame of mind makes an enormous difference with respect to our propensity towards success or failure. Those with high achievement motivation (High-AMs as I call them in the book) have a positive frame of mind that attributes their successes to their own abilities. They also attribute their failures to the need to acquire new skills that, they believe, are within their grasp. Yet those with a negative frame of mind (and therefore with a high fear of failure) attribute their successes to the fact the task was easy or that they were lucky, and their failures to their innate lack of ability.
A key concept in this respect is what Weiner and others refer to as the “locus of control” – i.e. the extent to which individuals believe they can shape events that have an impact upon them. High-AMs have an “internal locus of control”, which means they view themselves as in control of their destiny. They can shape their own lives, including the impact external factors have upon them. Meanwhile, High-FFs (as I call those with high fear of failure) have an “external locus of control”, which results in a self-belief that they are at the whim of external forces (including superstition) – such as luck or fate – and that they have no power to influence other than, perhaps, through ritualistic behaviour.
Unfortunately, those with an external locus of control are also susceptible to the manipulation of others (who they believe to be stronger). And they assume that their skills (or more likely their lack of them) are innate, which means their ability to learn new skills is immediately limited by their self-beliefs.
Having an external locus of control, therefore, can not only lead us in to thinking obstacles to our progress are insurmountable (a self-fulfilling prophesy if ever there was one), it also means we are subject to any influence or signal – good or more likely bad – from outside: hence the disposition towards superstitions such as astrology or fortune telling.
Put like this, the irrationality of superstition is obvious. Isn’t it…?
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