Just in time for 2022’s solitary Friday the 13th, YouGov released their poll “Luck and Superstitions” on May 2. The poll, conducted April 26–30, 2022, asked 1,000 people from YouGov’s opt-in panel for their beliefs and attitudes regarding superstitions. The good news is that a majority, 56 percent, answered no to the question “Is there anything that you are superstitious about?” Additionally, 64 percent never carry a lucky charm.
For those who are superstitious, the poll found that more of them believe in “good luck” superstitions than “bad luck” superstitions. When it comes to lucky occurrences, the highest percentage of “yes” responses involved making a wish while blowing out birthday candles and seeing a shooting star, each of which garnered 28 percent. These were followed closely by people who believe saying “bless you” when someone sneezes (27 percent)1 and seeing a rainbow (26 percent) bring good luck. In contrast, the highest percentage for bad luck occurrences was a three-way tie of 21 percent each for walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, and the number 666.
This got me thinking: What about the people who do not believe in superstitions but act them out anyway? For instance, I have worked for Skeptical Inquirer for sixteen years and consider myself a pretty diehard skeptic, but I have been known to “knock on wood” or proclaim, “It’s 11:11! Make a wish!” from time to time. I did a little digging and found a 2016 article by Jane Risen (“Believing What We Do Not Believe: Acquiescence to Superstitious Beliefs and Other Powerful Intuitions,” Psychological Review, 123(2): 182–207) in which she explains the mechanism behind people acting out superstitions they don’t believe in.
Risen starts by explaining the dual process model in psychology. Basically, the model posits that there are two different ways that thought arises: the knee-jerk unconscious process known as System 1 and the controlled, conscious process of System 2. Daniel Kahneman further interpreted this model in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow. As his title suggests, he defined System 1 as fast, automatic, and strongly dependent on emotion; System 2, on the other hand, is slow and subject to conscious judgments.
Risen looked into how in the dual process model “System 1 … generate[s] magical intuitions and features of the person or situation that prompt[s] System 2 to correct them.” However, Risen believes that in light of non-superstitious people engaging in seemingly superstitious ritual, the dual process model needs to be refined:
It must allow for the possibility that people can recognize—in the moment—that their belief does not make sense [System 2], but act on it nevertheless [System 1]. People can detect an error, but choose not to correct it, a process I refer to as acquiescence. … [I] suggest that we can improve the model by decoupling the detection of errors from their correction and recognizing acquiescence as a possible System 2 response.
In other words, it is the opposite of the traditional dual process model in which System 2 is thought to correct the knee-jerk System 1 response. In Risen’s model, the System 2 thought is the correct one—the superstition will not have an effect—and it is System 1 that fails to fall in line with this thought; the person still acts out the superstition.
I reached out to CFI Fellow and psychologist Stuart Vyse, SI’s “Behavior & Belief” columnist, for comment on this superstition business. Vyse wrote the book on the subject—literally. His Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. “In our daily lives, we are often of two minds. We know we shouldn’t have a second helping of chocolate cake, but we do it anyway,” Vyse explained. “For many who have an inclination to be superstitious, there is a similar kind of acquiescence. The rational part of their brains knows what makes sense, but their emotional and intuitive brain says, ‘I don’t want to take a chance. I’ll just feel better if I walk around this ladder.’”
So the next time you delight in finding a penny heads up or blow on a pair of dice at the craps table, you’ll have a little more insight into why.
Note
1. There is an argument to be made that saying “bless you” is no longer really a superstition but rather a cultural custom that people engage in simply to be socially decorous. In this view, the ritual is not performed out of superstition but rather out of courtesy. Regardless, the YouGov poll made no such distinction.