How Superstitions Are Affecting Your Behavior

Are you spooked by Friday the 13th, black cats crossing your path or having to walk under a ladder? Do you often knock on wood after mentioning your good fortune or throw salt over your left shoulder after spilling it to ward off bad luck? If so, you're among the legions of people who are superstitious: A 2014 Harris Interactive/Statista survey of 2,236 adults across the U.S. found that 33 percent of people believe finding and picking up a penny is good luck, and 21 percent believe knocking on wood prevents bad luck. A previous Gallup news poll found that 25 percent of people in the U.S. say they are "very" or "somewhat" superstitious in general.

Where do these beliefs come from? "Superstitions come from traditions and your upbringing -- people teach you superstitions; you're not born believing in Friday the 13th or that if you step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back," says Stuart Vyse, a psychologist in Stonington, Connecticut, and author of "Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition." "They also come from the uncertainty of life -- if you have something you desire that you cannot make sure will happen," you might engage in superstitious behavior. That's because superstitions often provide the illusion of control.

Believe it or not, being superstitious can affect your behavior and state of mind, influencing everything from your preparation for and performance on a particular challenge to your responsiveness to placebos. In a series of studies in the March 2015 issue of Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers found that performance goals were more likely to elicit superstitious behavior -- especially a penchant for lucky items -- than learning goals were. As the participants' uncertainty of achieving their goals increased, their superstitious behavior also increased; by contrast, when they were assigned to use a lucky item, their confidence about achieving their performance-related goals rose significantly.

"When people feel the world is out of their control, they look for external sources of control -- superstitions are really a reaction to feeling out of control," says study co-author Eric Hamerman, an assistant professor of marketing at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. "People like to put a sense of control around chaos or uncertainty."

Generally, superstitions fall into two categories: those that are believed to court good luck (such as having a lucky charm or pre-game ritual) and those that might help you avoid bad luck (like steering clear of a black cat on the street). "People like to have the idea that they can make sense of the world and predict what will happen to them," notes social psychologist Carey Morewedge, an associate professor of marketing at Boston University. "Superstitions serve as external explanations for seemingly causal events" or as a possible way to reduce the odds that something bad will happen.

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Supporting Superstitions

Once they take hold, superstitions are often maintained and reinforced by a confirmation bias, a tendency to remember information that confirms what you already believe and to discount information that doesn't jibe with that. "Once a hypothesis comes to mind, people look for ways to support that," explains social psychologist Jane Risen, an associate professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Say you wore your charm bracelet to a job interview that you aced or you ate a turkey sandwich before playing your best tennis match ever: You might come to believe in the lucky power of that piece of jewelry or pre-game meal; meanwhile, you might overlook all the times you wore that bracelet or ate a turkey sandwich and nothing special happened. "Sometimes people recognize that these superstitious beliefs don't make sense," Risen says, "but the intuitive appeal is so powerful that it's hard to shake them."

Illusions aside, there are some positive aspects of superstitious thinking, experts say. "It's not that we have superstitions because of those positive aspects," Risen points out. They're more like accidental perks. For example, "sometimes superstitions create a sense of group identity by connecting you to other people," Risen explains, as is the case with sports-related superstitions.

For a 2013 study in Athletic Insight: The Online Journal of Sport Psychology, researchers surveyed 1,661 college students about their superstitious behaviors related to being a sports fan. They found that "higher levels of sport fandom" and greater identification with a team was linked with harboring more superstitions, and those with higher levels of team identification reported "greater perceptions of the impact and importance of their superstitions." Interestingly, apparel-related superstitions were the most common.

Another perk: "Superstitious behavior does help with anxiety," Vyse notes. "If you care very much about the outcome [of an event] but it's uncertain, just doing something makes you feel better even if it's unlikely to have a direct effect on the outcome."

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Superstitions Taken Too Far

Granted, it is possible to take superstitions too far. On the far side of the continuum, superstitious behaviors can be a feature of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, Risen notes, where superstitious beliefs and rituals become so entrenched that they interfere with a person's life. To tell if you've taken your own superstitions too far, Risen recommends asking yourself: Are my superstitions or superstitious rituals interfering with my relationships, the way I function in my life or with activities I usually do? "Most people don't take this too far," Risen says, but it can happen.

If you find that you're making important decisions based on false beliefs such as superstitions, "you might be making the wrong decisions," Risen says. If you need to have emergency surgery, and you ask to delay it because it's the 13th day of the month, that's an example of letting a superstitious belief impair your decision-making. Similarly, if you decide not to practice safe sex with a new partner or you engage in excessive gambling because you're wearing your lucky shirt, those are bad ideas, too. Research from Australia found that with problem gamblers, there's a significant relationship between their superstitious beliefs and their gambling intensity.

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Regardless of the setting, "superstitions become problematic when they cause you to do things that aren't beneficial to you or they cause you to not do things that would be," Vyse says. In which case, it's time to dial down your superstitions with a hefty dose of rational thought.

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Stacey Colino is a freelance Health + Wellness reporter at U.S. News. You can connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at staceycolino@gmail.com.