Competition, superstition and the illusion of control

The effects of reinforcement schedule and competition on generating superstitious behaviors and beliefs were examined in 72 people. Superstition was induced by having participants respond to turn on a tone under a concurrent 2—lever Variable Interval (VI) Extinction (EXT) schedule. During the session, stimulus lights would occasionally be illuminated, although they did not signal any change in contingency. Attributing importance to the inactive lever, a pattern of switching between levers, or to the illumination of the lights were considered to be superstitious beliefs. Participants were either run alone or in pairs, and manipulation of the reinforcement schedule resulted in groups which were matched in probability of reinforcement, as well as in groups which were mismatched. Reinforcement schedule (VI 30” versus VI 60”) and competitive situation did not affect degree of superstitious belief, except when people were placed in a “winning” condition. However, Superstition was associated with participants’ belief in improved future performance and with participants’ perceived skill relative to their opponents. Results are discussed in terms of relationships between superstition, the illusion of control, and self-efficacy. Differences between experimentally-induced and commonly held superstitions are also discussed.     

Competition, superstition and the illusion of control

The effects of reinforcement schedule and competition on generating superstitious behaviors and beliefs were examined in 72 people. Superstition was induced by having participants respond to turn on a tone under a concurrent 2—lever Variable Interval (VI) Extinction (EXT) schedule. During the session, stimulus lights would occasionally be illuminated, although they did not signal any change in contingency. Attributing importance to the inactive lever, a pattern of switching between levers, or to the illumination of the lights were considered to be superstitious beliefs. Participants were either run alone or in pairs, and manipulation of the reinforcement schedule resulted in groups which were matched in probability of reinforcement, as well as in groups which were mismatched. Reinforcement schedule (VI 30” versus VI 60”) and competitive situation did not affect degree of superstitious belief, except when people were placed in a “winning” condition. However, Superstition was associated with participants’ belief in improved future performance and with participants’ perceived skill relative to their opponents. Results are discussed in terms of relationships between superstition, the illusion of control, and self-efficacy. Differences between experimentally-induced and commonly held superstitions are also discussed.     

Magical thinking in judgments of causation: Can anomalous phenomena affect ontological causal beliefs in children and adults?

In four experiments, 4‐, 5‐, 6‐ and 9‐year‐old children and adults were tested on the entrenchment of their magical beliefs and their beliefs in the universal power of physical causality. In Experiment 1, even 4‐year‐olds showed some understanding of the difference between ordinary and anomalous (magical) causal events, but only 6‐year‐olds and older participants denied that magic could occur in real life. When shown an anomalous causal event (a transformation of a physical object in an apparently empty box after a magic spell was cast on the box), 4‐ and 6‐year‐olds accepted magical explanations of the event, whereas 9‐year‐olds and adults did not. In Experiment 2, the same patterns of behaviour as above were shown by 6‐ and 9‐year‐olds who demonstrated an understanding of the difference between genuine magical events and similarly looking tricks. Testing the entrenchment of magical beliefs in this experiment showed that 5‐year‐olds tended to retain their magical explanations of the anomalous event, even after the mechanism of the trick had been explained to them, whereas 6‐ and 9‐year‐olds did not. In Experiment 3, adult participants refused to accept magical explanations of the anomalous event and interpreted it as a trick or an illusion, even after this event was repeated 4 times. Yet, when in Experiment 4 similar anomalous causal events were demonstrated without reference to magic, most adults acknowledged, both in their verbal judgments and in their actions, that the anomalous effects were not a fiction but had really occurred. The data of this study suggest that in the modern industrialized world, magical beliefs persist but are disguised to fit the dominant scientific paradigm.     

The effect of superstitious thinking on psychosocial stress responses and perceived task performance

Previous research on superstitious belief, a subset of paranormal belief (Irwin, 1993 ), has suggested that people tend to invoke luck‐related superstitions in stressful situations as an attempt to gain an illusion of control over outcomes. Based on this, the current study examined whether luck‐related superstition, in the form of a “lucky” pen, could influence the psychological response to a psychosocial stressor. Participants (N = 114), aged between 17 and 59 years (M = 22.98, SD = 4.57) from James Cook University Singapore, were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (a) no‐stress with no lucky pen; (b) no‐stress with a lucky pen; (c) stress with no lucky pen or; (d) stress with a lucky pen. The results revealed that participants provided with a lucky pen experienced lower state anxiety when exposed to the stressor. Further, participants provided with a lucky pen perceived their performance to be better than those without it. However, superstitious belief did not significantly change following exposure to stress. Taken together, the present findings add some support to the suggestion that belief in transferable luck may facilitate coping with a stressor. However, further research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms behind the potential benefits of superstitious belief.     

Just World Beliefs Are Associated With Lower Levels of Metabolic Risk and Inflammation and Better Sleep After an Unfair Event

This study's goal was to conduct a preliminary test of the theory that just world beliefs can buffer against negative physiological outcomes after people experience certain types of negative life events by testing associations between just world beliefs and physiological outcomes among people with different life event histories. In a sample of 247 adults (M_age = 46.01; 24.31% men; 60.78% White), this research investigated the relationship between just world beliefs and metabolic symptoms, inflammation, and sleep among people who had recently experienced an unfair event, another type of negative event, or no negative event. Stronger just world beliefs correlated with lower metabolic risk, lower inflammation, and better sleep among people who had recently experienced an unfair event, but not among those in the other two event groups. These findings suggest that people's beliefs about the world may interact with their life experiences in ways that have implications for health‐relevant outcomes.     

HOW TO CONFUSE ORGANISMS WITH MOUSETRAPS: MACHINE METAPHORS AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Why do design arguments—particularly those emphasizing machine metaphors such as “Organisms and/or their parts are machines”—continue to be so convincing to so many people after they have been repeatedly refuted? In this essay I review various interpretations and refutations of design arguments and make a distinction between rationally refuting such arguments (Refuting_R) and rendering them psychologically unconvincing (Refuting_P). Expanding on this distinction, I provide support from recent work on the cognitive power of metaphors and developmental psychological work indicating a basic human propensity toward attributing agency to natural events, to show that design arguments “make sense”unless one is cued to look more closely. As with visual illusions, such as the Müller‐Lyer arrow illusion, there is nothing wrong with a believer's cognitive apparatus any more than with their visual apparatus when they judge the lines in the illusion to be of unequal length. It takes training or a dissonance between design beliefs and other beliefs or experiences to play the role that a ruler does in the visual case. Unless people are cued to “look again” at what initially makes perfect sense, they are not inclined to apply more sophisticated evaluative procedures.     

Causal illusion as a cognitive basis of pseudoscientific beliefs

Causal illusion has been proposed as a cognitive mediator of pseudoscientific beliefs. However, previous studies have only tested the association between this cognitive bias and a closely related but different type of unwarranted beliefs, those related to superstition and paranormal phenomena. Participants (n = 225) responded to a novel questionnaire of pseudoscientific beliefs designed for this study. They also completed a contingency learning task in which a possible cause, infusion intake, and a desired effect, headache remission, were actually non-contingent. Volunteers with higher scores on the questionnaire also presented stronger causal illusion effects. These results support the hypothesis that causal illusions might play a fundamental role in the endorsement of pseudoscientific beliefs.     

Reappraising Past and Future Transitional Events: The Effects of Mental Focus on Present Perceptions of Personal Impact and Self‐Relevance

This research examined how instructions to focus on the concrete details (experience focus) versus broader life significance (coherence focus) influence present perceptions of transitional impact and self‐relevance for past and future transitional events. Participants (Study 1, N = 119; Study 2, N = 251) selected a past or future transition and wrote about it using either an experiential or coherence focus. Participants then rated the event on transitional impact, self‐relevance, and other phenomenological characteristics. Individuals instructed to use a coherence focus on a past transition reported higher levels of material and psychological impact and rated the event as more self‐relevant, compared to those instructed to use an experiential focus. The manipulation did not influence ratings for future events. Controlling for temporal distance and emotional valence did not alter the findings. Future transitions were regarded as more personally important than past transitions. Appraisals of the impact and self‐relevance of transformative past events (but not future events) are affected by the mental focus adopted at retrieval. The findings are considered in light of essential differences between remembering and forecasting and support the notion that a coherence focus promotes adaptive self‐reflection by affording people the cognitive means with which to reconcile transitional experiences.     

Superstition and self-efficacy in Chinese postgraduate students

43 Chinese postgraduate education students (16 men and 27 women), whose mean age was 33.5 yr., completed a questionnaire measuring superstitious beliefs (Superstitious Beliefs Scale) and self-efficacy (General Perceived Self-efficacy Scale). Higher scores on belief in superstition were associated with lower rated self-efficacy. While not significant, the observed correlation of -.28 between superstitious belief and self-efficacy was of a similar magnitude and in the same direction as that previously reported for western students. Such cross-cultural validation is consistent with the generality of this relationship. Suggestions for further research are made.     

Paranormal beliefs: their dimensionality and correlates

Lack of conceptual clarity and multivariate empirical studies has troubled research on superstitious, magical and paranormal beliefs. We defined paranormal beliefs as beliefs in physical, biological or psychological phenomena that feature core ontological properties of another ontological category. The aim was to bring together a range of beliefs and their potential correlates, to analyse whether the beliefs form independent subsets, and to test a structural model of the beliefs and their potential correlates. The results (N = 3261) showed that the beliefs could be best described by one higher‐order factor. There were also four lower‐order factors of paranormal beliefs but their explanatory power was low. Magico‐religious beliefs were best explained by high intuitive thinking, a humanistic world view and low analytical thinking. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An experimental demonstration of discriminated (nongeneralized) imitation

In a number of experiments, nonreinforced imitation has been found to persist at high rates despite the variety of procedures which have been employed to eliminate such responses. In the present experiment, powerful stimulus control was established over imitation by providing an alternative response which was reinforcible. Four children participated in a multiple-schedule experiment in which imitation was reinforced in the presence of one light and bar pressing in the presence of a second light; throughout the experiment, responses were modeled on each trial: hand-arm responses in the presence of the red light and leg responses in the presence of the yellow light. Initially, imitation was reinforced in the presence of the red light and button pressing in the presence of the yellow light. In a within-subjects design, stimulus control was demonstrated by reversing the association of lights and contingencies, then reinstating the original contingencies. The children imitated when reinforced for imitation and pressed the button when button pressing was reinforced. The results demonstrate stimulus control over imitation which is more powerful than in previous investigations and indicate that the prevailing reinforcement contingencies determine whether or not a child will imitate on a particular occasion.This research was supported by a Faculty Summer Research Grant from The American University. The authors wish to express their appreciation to the School for Contemporary Education, McLean, Virginia, and to Dr. Sally Sibley, Mr. David Williams, and Mrs. Linda Trout for their cooperation in providing subjects and research space.     

When causality shapes the experience of time: Evidence for temporal binding in young children

It is well established that the temporal proximity of two events is a fundamental cue to causality. Recent research with adults has shown that this relation is bidirectional: events that are believed to be causally related are perceived as occurring closer together in time—the so‐called temporal binding effect. Here, we examined the developmental origins of temporal binding. Participants predicted when an event that was either caused by a button press, or preceded by a non‐causal signal, would occur. We demonstrate for the first time that children as young as 4 years are susceptible to temporal binding. Binding occurred both when the button press was executed via intentional action, and when a machine caused it. These results suggest binding is a fundamental, early developing property of perception and grounded in causal knowledge. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQC_MqjxZQQ     

Belief in Conspiracy Theories and Susceptibility to the Conjunction Fallacy

People who believe in the paranormal have been found to be particularly susceptible to the conjunction fallacy. The present research examines whether the same is true of people who endorse conspiracy theories. Two studies examined the association between conspiracist ideation and the number of conjunction violations made in a variety of contexts (neutral, paranormal and conspiracy). Study 1 found that participants who endorsed a range of popular conspiracy theories more strongly also made more conjunction errors than participants with weaker conspiracism, regardless of the contextual framing of the conjunction. Study 2, using an independent sample and a generic measure of conspiracist ideation, replicated the finding that conspiracy belief is associated with domain‐general susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy. The findings are discussed in relation to the association between conspiracism and other anomalous beliefs, the representativeness heuristic and the tendency to infer underlying causal relationships connecting ostensibly unrelated events. © 2014 The Authors. Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Social support,coping, and depressive symptoms in cardiac illness among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White cardiac patients

In Multi-Trait Multi-Method (MTMM) studies of causal attributions for laboratory events, there is little evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for attribution measures. We report the first MTMM study to investigate the validity of two methods of eliciting causal beliefs for an illness, specifically, myocardial infarction. Adult respondents (N?=?107) listed causes of MI, then completed questionnaire rating scales for causal beliefs for MI. Measures were compared using both Campbell and Fiske's approach to MTMM analyses, and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis approach. Neither single item measures causal beliefs, nor scales of causal beliefs derived using exploratory factor analysis provided much evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that a model containing only causal belief factors provided a moderately good fit to the data. Adding a questionnaire method factor significantly improved the fit of the model, as well as substantially changing the pattern of factor loadings: loadings of questionnaire items on causal belief factors were markedly reduced. These results highlight major problems with the measurement of causal beliefs, and in particular question the validity of factor analysis of questionnaire measures of causal beliefs. They also suggest that at least some of the MI causal belief factors reported in the literature are artefacts of common questionnaire method variance.     

How Stories in Memory Perpetuate the Continued Influence of False Information

People often encounter information that they subsequently learn is false. Past research has shown that people sometimes continue to use this misinformation in their reasoning, even if they remember that the information is false, which researchers refer to as the continued influence effect. The current work shows that the continued influence effect depends on the stories people have in memory: corrected misinformation was found to have a stronger effect on people's beliefs than information that was topically related to the story if it helped to provide a causal explanation of a story they had read previously. We argue this effect occurs because information that can fill a causal “gap” in a story enhances comprehension of the story event, which allows people to build a complete (if inaccurate) event model that they prefer over an accurate but incomplete event model. This effect is less likely to occur for stories in memory that end in a negative way, presumably because people are more motivated to accurately understand negative outcome events.     

The effect of superstitious belief on performance following an unsolvable problem

Two experiments investigated the hypothesis that performance is not impaired following instances of uncontrollability when superstitious beliefs are invoked. In Experiment 1, undergraduates worked on an anagrams task following exposure to either a solvable or unsolvable word puzzle. Level of superstitious belief was assessed using Tobacyk, 1988 revised Paranormal Belief Scale. Following the unsolvable problem, students with a high level of superstitious belief solved more anagrams than students with a low level of superstitious belief. In Experiment 2, level of superstitious belief was assessed both before and after working on a solvable or unsolvable puzzle. Reported level of superstitious belief increased following exposure to unsolvable, but not solvable problems. These studies support the hypothesis that participants invoke superstitious beliefs during instances of uncontrollability, which may prevent or interrupt subsequent performance impairment.     

Religious Believers Do Not Distinguish Good from Poor Reasons for God’s Existence

Can people discriminate good from bad reasons for their beliefs about God? Research shows that religious believers favor intuitive processing, suggesting they may be less discriminating than nonbelievers. Indeed, in Experiment 1 and a replication, people listed 15 reasons for their beliefs about God, then evaluated the quality of either their first 3 reasons (presumably their best) or their last 3 (their worst); in both experiments, nonbelievers rated their good reasons as better than their bad reasons, whereas believers rated the 2 types of reasons equally. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that this difference was limited to beliefs about God and was specific to believers’ own beliefs about God: Both believers and nonbelievers discriminated reasons for other people’s beliefs, as long as the reasons were congruent with their own. Whether cognitively or motivationally driven, our findings help explain why religious beliefs, in particular, are often immune to logical argument.     

Fatalistic beliefs,risk perception and traffic safe behaviors

IntroductionRoad safety is a major worldwide concern especially for developing countries where a certain feeling of helplessness predominate. Local authorities are seeking ways to change people's behaviors considered as the first causal factor of traffic accidents. Risk perception and fatalistic beliefs have been identified as important socio-cognitive functioning patterns, which can shed light on people's behaviors towards risks, for prevention purpose. But the way fatalistic beliefs are associated with risk perception and safety behaviors remains blurred in literature.ObjectiveThis article examined the relationship between fatalistic beliefs, risk perception and traffic safety-related behaviors.MethodThe study was carried out in Cameroon on a sample of 525 road users with a questionnaire made up of scales measuring fatalistic beliefs, perceived risk for dangerous traffic events and reported safe behaviors.ResultsAs expected, participants with higher levels of fatalistic beliefs perceived dangerous traffic situations as less risky and reported less safe behaviors. Perceived risk partially mediated the association between fatalistic beliefs and reported safe behaviors.ConclusionPerceiving dangerous traffic situations as risky can mitigate the magnitude of one's fatalistic beliefs on the engagement in protective behaviors. The implications for more effective prevention including both beliefs and perceptions are suggested. One can explain to people how to avoid accidents, emphasizing on their capacity to change their behavior and the gains they retrieved from that behavioral change.