From Skeptical Inquirer, March-April 2018
Do Superstitious Rituals Work?
Let us stipulate that there is no magic. Sleight-of-hand, deception, illusion,
and conjuring, yes, but no “real” magic. On this, most science-minded people
agree. But when it comes to superstition, there has always been an additional,
less obvious question. Of course, superstitions do not have a magical effect on
the world, but do they have psychological benefits? Could superstitions make
difficult situations easier to handle? Furthermore, if they have an emotional or
psychological benefit, could they also produce better performance in situations
where skill is involved? The psychological benefits of superstitions—if they
exist—would not be expected to change your luck at the roulette wheel, but
perhaps an actor’s pre-performance ritual could reduce anxiety, allowing for
better acting.
...
Then in 2010 there was a great advance—or so it seemed. Researchers at the
University of Cologne in Germany conducted the now famous golf ball study
(Damisch et al. 2010). Participants were given a putter and asked to hit a golf
ball into a cup on the carpet of a laboratory. Half the participants were handed
a ball and told, “This ball has been lucky today.” The other half were told,
“This is your ball.” As it turned out, more than 80 percent of the German
participants reported believing in the concept of good luck, and when the
results were tallied, the researchers discovered that participants in the lucky
ball group sank significantly more of their putts than the other group.
Furthermore, Damisch et al. replicated this result with different tasks and
several different luck-activating superstitions. Of course, there still was no
magic, but these studies seemed to have demonstrated that believing in luck gave
participants the confidence to perform better than they otherwise would. A
phenomenon long speculated to be a possibility had finally been demonstrated in
a laboratory setting.
Except there was a catch. As I reported in my January 2017 online column (“Your
Unlearning Report: The Trouble with Empathy, Implicit Bias, and Believing in
Luck,” available at https://tinyurl.com/yc9nm8vu), a group of researchers at
Dominion University in Illinois conducted a replication of the Damisch et al.
study in 2014 and found no luck-enhancing effect on putting (Calin-Jageman and
Caldwell 2014). Furthermore, the 2014 study included over three times as many
golfers and was a pre-registered study—meaning that the design and methods of
the study were publicly posted prior the start of data collection. The Dominion
study was much more thorough and scientifically sound, and it came up empty. So,
at least with respect to the effect of luck on putting performance, the jury is
still out.
...
Please do the following ritual: Draw a picture of how you are feeling right now.
Sprinkle salt on your drawing. Count up to five out loud. Crinkle up your paper.
Throw your paper in the trash.
In a series of experiments, Brooks et al. showed that participants who performed
this ritual did better on the task—high-pressure math problems or singing—than
those who did not. Furthermore, they were able to show that the effect was
mediated by a reduction in anxiety. So performing a symbolic ritual prior to a
high-anxiety task reduced anxiety, which in turn produced better performance.
...
For one group of participants, this new sequence was described as “random
behaviors,” and for another it was described as a “ritual.” Finally, a third
group did not perform the sequence of actions at all. The results showed that
the ritual group had lower anxiety and performed significantly better on a timed
math test than either the random behaviors group or the no ritual group. The
authors suggested that merely calling the sequence a “ritual” was sufficient to
give it the necessary symbolic function to reduce anxiety and increase
performance. Brooks et al. did not find that participants had an increased sense
of control, which was surprising because a desire for control has often been
cited as a motivation for superstitious behavior (e.g., Hamerman and Johar
2013). Instead, the effect on performance was entirely due to reduced anxiety.
...
Does this mean that superstitious rituals work? Yes and no. The Brooks et al.
study suggests that superstitious rituals do work—not because they are
superstitious but because they are rituals. Any old ritual will do, including
writing numbers on a piece of paper, crinkling it up, and throwing it away
...
You don’t have to believe in the efficacy of a ritual for it to help you feel
better. All of these studies are preliminary, and it will be important to see
whether they hold up when other researchers try to reproduce the results.
Furthermore, there is much more we need to know about why and how rituals work.
But these early findings are quite interesting.
...
For skeptics who would like to discourage superstitious and irrational thinking,
this line of research has both a downside and an upside. The downside is that
the research by Brooks et al. suggests that superstitious rituals do work—not
because they are magic but because they are rituals. As a result, the calming
features of superstitious rituals and the improved performance they engender are
likely to sustain superstitious thinking. The superstitious person’s beliefs
will appear to be validated. The upside, however, is that skeptics now have a
ready response to those who claim their superstitions work: Yes, your
superstitions work, but it’s the ritual, not the superstition that’s making you
feel better. Any old ritual will do.
References
Brooks, Alison, Juliana Schroeder, Jane Risen, et al. 2016. Don’t stop
believing: Rituals improve performance by decreasing anxiety. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes 137: 71–85.
Calin-Jageman, Robert J., and Tracy L. Caldwell. 2014. Replication of the
superstition and performance study by Damisch, Stoberock, and Mussweiler (2010).
Social Psychology 45(3): 239–45.
Damisch, Lysann, Barbara Stoberock, and Thomas Mussweiler. 2010. Keep your
fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science
21(7): 1014–20. Available online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20511389.
Hamerman, Eric J., and Gita V. Johar. 2013. Conditioned superstition: Desire for
control and consumer brand preferences. Journal of Consumer Research 40(3):
428–43.
Norton, Michael I., and Francesca Gino. 2014. Rituals alleviate grieving for
loved ones, lovers, and lotteries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
143(1): 266–72.