What with today being Friday the thirteenth and me being an ethnologist with an interest in customs, beliefs, ritual etc, I thought it would be rather apt to share superstitions. Apart from the fact that I don't actually have any - not even an exam ritual! So I'll talk about other people's superstitions, and you can share yours with me.
The psychologist Skinner conditioned superstitious-like behaviours in pigeons in 1948, and while he was criticised for his analogy being too simplistic, conditioning can explain how some individual superstitions are formed. For example, if someone wears a particular jumper to an exam and does really well in it, they may be more likely to wear the same jumper for their next exam. If they do well in that one, they're even more likely to wear it for the next one, and so on. They have accidentally paired wearing that jumper with getting good results, and have perceived a causal relationship between the two.
One of my favourite examples of superstitious behaviour has to be the American baseball player Wade Boggs. Mr Boggs ate chicken before every single game for 17 years (wow!) because he thought it made him play better. He even wrote a recipe book of all his favourite chicken recipes (called 'Fowl Tips'). It all started when he was a rookie and perceived a correlation between eating chicken and playing well. So he kept on eating it, even though he didn't play well in every game. For 17 years. Now that's dedication to a superstition.
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