Superstitions Have Evolutionary Basis
This model tests the robustness of superstitions, and how they might persist in the face of contradictory evidence. The more times you carry a lucky charm the more likely you will be convinced it doesn’t work, surprisingly only if you originally believed it would. If you doubted it in the first place, a large number of trials might present you with enough positive experiences so that you might very well begin to believe.
“Their work is helpful,” said Marc Mangel, an applied mathematics and statistics professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It shows how these adaptive learning mechanisms can be leading us to places we shouldn’t go.”
But Killeen thinks something is left out of their model, elegant as he thinks it is.
“Sometimes simpler answers suffice; for beasts like us who are never quite sure that we are well enough informed, taking that multivitamin and knocking wood puts the semblance of control back in our hands, and that feels good,” Killeen said.