Likeness and Likelihood in Everyday Thought: Magical Thinking in Judgments About Personality [and Comments and Reply]

Shweder, Richard A.; Casagrande, Joseph B.; Fiske, Donald W.; Greenstone, J. David; Heelas, Paul; Lancy, David F.

doi:10.1086/201974

Cited by 309 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…The aforementioned research challenged the traditional view on magical beliefs as a remnant of the past: This research showed that magical beliefs are widely spread in modern societies, may show up even in rational educated adults, and can perform some important functions in the individual's life, such as the "illusion of control" function (Langer, 1975), or the "heuristic" function (Nemeroff & Rozin, 2000;Shweder, 1977). Nevertheless, magical beliefs in modern people are largely still viewed as an unnecessary addition to the much more important rational beliefs.…”

Section: The "Fundamentality Hypothesis": Magical Beliefs Reconsideredmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

Subbotsky

2014

Sage Open

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ArticleIn this article, attempt is made to show that the belief in magic is a fundamental feature of the human mind (the "fundamentality hypothesis"). Even those who explicitly consider themselves to be completely rational individuals implicitly still harbor a belief in magical powers. It is also argued that magical thinking and magical beliefs are different psychological constructs. Whereas magical thinking might have important implications for learning, the belief in magic affects communication in modern societies. Finally, the areas of practice are outlined in which magical thinking and implicit or explicit magical beliefs can be engaged, such as education, political influence, commerce, military and political terror, and entertainment. The Starting Point: Theoretical Issues and Empirical Evidence of Hidden Magical Beliefs in Modern People Concepts and ProblemsIn the modern view, magical causality comprises events that violate known physical, biological, and psychological principles and conventions. Affecting or creating physical objects directly through the effort of thought, will, wishes, or words (mind-over-matter magic); affecting people's lives and health through prayer, magic spells, and rituals, or by promising reinforcement in the afterlife (communicative magic); and harming or helping people by manipulating the objects that those people were in contact with, such as their hair, clothes, or shadow (contagion magic) are just a few kinds of magical events (Frazer, 1890(Frazer, /1959Lévy-Brühl, 1923/1966Nemeroff & Rozin, 2000;Piaget, 1929Piaget, /1971Subbotsky, 2010a). The contrast between magical causality and physical causality cannot be properly understood without realization that the belief in magical causality goes back for about 30,000 years, to the Upper Paleolithic period, when people populated nature with spiritual agents that could think or wish; that is, they attributed to inanimate things a certain "theory of mind," a concept that is alien to the objects of science. The assumption that physical objects at the receptive end of a causal event have some kind of consciousness is what distinguishes magical causality from physical causality.1 By addressing their pleas to the Gods and spirits, people tried to beg favors (good weather, good health, luck in hunting) from natural objects. In return, people were prepared to obey when the Gods and spirits spoke to them, either directly or indirectly through medicine men, kings, or wizards. From this it follows that from the beginning, magical causality had two dimensions: natural (people's magical communication with nature) and social (people's magical communication with other people; Boyer, 1994;Boyer & Walker, 2000;Tambiah, 1990).Whereas ordinary fantasy involves mental processing of ordinary characters or events (e.g., a child having AbstractThe widely spread view on magical beliefs in modern industrial cultures contends that magical beliefs are a bunch of curious phenomena that persist today as an unnecessary addition to a much more important set of...

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Section: The "Fundamentality Hypothesis": Magical Beliefs Reconsideredmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

Subbotsky

2014

Sage Open

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“…Studies indicate that people are particularly apt to form illusory correlations that are consistent with preexisting expectancies. Individuals commonly perceive the pattern of covariation that is expected in a data set, even when there is no actual association between the variables or events (see, e.g., Hamilton & Rose, 1980;; see also Newcomb, 1929;Shweder, 1977;Shweder & D' Andrade, 1979). For example, L. 1.…”

Section: Covariation Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective hypothesis testing

Sanbonmatsu

Posavac

Kardes

et al. 1998

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

134

121

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A diverse set of biases that have been found to characterize judgment may be similarly mediated by a process ofselective hypothesis testing. Our paper begins with a definition ofselective hypothesis testing and an explanation of how and when this process leads to error. We then review a diverse and often disconnected set of fmdings in the person perception, judgment, cognition, attitudes, attribution, and rule discovery literatures that can be explained by this process, Finally, we examine the question of why the selective testing of hypotheses occurs. Although the psychological literature suggests that selective hypothesis testing contributes to a variety of errors, in many contexts it may be a useful and efficient strategy that leads to satisfactory judgment.

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“…Shweder [42] showed a correlation between initially recorded data, and memories of subsequent data. The history of science offers many examples of this obstinacy, an example of which is the obdurate and exaggerated application of circular motion to the planetary orbits before Kepler introduced ellipses in 1609 in his Astronomia Nova.…”

Section: Confirmation Biasmentioning

confidence: 93%

Cognitive Biases Affect the Acceptance of Tradeoff Studies

Smith

Piatelli-Palmarini

Bahill

2008

Decision Modeling and Behavior in Complex and Uncertain Environments

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Summary. Tradeoff studies involving human subjective calibration and data updating are often distrusted by decision makers. A review of objectivity and subjectivity in decision making confirms that prospect theory is a good model for actual human decision making. Relationships between tradeoff studies and the elements of experiments in judgment and decision making show that tradeoff studies are susceptible to human cognitive biases. Examples of relevant biases are given. Knowledge of these biases should help give decision makers more confidence in tradeoff studies.

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Likeness and Likelihood in Everyday Thought: Magical Thinking in Judgments About Personality [and Comments and Reply]

Cited by 309 publications

References 67 publications

The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

Selective hypothesis testing

Cognitive Biases Affect the Acceptance of Tradeoff Studies

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