Superstition predicts perception of illusory control

Abstract

Superstitions are common, yet we have little understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that bring them about. This study used a laboratory-based analogue for superstitious beliefs that involved people monitoring the relationship between undertaking an action (pressing a button) and an outcome occurring (a light illuminating). The task was arranged such that there was no objective contingency between pressing the button and the light illuminating - the light was just as likely to illuminate whether the button was pressed or not. Nevertheless, most people rated the causal relationship between the button press and the light illuminating to be moderately positive, demonstrating an illusion of causality. This study found that the magnitude of this illusion was predicted by people's level of endorsement of common superstitious beliefs (measured using a novel Superstitious Beliefs Questionnaire), but was not associated with mood variables or their self-rated locus of control. This observation is consistent with a more general individual difference or bias to overweight conjunctive events over disjunctive events during causal reasoning in those with a propensity for superstitious beliefs.

Causal illusion as a cognitive basis of pseudoscientific beliefs

“…We translated the English SBQ (Griffiths et al, 2018) into Spanish following common translation and back-translation procedures (Sierro, Rossier, Mason, & Mohr, 2016). Thus, a Spanish speaker of advanced English proficiency translated the English version into Spanish.…”

“…Given the passive nature of our task, this result would be indicative of a bias in the interpretation of available contingency information. Finally, in order to replicate the results obtained in previous studies, we also included a measure of superstitious beliefs (Griffiths et al, 2018) in our experimental design.…”

“…The other noteworthy work regarding the relationship between causal illusions and misbeliefs is a recent study by Griffiths, Shehabi, Murphy, and Le Pelley (2018). In their study, Griffiths et al (2018) asked their participants to discover the extent to which pressing a button controlled the illumination of a light.…”

“…The other noteworthy work regarding the relationship between causal illusions and misbeliefs is a recent study by Griffiths, Shehabi, Murphy, and Le Pelley (2018). In their study, Griffiths et al (2018) asked their participants to discover the extent to which pressing a button controlled the illumination of a light. Again, the task involved a null contingency between the button press and the illumination of the light, that is, the light illuminated about 60% of the time independent of the participant pressing or not pressing the button.…”

“…In contrast to the procedure used by Blanco et al (2015), in which volunteers decided whether or not to administer the drug to the patients, our participants were passively presented with the information regarding whether the patients used the infusion and whether they recovered from the headache. In this sense, our task is more similar to the one used by Griffiths et al (2018), who controlled for the rate of cause administration by asking their participants to keep a constant rate of cause administration. However, instead of presenting participants with balanced samples of patients taking and not taking the infusion, we presented them with a majority of patients taking the infusion.…”