Magical Thinking

Do You Believe in Magic?

By BENEDICT CAREY The New York Times January 23, 2007

A graduate school application can go sour in as many ways as a blind date. The personal essay might seem too eager, the references too casual. The admissions officer on duty might be nursing a grudge. Or a hangover.

Rachel Riskind of Austin, Tex., nonetheless has a good feeling about her chances for admittance to the University of Michigan’s exclusive graduate program in psychology, and it’s not just a matter of her qualifications.

On a recent afternoon, as she was working on the admissions application, she went out for lunch with co-workers. Walking from the car to the restaurant in a misting rain, she saw a woman stroll by with a Michigan umbrella.

“I felt it was a sign; you almost never see Michigan stuff here,” said Ms. Riskind, 22. “And I guess I think that has given me a kind of confidence. Even if it’s a false confidence, I know that that in itself can help people do well.”

Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors, lab assistants or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge.

These habits have little to do with religious faith, which is much more complex because it involves large questions of morality, community and history. But magical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour of a day.

The appetite for such beliefs appears to be rooted in the circuitry of the brain, and for good reason. The sense of having special powers buoys people in threatening situations, and helps soothe everyday fears and ward off mental distress. In excess, it can lead to compulsive or delusional behavior. This emerging portrait of magical thinking helps explain why people who fashion themselves skeptics cling to odd rituals that seem to make no sense, and how apparently harmless superstition may become disabling.

The brain seems to have networks that are specialized to produce an explicit, magical explanation in some circumstances, said Pascal Boyer, a professor of psychology and anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. In an e-mail message, he said such thinking was “only one domain where a relevant interpretation that connects all the dots, so to speak, is preferred to a rational one.”

Children exhibit a form of magical thinking by about 18 months, when they begin to create imaginary worlds while playing. By age 3, most know the difference between fantasy and reality, though they usually still believe (with adult encouragement) in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. By age 8, and sometimes earlier, they have mostly pruned away these beliefs, and the line between magic and reality is about as clear to them as it is for adults.

It is no coincidence, some social scientists believe, that youngsters begin learning about faith around the time they begin to give up on wishing. “The point at which the culture withdraws support for belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy is about the same time it introduces children to prayer,” said Jacqueline Woolley, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. “The mechanism is already there, kids have already spent time believing that wishing can make things come true, and they’re just losing faith in the efficacy of that.”

If the tendency to think magically were no more than self-defeating superstition, then over the pitiless history of human evolution it should have all but disappeared in intellectually mature adults.

Yet in a series of experiments published last summer, psychologists at Princeton and Harvard showed how easy it was to elicit magical thinking in well-educated young adults. In one instance, the researchers had participants watch a blindfolded person play an arcade basketball game, and visualize success for the player. The game, unknown to the subjects, was rigged: the shooter could see through the blindfold, had practiced extensively and made most of the shots.

On questionnaires, the spectators said later that they had probably had some role in the shooter’s success. A comparison group of participants, who had been instructed to visualize the player lifting dumbbells, was far less likely to claim such credit.

In another experiment, the researchers demonstrated that young men and women instructed on how to use a voodoo doll suspected that they might have put a curse on a study partner who feigned a headache. And they found, similarly, that devoted fans who watched the 2005 Super Bowl felt somewhat responsible for the outcome, whether their team won or lost. Millions in Chicago and Indianapolis are currently trying to channel the winning magic.

“The question is why do people create this illusion of magical power?” said the lead author, Emily Pronin, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. “I think in part it’s because we are constantly exposed to our own thoughts, they are most salient to us” — and thus we are likely to overestimate their connection to outside events.

The brain, moreover, has evolved to make snap judgments about causation, and will leap to conclusions well before logic can be applied. In an experiment presented last fall at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, Ben Parris of the University of Exeter in England presented magnetic resonance imaging scans taken from the brains of people watching magic tricks. In one, the magician performed a simple sleight of hand: he placed a coin in his palm, closed his fingers over it, then opened his hand to reveal that the coin was gone.

Dr. Parris and his colleagues found spikes of activity in regions of the left hemisphere of the brain that usually become engaged when people form hypotheses in uncertain situations.

These activations occur so quickly, other researchers say, that they often link two events based on nothing more than coincidence: “I was just thinking about looking up my high school girlfriend when out of the blue she called me,” or, “The day after I began praying for a quick recovery, she emerged from the coma.”

For people who are generally uncertain of their own abilities, or slow to act because of feelings of inadequacy, this kind of thinking can be an antidote, a needed activator, said Daniel M. Wegner, a professor of psychology at Harvard. (Dr. Wegner was a co-author of the voodoo study, with Kimberly McCarthy of Harvard and Sylvia Rodriguez of Princeton.)

“I deal with students like this all the time and I say, ‘Let’s get you overconfident,’ ” Dr. Wegner said. “This feeling that your thoughts can somehow control things can be a needed feeling” — the polar opposite of the helplessness, he added, that so often accompanies depression.

Magical thinking is most evident precisely when people feel most helpless. Giora Keinan, a professor at Tel Aviv University, sent questionnaires to 174 Israelis after the Iraqi Scud missile attacks of the 1991 gulf war. Those who reported the highest level of stress were also the most likely to endorse magical beliefs, like “I have the feeling that the chances of being hit during a missile attack are greater if a person whose house was attacked is present in the sealed room,” or “To be on the safe side, it is best to step into the sealed room right foot first.”

“It is of interest to note,” Dr. Keinan concluded, “that persons who hold magical beliefs or engage in magical rituals are often aware that their thoughts, actions or both are unreasonable and irrational. Despite this awareness, they are unable to rid themselves of such behavior.”

On athletic fields, at the craps table or out sailing in the open ocean, magical thinking is a way of life. Elaborate, entirely nonsensical rituals are performed with solemn deliberation, complete with theories of magical causation.

“I am hoping I do not change my clothes for the rest of the season, that I really start to stink,” said Tom Livatino, head basketball coach at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago, who wears the same outfit as long as his team is winning. (And it usually does.)

The idea, Mr. Livatino said, is to do as much as possible to recreate the environment that surrounds his team’s good play. He doesn’t change his socks; he doesn’t empty his pockets; and he works the sideline with the sense he has done everything possible to win. “The full commitment,” he explained. “I’ll do anything to give us an edge.”

Only in extreme doses can magical thinking increase the likelihood of mental distress, studies suggest. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder are often nearly paralyzed by the convictions that they must perform elaborate rituals, like hand washing or special prayers, to ward off contamination or disaster. The superstitions, perhaps harmless at the outset, can grow into disabling defense mechanisms.

Those whose magical thoughts can blossom into full-blown delusion and psychosis appear to be a fundamentally different group in their own right, said Mark Lenzenweger, a professor of clinical science, neuroscience and cognitive psychology at Binghamton, part of the State University of New York. “These are people for whom magical thinking is a central part of how they view the world,” not a vague sense of having special powers, he said. “Whereas with most people, if you were to confront them about their magical beliefs, they would back down.”

Reality is the most potent check on runaway magical thoughts, and in the vast majority of people it prevents the beliefs from becoming anything more than comforting — and disposable — private rituals. When something important is at stake, a test or a performance or a relationship, people don’t simply perform their private rituals: they prepare. And if their rituals start getting in the way, they adapt quickly.

Mr. Livatino lives and breathes basketball, but he also recently was engaged to be married.

“I can tell you she doesn’t like the clothes superstition,” he said. “She has made that pretty clear.”

Cock Crow

This morning I came to a startling conclusion: it’s all Tim and Kathleen’s fault. Every bit of it. Well, them and my now-long-dead Nana. I honestly had no interest in birds until they came along.

Nana—my maternal grandmother, Dorothy—arose at dawn and would spend an hour each morning at her kitchen table in front of that huge bay window, sipping impossibly weak coffee, reading her well-worn Bible, and communing with God by listening to and watching the birds that she saw in her vast yard.

Kathleen and Tim were the first true birders I ever met, and though I’ve since met some who are more obsessive, few have as much love for birds as they do. For years I treated their interest in winged fauna as just an interesting quirk, something that added to the richness of their personalities. (One of Tim’s pet names for Kathleen is “Bird.”)

I’m not sure when that interest started rubbing off on me.

Perhaps it was the picnic beside

Sligo Creek when we saw a Pileated Woodpecker hammering away above us. Perhaps it was Vermont’s Black-capped Chickadee-dee-dees with their late winter song, an out-of-tune, whistled fee-bee. Or maybe the Red-winged Blackbirds with their distinctive conk-a-ree!

But I know the deal was sealed for me when I heard my first Barred Owls, one of them in a tree just above me being answered by another across a little valley. I remember thinking the bird must have started out in the Deep South, because it very clearly says, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” (The Barred Owl may also suddenly break into demonic screams punctuated by maniacal laughter. Or it may mutter in churlish tones, “Old fool, old fool, don’t do it, don’t do it.”)

Of late, the birds seem to have made me their own pet project. Mr. Cardinal is a daily visitor to the hibiscus bushes outside my bedroom and office windows. If I don’t stop and pay attention to him as he sings and chirps, he actually taps on the glass to get my attention.

They seem to be commanding my attention in other ways, too. I hear a hawk, and understand instinctively that he’s issuing a threat call, warning others to stay away from his family’s nest, high in a radio tower. Or I’m in conversation with friends at a café, but get distracted by faint bird-chatter; I strain to hear it, and imagine that if I listen carefully enough, I’ll be able to understand their words.

I’ve even begun dreaming about them. Two nights ago it was dozens of small puddle ducks swimming happily in floodwaters, and Snowy Egrets and Scarlet Ibises wading around, oblivious to the natural disaster that had befallen the dreamscape. The next morning, as I was getting in my car, the sky was suddenly filled with a massive flock of tiny black migratory birds.

But as much as I appreciate the birdlife here in Florida, I think the neighborhood rooster that started crowing at 2 a.m. last night, and did not stop crowing until 5, crossed a line with me somewhere. He had a lovely, distinctive voice, to be sure; his crow was unusual, and I appreciated his vocal prowess. Just not all night long, thankyouverymuch.

Around 6:30, other roosters started crowing. Mind you, the area I live in is terminally suburban. There are no farms nearby. Now, one town north, in West Melbourne, there used to be something called the Melbourne Poultry Colony, but the colony has long since disappeared, and is now just the name of a local neighborhood association. So where in the world did all these roosters come from? I counted five distinct voices, coming from five different areas. And they were all calling to one another, announcing the dawn and sounding mighty pleased with themselves. But I have never seen any chickens in the neighborhood, so where they live, exactly, is beyond me.

Right now I’m listening to a Fish Crow outside my window. He’s saying “Uh-oh!” over and over. Maybe he knows I’m planning to have chicken for dinner, and is worried for the neighborhood roosters.

Thoughts? Comments?

The Truth, While Inconvenient, is Heating Up

I live in Florida (or, as one friend calls it, Flori-duh), so the best we can hope for in winter is some slight relief to the endless heat and humidity. Right now we’re running a good ten degrees above normal for this time of year, our poor excuse for “winter.” Not shocking, certainly, though my Internet penpals across the country are reporting similar temperature oddities.

Al Gore’s powerful documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, arrived in our movie theaters a few weeks after it had opened everywhere else.

I guess I should be grateful we got it at all, since many other independent films never see the light of day around here. It’s one of the few films I’ve seen where the audience applauded it heartily. It generated nearly as many parking lot discussions afterward as

Fahrenheit 911 did.

This Saturday, I’m having an Inconvenient Truth viewing party. I’m providing the popcorn and the television (no big-screen monitor, alas!), and friends who want to stop by at 7 will see a film that at once depresses and inspires to action.

And just to give you something to think about in the interim, here’s a great column from Mark Morford:

Nine Uncommon Ways to Keep Warm

Frigid weather got you down? Warm the heart of your cockles with these smokin’ tidbits

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, January 17, 2007

(1) First and foremost, warm yourself in front of a nice Duraflame fire as you hone jokes about global warming. Say things like “Oh my God, so this is what they mean when they say the planet’s weather systems are becoming more volatile and unpredictable,” ha ha wink wink, as we all whistle past the graveyard and remember that 2006 was the warmest year we’ve ever known and New York recently hit a record 72 degrees in January even as Napa Valley drops to 21 degrees and icicles give the next orange crop the kiss of death.

Note how the energy industry is racing to build 150 brutally pollutive new coal plants by 2011, before Congress wakes the hell up and starts enacting stricter environmental laws, and that one of the nastiest coal companies, TXU of Texas, is rushing to complete 11 new pollution-spewing coal plants that will collectively pump out the toxic equivalent of 11 million SUVs. Feel your heart sizzle in pain as you guess which side the Bush administration is on.

Side note: If you are from a red state and don’t really understand the concept of global warming and still think it’s all a big left-wing conspiracy to sell more Prius’ and science books and gay-causing tofu, be sure to make jokes about how it sure doesn’t feel warm, what with it being all, you know, cold and stuff. Remain too mistrustful of “goddamn liberal media” to notice how this joke is only funny to 5-year-olds. From Texas.

(2) Amuse self into cozy warmth with anecdotes about wimpy Californians who think 30 degrees is somehow “cold,” when in fact you grew up in Chicago or Minneapolis or Michigan and/or dated a struggling anorexic cosmo-swilling model named Genevieve from New York and therefore you really know cold.

Laugh derisively at alarmist Bay Area headlines about how Californians need to bring in their wimpy pets and delicate girly plants when the temps drop below 40 lest they all freeze and whimper and die. Feel somehow superior even as your teeth chatter and your toes go numb and your girlfriend refuses to walk around your drafty S.F. apartment wearing only tiny boy shorts and a smile because it’s so freakin’ cold and you refuse to turn up the heat because PG&E charges you 25 dollars a minute.

(3) Read the swell item about how George Bush’s White House often refuses to allow press photographers to take still shots of the prez after important speeches, a relatively unprecedented and obnoxious move designed to control the president’s image that forces media to either use generic White House handout shots of Dubya (over 500 handouts in five years) just standing there, looking wooden and lifeless and bland as milk, or low-quality video screen-grabs.

Note how the last speech was also a historic, soul-bludgeoning announcement that Dubya has decided to defy just about the entire planet and send another 21,500 American kids to Iraq to risk their lives in a desperate Hail Mary move born of an imbecilic warmonger of a commander in chief who harbors delusions of some sort of valiant, epic legacy but whose reign of brutal misprision will actually go down as one of the bleakest, most irresponsible and morally humiliating times in American history. See? Your face is already getting hot with rage. Or rather, it should be.

(4) Consider: dead birds recently shut down part of Austin. Barn owls are dying by the thousands in Idaho. Well over 5,000 birds of varying species have dropped dead in Esperance, western Australia, and scientists still have no idea why. Record numbers of birds are dying from an unusually large viral outbreak in England. Meanwhile, mysterious metal objects fell from the sky in New Jersey, and numerous United Airlines employees who swear they all saw something very, very strange hovering in the night sky over O’Hare airport last fall are told by the government that they’re just being silly. Coincidence? Very likely. Is there such a thing as coincidence? No way. Warm self over open flames of this happy and mysterious contradiction.

(5) Mix three parts rum to two parts vodka to one part cinnamon schnapps. Add a chug of Worcestershire sauce, a splash of Tabasco and a generous sprinkle of red pepper flakes. Carry large tray of this white-trash rocket fuel over to the nearest frat house and hand out shots of skanky death juice to anyone wearing a backward baseball hat and a sports jersey and eyes that scream “future associate VP of a Texas coal company.” Come home, strip naked, pour yourself a large glass of Pinot, climb into a hot bath and warm your soul in the knowledge that you will never become a Republican.

(6) Did you know that the experts who work at the Grand Canyon are not permitted to discuss the geological age of the famed giant hole with visitors because of the Bush administration’s love of small-brained creationism? That they are commanded, in other words, to ignore science, fact and truth so as not to offend twitchy biblical literalists? It’s true. In fact, you can still buy the book The Grand Canyon: A Different View — in which you learn fun facts like how the canyon was created by Noah’s flood, not by geological forces — in the visitor’s bookstore, right now.

(7) Tie this item in with the bit about the new $27 million animatronic museum in Kentucky, where humans and dinosaurs are depicted as co-existing in a religious nutball-approved scenario that actually took place (they claim) a mere 6,000 year ago. Your intellect will be cringing so vigorously you’ll be warm through June.

(8) Smile slyly as you note how gay evangelical preachers abound, anal sex is up, dildo design has improved radically in the past decade, Violet Blue is published on this very site, Dan Savage helped kill Rick Santorum, the orgasmic iPhone will easily play your porn clips and more honest and invaluable sex education is available via blogs and books than ever before, if you know where to look.

In other words, enjoy the heat generated in your groinal region over the fact that, despite furious outcry from the uptight and the perturbed and the sexually shriveled on the religious right, enlightened sexuality still manages to progress and evolve and offend and confound and inspire and titillate and sigh.

(9) Sigh even deeper as you read how David Beckham will be paid $250 million to play soccer for the L.A. Galaxy for five years, which translates into about $2.5 million per game that no one will actually watch and which is the equivalent of what Mel Gibson made in about a week of sales of little pewter nail necklaces from the “Passion of the Christ” swag store and which is also equivalent to what Tom Cruise has paid out (I’m just guessing) to the Church of Scientology lo these past many years so he may become OT-8 (Operating Thetan Level 8), which means he knows the “secret” of the “great battle” in which alien overlord Xenu enslaved the human race 75 million of years ago by using H-bombs and volcanoes and blah blah whatever.

Note the rumor that Becks and wife Posh might indeed be turning to the cult of Scientology per their friend Tom’s “suggestion.” Warm yourself with the knowledge that you don’t really give a flying Hubbard’s E-meter about any of this, except to note how the United States is actually spending about $250 million per day in Iraq and that David Beckham sure has great hair and that when you combine all these notions your id whipsaws and your perspective heats up like a polar ice cap and you can only realize that this life is one very convoluted, gorgeous, disturbing circus sideshow indeed.

And hey, if that chronic fact doesn’t keep you warm at night, nothing will.

Thoughts? Comments?