When Hope Becomes Belief

On a recent morning while waiting for a train, I witnessed a rather humorous scene. A man on the platform was smoking a cigarette and making a call on his cellphone. He was using a headset connected to the phone by a long wire, and as he listened to the person on the other end of the call, he nodded his head vigorously making the cigarette in his mouth flop up and down like a diving board. When it was his turn to talk, he gestured dramatically, emphasizing each point with a slash of his hands. Of course, none of this drama was visible to whomever the man was talking to, but it seemed not to matter to him. I have rarely seen such wild gesturing in the context of a live conversation—much less in someone making a phone call.

Of course the man could not have believed his gestures had any effect on the person at the other end of the phone, but his behavior can be explained without reference to his beliefs. Undoubtedly my fellow traveler acquired his gestural style over a long history of face-to-face conversations. His movements were rewarded by the reactions of various listeners and, over time, had probably come to represent a small piece of his unique personality. Bobbing his head and cutting the air with his arms during the heat of conversation was such a strong impulse that it spilled over into other situations. Something psychologists call generalization. All of this motion might seem like a lot of effort for nothing, but his enthusiastic style of conversation was probably such a fixed habit that it would require great effort to restrain himself. Even the public nature of the train platform was insufficient to inhibit his behavior.

Sometimes generalization has an even greater effect, and it is difficult to say the action in question is just a habit. Red Sox fans of a certain age remember Carlton Fisk’s famous walk-off home run in the six game of the 1975 World Series. The score was tied in the twelfth inning, and Fisk hit a long drive near the foul line in left field. As the ball travelled an arcing path up over the left field wall, Fisk jumped up and down making swatting gestures from left to right in an effort to keep the ball in fair territory. The hit stayed in bounds and became one of the greatest home runs of all time, but Fisk’s swatting of the air could not possibly have had an effect. His behavior generalized from contexts in which swatting might work (e.g., being attacked by a swarm of hornets) to one where it could not possibly have worked, and unlike the case of the man on the train platform, whose gestures were part of a real conversation, watching the arc of a fly ball has very little in common with swatting hornets. In his famous article “‘Superstition’ in the Pigeon,” B. F. Skinner described a similar phenomenon in bowlers who make various gestures after releasing the ball in an effort to guide it towards a collision with the pins at the other end of the alley. If asked, I suspect neither Fisk nor the bowler would admit to believing in magic. They would probably say they didn’t really think their actions would change the course of the speeding ball, but they made their efforts as an expression of hope, “just in case.”

There are some very interesting psychological questions in these examples. What are the circumstances in which we believe our actions have power over the physical world? When are these beliefs true, and when are they mere illusion? Does what we believe about our actions always matter or—like the phone caller, Carlton Fisk, and the hopeful bowler—do we sometimes simply act without thinking? Not really considering whether our actions could possibly have an effect. What is the role of emotion in magical behavior? Was Carleton Fisk’s swatting just a way of coping with the anxiety he felt while waiting to see if the ball would land in fair territory? Was it merely an expression of hope? Is there any harm in believing in magic?

These and related questions will be the subject of my blog posts in this space. Today, we live in a highly technological, science-based world, and yet superstition, magical thinking, and paranormal belief abound. In the coming weeks and months, I will explore these topics and consider both the causes and social implications of magical behavior and belief. If you have particular topics you would like me to cover, leave suggestions in the comments or contact me directly through Psychology Today or Twitter at @stuartvyse.