Despite what we may have learned as we grew up, some misconceptions often remain with us as adults, says a new study.
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GUILDFORD, U.K.: Superstitious beliefs we hold as adults may be a by-product of the processes we use to make sense of the world around us as children, according to a novel hypothesis.
The research offers an explanation for curious traditions such as crossing fingers or tapping wood, as responses to events that we can't explain in any other way.
The idea is that we are born with brains that have evolved to make sense of a complex world by seeking patterns and trying to understand the mechanisms responsible for them.
Childhood roots
"In doing so - and this is an intuitive process - children sometimes come up with assumptions and misconceptions that later seem to be the basis of adult supernatural beliefs," said Bruce Hood, an experimental psychologist from the University of Bristol in England.
In effect, these beliefs are a by-product of the reasoning behaviour we develop as children. Despite what we may have learned as we grew up, these misconceptions often remain with us as adults, Hood has found.
To test his hypothesis he looked to our responses to transplanted organs. He found that organ transplant recipients are reluctant to accept organs when they are told that the donors were "morally corrupt" in some way; they were portrayed as murderers for example.
"I think this happens because subconsciously we think there is an inner property to the material world that is responsible for the identity of something," Hood said.
"Moral contamination"
The study which shows that atheists can sometimes hold superstitious beliefs as strongly as those with religious convictions, is to be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Culture and Cognition.
"Adults almost have to fight against these intuitions," said Hood. "There's evidence from other labs that when adults are in stressful situations or when they have a degree of compromise to mental function through brain disease, then they revert back to a superstitious way of thinking."
He is planning further studies that will look at our responses to voodoo and magic. Hood speculates that people who hold superstitious beliefs might be more likely to show less activity in the parts of their brains responsible for overriding emotion.
superstitions stay with us...
I subscribe to the most modern superstitions, even though I still believe in Santa, fairies and the inherent honesty of politicians.Science has produced its own superstitions and I love them. I firmly believe some atoms go somewhere else while you are not looking,there are lots of extra dimensions we can't detect in any way and gravity wells make unsightly dents that we can't detect in the fabric of space/time which may or may not exist as a real entity anyway.It's not fair to rubbish the old superstitions as they are just as valid as the new, and in certain situations make more sense. Who can disprove the theory that a subconscious defense mechanism makes us throw salt over our shoulder to kill attacking invisible monster slugs from a quantum dimension? When somebody knocks on wood -a bedroom door, say, it may give you the lucky opportunity to jump out of the window!
Elmohu,
Brisbane
Superstitions
Er, yes, I think you need to keep taking the drugs Elmohu.
superstitions
Elmohu, I think I love you. My demon is the number 13, because my grandmother didn't like it. I know that such fear is nonsense, but the shiver inside is real. Please comment somewhere again.