Gomes-Ng, StephanieCowie, Sarah2025-04-092025-04-092024-11-22The Conversation. November 22, 2024. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/knowing-superstitions-arent-real-doesnt-stop-us-behaving-superstitiously-why-240541http://hdl.handle.net/10292/19026Former New Zealand prime minister John Key has three white rabbits painted on his helicopter, a nod to his “massively superstitious” habit of repeating “white rabbits” three times at the start of every month. Tennis champion Rafael Nadal performs the same sequence of actions (shirt-tug, hair-tuck, face-wipe) before every serve. Taylor Swift paints “13” on her hand for good luck before a show. Perhaps you, too, are superstitious. Maybe you have a lucky number, avoid black cats, or shudder at the thought of opening an umbrella indoors. Even if you don’t consider yourself superstitious, little things like saying “bless you” after a sneeze, knocking on wood or crossing your fingers are all examples of behaviours with superstitious origins. We humans are particularly susceptible to superstitions. But why are we so quick to develop superstitious behaviours, and do we really believe they can bring good or bad luck? In our new research, we set out to answer this question. We tested whether people could tell the difference between outcomes they caused and outcomes they didn’t cause, and this told us something about the cognitive roots of human superstition.We believe in the free flow of information. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.Other Form of Assessable OutputOpenAccess