Dave’s Football Blog

Remember a few months ago when I actually apologized for going to Champps to watch the Steelers-Raiders game? Before that game, the Steelers were winless when I went to Champps to watch them play, and I thought that would change that particular week. Instead, Ben Roethlisberger threw 4 interceptions, and the Steelers lost.

Of course, the fact that I was at Champps to watch that game had nothing to do with the outcome — not nearly as much as the fact that Big Ben suffered a concussion the previous Sunday in Atlanta. At the time, though, I actually had the nerve to think that my presence in a particular bar somehow impacted the outcome of this game. This is an example of magical thinking — the idea that wishing good or harm on a person will actually impact that person in the way you intend. For example, if you believe that eating chicken every day will make you the best hitter in baseball or that Barbaro would be dead right now if it weren’t for the affirmations of Dee Mirich, that’s magical thinking.

Just in time for the Super Bowl, the Old Gray Lady has a big story about the psychology of magical thinking and why we still use it against all reason. It’s interesting stuff, and it might convince you that putting that kielbasa on your head every time the Bears are in the red zone is just general stupidity…

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.

(Spotted on Boing Boing.)

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