3. Cause and Effect

Another reason that many people are superstitious is cause and effect. In some cases, people will carry out an action and associate the action with the outcome of a situation. For example, a person might wear a certain pair of socks when their favourite football team is playing and, if the team wins, they will begin to associate the socks with winning. Likewise, if the team were to lose the socks would be seen as ‘unlucky’. This is due to a process called Operant Conditioning in which behaviour is moulded by its consequences.

B.F Skinner studied this effect with pigeons and found that the pigeons began to display superstitious behaviours, believing that certain actions would cause food to arrive.

Sources: Psychologist World, The Independent, B.F Skinner – Superstition in The Pigeon, Why Do People Believe Weird Things – Shermer, The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour – Kevin R Foster, Hanna Kokko