5. To Increase Confidence and Improve Performance

A more recent theory behind superstition is that it increases our confidence and improves our performance of tasks. It has been shown that people’s self-efficacy (inner self-confidence) is higher when performing tasks in the presence of their ‘lucky charm’. This means that the people with lucky charms had more confidence within themselves than they would have if they had not had a lucky charm. This heightened confidence is what allows them to perform better in tasks as they work at the problem harder and for longer.

The long and short of this seems to be that superstition is not as useless and ‘spooky’ as many people make it out to be! It can actually help us succeed in our everyday lives and allowed us to evolve into what we are today.

Sources: Psychology Today, How Superstition Improves Performance – Lysann Damisch, Barbara Stoberock and Thomas Mussweiler, Psych Central