Why do superstitions exist?

We all know someone who, to a greater or lesser extent, gets carried away by superstitions. But what is the explanation?

We will try to analyze these mental processes to understand why some people act on superstitious beliefsespecially in certain situations. We will also explore the historical origin of some of the most famous superstitions.

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Why superstitions exist: psychological and social causes

In order to address the question of why superstitions exist, we first need to focus on this concept to fully understand what it means and what its implications are. A superstition is an irrational belief about the explanation of a certain phenomenon.

That is to say, superstition implies believing that there is a certain supernatural condition about an object or a circumstance, which can affect our own destiny, either positively or negatively. Sometimes there are small rituals to try to get rid of that bad luck that an act can imply on the person's life, always according to these irrational beliefs.

When we try to understand why superstitions exist, we must know that this phenomenon has accompanied humanity since ancient times. In fact, for the Romans they were commonplace. The fortune tellers themselves were known by the word superstitiosus.

In Rome, a meaning was usually assigned to different natural elements, attributing to them the condition of omen of certain phenomena, which could be good or bad fortune. That is to say, superstitions were created, irrational beliefs, without scientific foundation, to facts by themselves neutral, such as the sighting of a certain animal or an element.

In this sense, they believed that bees brought messages from the gods and therefore gave them good luck. The flight of the eagle, heralded storms with lightning. They also thought that simply listening to the ringing of the bells acted as an analgesic for a woman in labor. They even thought that smelling cyclamen was helpful in stopping alopecia.

These examples give us some clues as to why superstitions exist, although we will address this issue in depth in the next point.

The feeling of control

The underlying question of why superstitions exist is none other than what is their usefulness. And the answer is actually simple: superstitions They give us a sense of control over situations in which we don't really have it.. That is, we assume cause and effect relationships without any scientific basis, due to the fact that this way we reduce uncertainty.

The problem is evident, and it is that this reduction in uncertainty is nothing more than a chimera, since in reality superstition, as we have already seen, is a simple irrational belief. Therefore, in reality, that cause and effect relationship does not exist, but the important thing is that by believing that it exists, and that we have control over it, we feel better.

We already realize that this is a very specific psychological phenomenon. If we think about why superstitions exist, on a psychological level, we must review the works of B.F. Skinner on operant conditioning. For this author, superstitions originate through this mechanism, through a casual process.

Skinner, through his experiments with pigeons, discovered that these animals performed behaviors random, and when these were presented just before receiving the food, they established this connection and the they repeated in the future, because they "thought" that it was that behavior that had caused the food to appear.

These behaviors ranged from walking through certain areas to bowing their heads or going around in circles.

Another way of considering why superstitions exist from psychology, but with a more modern vision of the matter, is through the concept of cognitive distortion. In this sense, superstitious people would be using prejudices to face a certain situation.

Nor should we forget the relationship between superstition and religion. Many definitions separate both concepts, since they attribute pejorative characteristics to superstition and try to move this concept away from religious terrain. However, from the point of view of objectivity, we cannot forget that many rites of different religions establish reasoning of irrational cause and effect.

In these cases, the explanation before them would be their own faith in the belief of a superior reality that transcends human understanding. But the reality is that a series of behaviors or thoughts are established aimed at attributing control over situations of uncertainty, just as superstitions do.

For this reason, and although it is a controversial issue, we must not ignore the relationship that the different religions, majority or no, they have had throughout history with the question at hand, which is none other than why there are superstitions.

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Practical examples

We have faced the question of why superstitions exist in a general way. Now we will try to review the origin of some superstitions in particular. There are many of them, so we are going to focus on some of the most popular.

1. come across a black cat

A situation as simple as coming across a black cat is capable of generating tremendous anxiety for some people, who really believe that this is a fatal omen and try to divert their path so as not to cross the imaginary line that the animal has traveled. But where is the origin of this strange belief?

In other words, what we want is to know why superstitions exist, and more specifically the one referring to meeting a cat with black fur. To do this, we must go back to nothing less than the Middle Ages. At this time, stray cats used to receive food from some residents of the towns, especially old women.

It was then that the belief that there were hidden witches among people became popular, and a relationship was established between them and cats, especially black ones, thinking that witches had the power to transform into them to camouflage themselves, or even that the devil himself was hiding behind that animal figure.

Therefore, people began to think that meeting a black cat was something very dangerous, because it could actually be an evil being. This is how the superstition was established that coming across a black cat is a sign of bad luck.

2. Spilling salt

To continue investigating why superstitions exist, we will now focus on another of the most popular. It is the one that says that spilling salt is an omen of bad fortune. The origin is not entirely clear, but some versions point to a very simple explanation.

Although nowadays salt is a very easy object to find, and can be obtained very cheaply, the truth is that in ancient times it was much more valuable. So much so that payment for certain jobs was made by delivering a quantity of salt. In fact, to this day we have somehow preserved that custom, since the root of the word salary comes precisely from salt.

For this reason, spilling something as valuable as salt was considered an act of misfortune, as it represented the waste of something that had cost a lot of effort to achieve. But this is only one of the explanations about it.

Another of the answers to why superstitions exist, thinking now about the bad luck that would hypothetically be triggered by throwing salt on the table, has to do precisely with christian religion. And it is that some people believe that Judas himself, who betrayed Jesus Christ after the last supper, spilled this element on the table that night.

What is the reason for thinking such a thing? That this is how it seems to be represented in the painting that Leonardo Da Vinci painted to represent this moment.

3. Touch wood

To conclude with another example of why superstitions exist, we will now review the popular expression of knocking on wood. On many occasions, when a person finds himself in a situation that he expects to end in a favorable for her, he utters this expression and then tries to actually touch a wooden object nearby.

The objective of this superstitious action is, somehow, to attract good luck (in a totally irrational way, let's not forget). Likewise, the origin does not seem clear, although some authors point out that the origin is none other than to grab the wooden crucifix that used to be worn around the neck in the past in Christian societies, to take an oath in the name of God.

Others, on the other hand, believe that it is an even older custom, from the first European settlers, who tried to scare away evil spiritual presences through rites that sometimes consisted of hitting tree trunks wood.

Bibliographic references:

• Michelett, J. (2004). The Witch: A Study of Superstitions in the Middle Ages. Akal Editions.
• Miguel, J.M. de, Martin, N., Marquez, M.O. (2012). Relations between the desire for control and superstition. Psychology Studies. Taylor &Francis.
• Vyse, S.A. (2013). Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition-updated edition. Oxford University Press.