The following is an excerpt from The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy and Sane, by Matthew Hutson (Hudson Street Press, 2012).

There are certain laws of nature everyone accepts. The surest way to bring about rain on an overcast day is to leave your umbrella at home. Is your line at the grocery store moving too slowly? Switch lines. That will definitely speed it up (minus you). And if you’ve hit a series of green traffic lights that just might get you to the post office before it closes, comment on your string of success. Ah, there’s the red.

Do people really believe such actions can change their fortunes?

In recent years Jane Risen of the University of Chicago and Thomas Gilovich of Cornell have shed more light than anyone on the phenomenon of tempting fate. When they asked people to answer rationally whether exchanging a lottery ticket for another ticket would increase the chances of their old ticket winning, 90 percent said no. But when asked to answer the same question using their gut, 46 percent said yes. (Subjects thought selling the ticket to an enemy gave it the best chance of winning.) In another experiment, people said wearing a Stanford shirt after applying to the school would reduce the probability of admission.

Risen and Gilovich argue that belief in tempting fate rests, in part, on a three-step mental process. First, some behaviors make outcomes seem especially bad because they highlight the contrast between what happened and what almost happened. Being stuck in a slow grocery line feels worse if you switched into that line than if you were always in that line, because you were just in a faster line. Second, negative scenarios engage our imagination more than positive ones (as they should: a fish can feed a man for a day, but a blowfish can kill him for a lifetime). So if you’re thinking about switching lines, the thought of switching to a line that then slows down is worse than the thought of staying in a slow line, and therefore it looms larger in your head. Finally, the more you think about something, the more likely it seems.

To summarize the three-step process, negative outcomes would feel worse after tempting fate, which makes their possibility especially attention-grabbing, and thus more likely-seeming. Sounds like a rickety series of cognitive contraptions requiring a lot of effort to execute, but it’s completely automatic. In fact, Risen and Gilovich found that asking subjects to count backward by threes from 564—a cognition-hogging task—made them more likely to believe showing up to class without doing the reading would get them called on.

Tempting fate usually refers to one of two things: taking unnecessary risks or displaying hubris. Attempting to cheat death or showing presumption about success will inevitably invite rebuke. As a proverb says, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.”

During the 2001 anthrax scare, a reporter for the Washington Post called up Scott Ian, a guitarist for the thrash-metal band Anthrax. “People keep coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if you got anthrax?’ ” he told the reporter. “I’m like, ‘Oh, that’d be hilarious.’ ” To be on the safe side, he filled a prescription for the antibiotic Cipro. “I will not die an ironic death,” he said.

“The universe seems interested not only in punishing certain behaviors but in punishing them a certain, ironic way,” Risen and Gilovich have written. We predict that negative outcomes will share some association with their antecedent—they’ll fit the crime. Therefore, wearing a Stanford T-shirt will have no effect on the weather, and carrying an umbrella will have no effect on school admissions. And naming your act Anthrax offers no reason to stock up on, say, Rogaine. (Naming your thrash-metal band Male Pattern Baldness, on the other hand...)

5 Comments

1. 1. Rev.Corvette 05:12 PM 5/4/12

   Superstition(including religion)is the greatest source of human misery, outside of the green eyed monsters Greed & Jealousy. I say to act with common sense, according to the moment, you never know if the guy in front of you in line at the store has a defective debit card. But you can see how full their shopping cart is and if they seem to be acting like an idiot.

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2. 2. Jerzy v. 3.0. 11:21 AM 5/5/12

   Surprisingly, superstition often turns rational when dealing with uncertainity.
   
   One reason is that the cost of mistake is disproportionally larger than the cost of superstition. Getting a pneumonia is much costlier than carrying an unnecessary umbrella. Second reason is that superficially unconnected visible events may have common origin. Cat crossing the road doesn't cause disaster. But it may signal that this is little used road, so a driver may encounter children playing on the road or a pothole.
   
   Indeed, it is possible to view superstition as yet another human behavior which evolved because it conferred survival advantages to its carrier.
   

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3. 3. silvrhairdevil 01:53 PM 5/5/12

   I've always thought of the as The Law of Irony.
   
   Notice, though, that poker players seem to be exempt. They call loudly and insistently for the card they need.

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4. 4. Raghuvanshi1 12:38 AM 5/8/12

   These are all credulous blind belief in our fate.This is a weakness of mankind.We are unpredictable uncertain world.Anything happen any time. Most horrible fear haunting to us constantly unexpected death.To avoid this terrible fear man can take shelter in any kind of irrational blind belief. We all are victims of our blind fate. There is most appropriated story in Hindu epic Mahabharata.Once semi God Yaksha asked to Dharma"Witch is most wonderful thing in the world?" Dharma replied "Thousands of men dying around him till man think himself immortal"

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5. 5. Rev.Corvette in reply to Raghuvanshi1 04:08 AM 5/8/12

   Namiste, Raghuvashi1
   I agree with you on the human tendency to seek shelter in any kind of irrational blind belief. I'll admit it took a ponder-some stretch for me to comprehend how the story of what "Dharma" replied when asked what would be the most wonderful thing in the world...but of course, it is a credulous blind belief in our fate.

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