Harvard Evolutionary Biologist Asks: Are There Hidden Benefits to Superstitions?

Superstitions have long been a part of human culture. From the extreme ones, like never crossing a black cat, shattering a mirror, or walking under a ladder, to the minor ones, like my necessity to wear my special beanie when I need help writing. There are superstitions for everything. But could superstition be linked to Charles Darwin’s famous theory of natural selection? Could there be a hidden benefit to superstition?

Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University and colleague Hanna Kokko, of the University of Helsinki, Finland, set out to find whether superstition ever pays off.

Now, you might be hard pressed to find potential benefits from not walking underneath a ladder (unless someone is really unlucky and has often found a paint tin upended on them), but there are other superstitions. Foster uses the prehistoric disposition to “get out of dodge” when they heard rustling grass. Sure, most of the time it was probably the wind, but, "if a group of lions is coming there’s a huge benefit to not being around," Foster says.

The basic math behind Foster and Kokko’s work came down to adding up the cost of being right over the cost of being wrong. Add up the chances, for example, of a real lion coming out of the grass, or it just being the wind, and Foster believes you can predict superstitious beliefs.

However modern day superstitions have less to do with natural selection. "Once you get to things like avoiding ladders and cats crossing the road, it's clear that culture and modern life have had an influence on many of these things," says Foster. "My guess would be that in modern life, the general tendency to believe in things where we don't have scientific evidence is less beneficial than it used to be.”

So though I’m unlikely to find that by wearing this beanie (I’m having a tough night) my offspring will develop less writers block than their dad, I’ll probably head for the hills if the grass around me starts rustling. (Actually, I probably won’t, I’ll probably end up mowing it. But the point stands.)

Posted by Josh Hill.

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Comments

[EvilCosmicMonkey from Knoxville]

Superstitions are mainly quaint cultural artifacts carried over from humanity's past. wearing a cross / holy medal, avoiding black cats, Avoiding the number 13, whistling in a graveyard, & suchlike. I see very little Darwinian about them.

I clutched a St. Christopher medal & a lucky tektite fragment while writing this. ;-}

[isreal 145]

is it that the genetic combination the one dorwin's proof is wrong? for i still dont get what this new article isopt to. can you please put me thrugh on this latest discovery thanks
Isreal 145 from Nigeruia.

[Saavik]

Technically, if there's a sensible reason for doing something, then it isn't really a superstition, right? If prehistoric peoples fled whenever they heard rustling grass because there MIGHT be a lion, that didn't make them superstitious; any more than my wearing a seatbelt because I MIGHT crash my car makes me superstitious.

[paransan]

Saavik is on the right track, I feel.
Superstitions are oft confused with faith nowadays, and many a cancer survivour will attest to the power of "belief". More importantly, the consensus among health workers supports the survival of those who believe in the invisible to acomplish the "impossible". Nothing succeeds like success, and just because it cannot be measured or defined by present methods does not preclude its existence.

[EvilCosmicMonkey from Knoxville]

The power of belief / faith in an individual life can have an emotional & physical benefit for one in some circumstances. Superstition isn't faith, except in a very narrow ( ? ) sense.
One could perform a ceremony to hex or curse an opponent in business, romance, on the battlefield, or to prevent disease or attract wealth. Many cultures still believe thus.

Someone explain to me how evolution & superstition connect again, please ?