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Superstitions On The Rise

SoundDust

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Thanks, perhaps, to falling stock markets and turmoil in the Middle East, Britons have become even more superstitious than usual, according to a report published today.

The Scots top the UK superstition league table, followed by the English, Welsh and Northern Irish. Women are more superstitious than men, and young people are more likely to touch wood, carry a talisman, or walk around a ladder than the old, according to the survey conducted by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at Hertfordshire University.

To mark national science week - which has just ended - Dr Wiseman launched an internet survey of national superstition, and found it "surprisingly high, even among those with a scientific background".
 
Top 14 superstitions

1 Touch wood

2 Cross fingers

3 Don't walk under ladders

4 Don't smash a mirror

5 Carry a charm

6 Black cat across your path

7 Don't put shoes on table

8 Salute a single magpie

9 Throw spilt salt over your left shoulder

10 Don't open an umbrella indoors

11 Don't walk on cracks in the pavement

12 Hang a horseshoe over your door

14 Number 13 is bad luck


This list can't be in any way representative of the most widely
practised superstitions. I have seen little evidence of people hopping along our British streets (see #11 on list).
 
The only one I have a problem with is #3. I don't consider myself a superstitous person, and don't care about black cats, etc. But I won't walk under a ladder for fear a bucket of paint (or worse) will fall on my head. Maybe a million-to-one, but I still feel it's grounded in some kind of reason, as opposed to throwing salt over my shoulder. Rationalizingly yours-lopaka:)
 
Women are more superstitious than men
Why do they always stick some vacuous comment about women in these "scientific" studies. "Ha ha! Women eh - aren't they silly!" :mad:
 
Because a lot of research suffers from gender bias and tends to be carried out and reported in an adrocentric way, exagerating the differences between men and women - it's called beta bias. Now I for one, don't believe in superstitions at all, but I wasn't sampled.
 
Well, as a sometime soldier, aviator and damned stupid person, I'm extremely superstitious; doesn't hurt to hedge your bets.
I have a bullet with my name engraved on it (Ha. Ha.) and a broken compass. Those are my lucky things.
 

Here's the middle portion of the article (the results; published after the intro in post #1 and the superstition list reproduced in post #2 ...

... Lucky people were much less superstitious and tended to take constructive action to improve their lives. Conversely, superstitious people tended to regard themselves as among the less lucky, worried about life, had a strong need for control, and could not tolerate ambiguity.

"There has been a significant increase in superstition over the last month, possibly as a result of current economic and political uncertainties," Dr Wiseman said. "This is especially true of people with a high need for control and a low tolerance of ambiguity."

Only one in 10 of the sample claimed to be not at all superstitious. But three out of four people in Britain feel the need to touch wood, and 65% cross their fingers. But the survey also revealed some unexpected beliefs. One respondent could not stay in the bathroom once a toilet had been flushed; another felt compelled to draw a smiley face in a pint of Guinness, while a third always had to leave the house by the same door used to enter it.

There was no evidence that superstitions ever worked, even by giving people more self-confidence. "Our work suggests the opposite," Dr Wiseman said. "We asked people to carry lucky charms for a week. They didn't feel any luckier or more satisfied with their lives at the end of that week than when they started. Part of it is that the problem of going into exams with a lucky charm is that it may mean that you trust the charm, rather than doing some extra revision." ...
 
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