Imagine a small box in a laboratory. Inside, a hungry pigeon paces randomly. Every so often, a mechanism releases a small amount of food at regular intervals, regardless of the pigeon’s behavior.
Over time, each pigeon began to exhibit what could be described as a “superstitious” response. That is, they developed their own specific behavior, such as flapping their wings. It seemed they believed that this behavior (flapping) would cause food to appear.
It was as if they were convinced there was a connection between their actions and the reward. As the days went by, some developed veritable rituals. They would always turn in the same direction, perform repetitive movements, or adopt strange postures, as if they were carrying out a carefully rehearsed ceremony.
This experiment, conducted in 1948 by Skinner, showed that the pigeons had constructed an idiosyncratic explanation for something that was actually a matter of chance. You might think the pigeons were foolish, but the truth is, we often behave the same way. We do it every time we rely on a lucky charm or when we believe in the law of attraction and think that simply wanting something strongly enough will make it materialize. Magical thinking, superstitions, and the illusion of control take many forms.
The brain hates chance
The problem is that our brains hate randomness and uncertainty. Designed to identify patterns, when they don’t exist, they invent them. That’s why certain beliefs are so appealing, even though they lack logic and supporting evidence.
From a purely evolutionary and anthropological perspective, it makes sense. For thousands of years, identifying the relationships between events increased our chances of survival. At the same time, not knowing how the world worked drove us to develop magical explanations to reduce uncertainty and to create rituals that provided us with a sense of security.
We don’t live in caves anymore, but those basic mechanisms still exist. That’s why we believe a t-shirt will bring us luck, a routine can guarantee success, an energy stone will improve our relationships, or writing a wish list will rearrange the stars to grant us that long-awaited promotion.
Ultimately, these illusions and false beliefs stem from our need to feel in control. This makes us feel calmer and gives the world a sense of logical order. However, we often take things too far. And when we start behaving like Skinner’s pigeons, making spurious correlations that we blindly believe, we become detached from reality and begin to behave maladaptively.
The industry that turned superstition into a business
Superstitions have always existed. It’s just that the old ones were simple: you crossed your fingers, touched wood, or avoided walking under a ladder.
Modern superstitions are far more sophisticated and sometimes come in the form of podcasts, online courses, and emotional marketing campaigns. We no longer talk about luck (that word has practically become obsolete), but about vibrations. We don’t talk about magical thinking, but about manifesting, and we don’t even mention superstitions, but rather an abundance mindset.
Although the packaging has changed, the psychological mechanism remains exactly the same as the one our ancestors and the pigeons used. The promise is also the same: “If you do such and such, you will get what you want.”
The mantras are numerous: visualize wealth, think positively, emit the right frequency… And when something good happens, you can attribute it to that ritual. If it fails, they’ll tell you that you didn’t visualize intensely enough. It’s an extraordinarily convenient system because it can never be refuted. If it works, you were right. And if it doesn’t work, it’s your fault. A perfect racket.
And absolutely all of us can fall into that trap, even the most intelligent people, because sometimes we want (or need) to believe that there is a formula, a shortcut, a secret code or some kind of hidden mechanism to make everything easier and more controllable.
Because accepting reality means admitting that many important things depend on chance, that effort increases the odds of success but doesn’t guarantee it, and that bad things happen to good people too, because life doesn’t always deal the cards fairly. And that produces a certain vertigo that terrifies us.
How can we protect ourselves from these false illusions?
The good news is that we can develop “psychological antibodies” by implementing certain filters. The first involves asking ourselves an uncomfortable question: How do I know this works? Don’t ask yourself how it makes you feel, how many people repeat it, or how many testimonials appear on social media, but rather what evidence actually exists.
Modern superstitions survive and spread because we rarely question them. They thrive on anecdotes, coincidences, and personal stories, but become extremely fragile when examined critically.
It’s also wise to be wary of any message that promises a simple cause-and-effect relationship in complex matters. Life rarely works that way. Getting a job, building a stable relationship, launching a business, or improving your health depend on multiple variables. When someone claims they can summarize it in a formula or action, they’re probably selling a fantasy rather than an explanation.
Another useful exercise is to keep in mind that coincidence rhymes with consequence, but they are not the same. Just because two events happen together doesn’t necessarily mean one caused the other. If you wear a lucky bracelet the day you get a promotion or pass a test, that doesn’t make the bracelet responsible for your success.
Finally, it’s worth remembering a simple idea: feeling in control is not the same as having control. Repeating affirmations can make us feel more secure, and carrying a lucky charm can reassure us, but none of that alters objective reality. What does change the results are the decisions we make, our attitudes, and the habits we build day by day.
Therefore, we should remember that we all carry within us a little dove that seeks simple explanations for a complex world and often makes spurious correlations just to gain a little peace of mind. The difference lies in whether we let that dove steer our lives or whether we learn to live with uncertainty without inventing magical relationships where only chance, effort, and reality exist.
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