Women and Superstitions – Part Four

Welcome to my 1000th blog entry!

You wonder why ‘part four’? Educate yourself, the same way I’ve been doing for the past year as a part of my Masters degree in Education, looking at what very well may be the biggest sample of Australians on paranormal, pseduoscientific AND conspiracy theory beliefs yet!

Part One; Part Two; Part Three and here’s my presentation done at the Australian National Skeptics Conference: ‘On Sex, Smarts and Where The SkepGrrls At: An Investigation into Gender Differences and Belief In Weird Things.’

Why Part Four right now? Well, this serves me RIGHT for asking a favour of a friend! Now I have challenging questions to answer in response! Let’s see how I go with the first one:

“I wonder if we look at collectivist cultures, whether there is less of a difference in the types of beliefs that men and women hold.”

Firstly, I define ‘collectivist culture’ in relation to the way Schwartz (1990) describes collectivism, involving ‘giving priority to in-group goals over personal goals’. We can see this as a significant influence in Asian cultures and within certain indigenous cultures, with notions of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ (Hofstede, 1984). Since some of the very early studies into superstition, collectivist societies have been a rich source of studying superstition and their influences.

By the way, in the photo, I’m holding a lucky Daruma doll. When I was asked to choose a present from my Japanese hosts in Kobe, this was my only preference. This is a factor we have to consider in these cases, which I’ll elaborate upon later.

In fact, the word comes from the Latin: ‘superstitio’ , or ’standing over’. I sometimes wonder if it implies something rather like a parent standing over one’s actions or perhaps an awesome force, guiding one beyond one’s control. Control and gaining control over a situation, is something that is often raised in the matter of superstitious beliefs.

Superstition is defined in one paper by drawing upon the American Heritage Dictionary as ‘beliefs that are inconsistent with the known laws of nature or with what is generally considered rational in a society’ (Kramer & Block, 2007); but is also summed up as ‘a causation between behaviour and outcome when none actually exists’ by Rudski and Edwards (2007) and even more broadly as ‘irrational practices’ (Jahoda, 1970). Many people might recall the work of Skinner (1947), which I’ve written about it earlier in my blog (‘Tis The Season For Superstition); it’s also extensively covered in Vyse’s excellent ‘Believing In Magic‘:

According to Skinner, the accidental pairing of a random act of the pigeon was enough to reinforce these idiosyncratic behaviours… the birds were dancing around the chamber as if their movements caused the operation of the feeder. (Vyse, 1997, p.71)

I guess it could be argued that researchers swing around vaguely and often seem to favour a broad definition (which explains why I was lost for words when I was asked in person for my own definition this year – I think I plumped for ‘confusion about probability and connection of certain behaviours to reality) – because if you go defining it as ‘wrong ideas about reality‘, it can cover not only self-created by an individual (like a dancing pigeon) but also transmitted culturally, or, as some try to argue in another recent paper, genetically inherited (I’m not too convinced about that aspect though – because a pigeon doesn’t use its smarts and discern that a loud noise isn’t necessarily a threat, by taking flight it’s therefore acting superstitiously? By the way, thanks to John Stephen of the great site JSK for bringing that item to my attention!)

At this point, I would like to say that I regret that I didn’t take the opportunity to video a good friend of mine demonstrating (in a New York bar with the NYC Skeptics, after a few beers), the dances of Skinner’s pigeons which form the basis of that particular study… they had both pigeons’ routines down quite well. I wonder if any PhD student has ever considered submitting it to John Bohannon’s request for students, scientists and postdocs to interpret their Ph.D. Thesis using only dance…

Back on topic – here’s a quick snippet from that earlier blog entry to sum up my views on the matter: discriminative stimulus and partial reinforcement – the ‘pigeon’ is doing what works for them, because it worked before or maybe they’ve seen it happen with others who succeeded.

Partial reinforcement with lucky charms or ritualistic behaviour is seen in many scenarios beyond the humble examination room – some of the more popularly known include sporting rituals – a fixed sequence of actions like how you put on your batting gloves (Nomar Garciaparra), or wearing ‘lucky gear’. It even extends to group mentality with people watching the game. If the ‘lucky’ ritual precedes success long enough, failure to execute it will distress and actually impede your performance.

What of Asian cultures then? I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the earlier studies in 1954 by Malinowski (‘The Trobriand Islanders: Primitive Law as Seen by Bronislaw Malinowski‘) drew upon deep-sea fishing practices in New Guinea, involving elaborate ‘magic’ rituals to ensure a good catch! Woo and Kwok (1994) worked on the matter of superstition on the price of products in Hong Kong (price; numbers; colour; number plates are a big one!) – studies of consumer relationship to items based upon superstition seem to be in vogue with quite a few papers, as I’ve blogged before too. They also pointed out that ‘what is considered to be unlucky in Western society is dismissed by the people in Hong Kong’ (Woo & Kwok, 1994). This is also reflected in some studies of individuals of Chinese background, reported to be ‘amongst the most superstitious in the world’ (Simmons & Schindler, 2003; Tsang, 2004 in Kramer & Block, 2007, p.786).

I earlier blogged about a paper published this year, “Belief in ghost month can help prevent drowning deaths: a natural experiment on the effects of cultural beliefs on risky behaviours” by Yang, Huang, Janes, Lin and Lu (2008), which looked at the influence of one of the Asian superstitions of ‘ghost month’, which involves “the traditional belief, many of the wandering ghosts are of those who have drowned or died from traffic accidents and whose bodies were not recovered for funeral. Therefore, water-related activities, especially recreational activities, are the most-avoided activities in ghost months.” I know that studies that investigated correlations between traffic accidents and Friday the 13th were demonstrated to be inconclusive, yet it appears that:

With regard to the possible mechanisms linking belief in ghost month and the reduction in the number of drowning deaths, risk compensation would be a better explanatory mechanism than psychological stress. Unlike short term fear or worry about the unlucky number “4” or Friday the 13th, anxiety about ghost month lasts for 29 or 30 days, and the believer would certainly adapt some kind of control measures.

So, what’s out there? What’s the belief comparison amongst countries in general, let alone collectivist ones? It’s a tough thing to pull together, because it actually depends on the type of beliefs you’re looking at for a start. Comparisons between a study on paranormal beliefs might have in passing a few items on luck, but another paper might not have the same items to compare and contrast. It was one of the factors considered in creating a survey for Australians – can we use an existing scale to help make international comparisons?

Torgler’s ‘Determinants of Superstition‘ (2007) outlines how people from formerly Communist countries show a particularly high degree of superstition, concluding that ’superstition substituted the religious beliefs and activities eradicated during the Communist era’. In fact, one of the most accessible ‘level of superstition in different countries’ tables is published in that paper, breaking them down into three aspects: ‘horoscope’ ‘good luck charms’ and ‘fortune tellers’:

Former Soviet Union and Central Eastern European countries such as Latvia, Bulgaria, Russia and Slovakia and the Czech Republic show the highest superstition values, the only exception being East Germany… For France, Canada, Ireland and Portugal, the values are generally low. Interestingly, wealthy countries such as Switzerland, Germany and Austria show relatively high values. (Torgler, 2007, p.718)

The final findings by Torgler (2007) showed yes, ‘a higher age is correlated with a lower degree of superstition and women are more superstitious than men’ (p.718).

Yet despite this all, we really cannot be sure how much of this is consciously or nonconsciously in people’s behaviour. What if, as I suspect in my own studies about ‘knocking wood’ and ‘crossing fingers’, people do it because it’s a habit or tradition, rather than a superstitious belief that allows one to have certainty in times of uncertainty? Issues of age, education and what other items may have different results are a factor too. Although plenty of people in China made up their own opinions about the ‘luck’ of the mascots of the 2008 Olympics, you can see how that developed quite rapidly without a nod to historical precedence in that case, so we can hardly say that superstitions are naturally grounded in tradition alone!

I guess that’s why I hold the Daruma doll in my photo. I find it appealing, colourful, a reminder of the culture and wonders I saw in Japan and I fondly treasure it. It links me to a history I shared with certain people and part of my own identity as a third-culture kid. The fact that other people, from a collectivist culture like Japan, may use it for wish-granting is entirely up to them. It’s entirely possible that many Japanese people like myself, do likewise. There’s a study in the making…

By the way – happy blogging anniversary to my friend Digital Cuttlefish. It appears I owe you a dollar, for the sake of blog-link love!

Tagged as: Asian beliefs, Australia, culture, culture and superstition, Daruma, differences, fortune, gender, influence on supersition, luck, Paranormal, Phd thesis dance, Psychology, research, Skepticism, Skinner, superstition, women, women and woo