Magical thinking

Magical thinking is a term used by historians of religion to describe one kind of non-scientific causal reasoning. Scholars like James George Frazer and Bronislaw K. Malinowski emphasized that magic is more like science than religion, and that societies with magical beliefs often had separate religious beliefs and practices. Like science, magic is concerned with causal relations, but unlike science, magic often attributes correlation to causation. For example, someone may believe a shirt is lucky if he had won a bowling competition in it. He will continue to wear the shirt to bowling competitions, and though he continues to win some and lose some, he will chalk up every win to his lucky shirt.

Overview
According to Frazer, magical thinking depends on two laws: the law of similarity (an effect resembles its cause), and the law of contagion (things which were once in physical contact maintain a connection even after physical contact has been broken). Others have described these two laws as examples of "analogical reasoning" (rather than logical reasoning).

Typically, people use magic to attempt to explain things that science has not yet explained, or to attempt to control things that science cannot. The classic example is of the collapsing roof, described in E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Magic, and Oracles Among the Azande, in which the Azande claimed that a roof fell on a particular person because of a magical spell cast by another person. The Azande did understand a scientific explanation for the collapsing room (that termites had eaten through the supporting posts), but pointed out that this scientific explanation could not explain why the roof happened to collapse at precisely the same moment that the particular man was resting beneath it. Thus, from the point of view of the practitioners, magic explains what scientists would call "coincidences" or "contingency". From the point of view of outside observers, magic is a way of making coincidences meaningful in social terms. Carl Jung coined the word synchronicity for experiences of this type.

Adherents of magical belief systems often do not see their beliefs as being magical. In Asia, many coincidences and contingencies are explained in terms of karma in which a person's actions in a past life affects current events.

A common form of magical thinking is that one's own thoughts can influence events, either beneficially, by creating good luck, or for the worse, as in divine punishment for "bad thoughts". Freud reflected on these phenomena in his essay, "The Uncanny". Some categorize the belief that prayer influences a deity to alter the course of events, as an example of this kind of thinking.

Another form of magical thinking occurs when people believe that words can directly affect the world. This can mean avoiding talking about certain subjects ("speak of the devil and he'll appear"), using euphemisms instead of certain words, or believing that to know the "true name" of something gives one power over it, or that certain chants, prayers or mystical phrases will change things.

Opponents of magical thinking state that it has an adverse effect on a person's faith in himself. Rather than acknowledging his or her own success upon accomplishing a particular task, the person credits a "magical" source as the reason why he or she achieved this particular goal, thus increasing dependence on "magic" rather than on oneself. Critics also note that while people are quick to give credit to magical thinking for their successes, they seldom blame their failures upon it, instead increasing their pessimism by taking credit for their own failures but not their own successes. This is known as confirmation bias, a psychological effect in which people assign more weight to and actively seek out evidence that confirms their claims while ignoring evidence that could discount their claims.

However, some forms of Magical Thought would instead attribute success to the person rather than failure, as in the belief that one's conviction or belief caused the result, and thus success was/is an amalgam of skill and volition.

Magical thinking exists in most people
Noting the great similarity of magical thinking in all types of human societies and eras of recorded history, some cognitive scientists suggest that these ways of thinking are intrinsic to humanity. Many articles in neuroscience have shown that the human brain excels at pattern matching, but that humans do not have a good filter for distinguishing between perceived patterns and actual patterns. Thus, people often are led to see "relationships" between actions that don't actually exist, creating a magical belief.

There is much current scientific research in cognitive science that supports this view. For example, people tend to seek confirmation of their hypotheses, rather than seeking refutation as in the scientific method. This is another example of confirmation bias. People are also reluctant to change their beliefs, even when presented with evidence, and often prefer to believe contradictory things rather than change pre-existing beliefs. This phenomenon is known as cognitive dissonance.

Members of the general public rarely have a deep understanding of statistics. For instance, statistically, it is unavoidable that there will be one day in a year when the most car accidents happen. There will also be a day in the year when the least accidents happen. People, however, may focus on the day the most accidents happen and conclude it must be 'jinxed'. Probability, or chance, is also generally poorly understood. It can be calculated that if 23 people are chosen randomly, the chance that two have their birthday on the same day is about 50%. Yet this "birthday paradox" seems counter-intuitive to most people.

Magical thinking in mental illness
Magical thinking is often intensified in mental illnesses such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or clinical depression. In each it can take a different form peculiar to the particular illness. In OCD, it is often used in ritual fashion to ameliorate the dread and risk of various dangerous possibilities, regardless of whether it has real effects on the object of fear. It contributes more to peace of mind, in that the person now feels they can engage in a risky activity more safely. This is not unlike magical thinking in non-afflicted individuals; lucky garments and activities are common in the sports world. It begins to interfere with life when those activities deemed risky are routine and everyday, such as meeting others, using a public toilet, crossing a busy intersection, or eating. It is important to note, however, that not all people with OCD engage in a strict form of magical thinking, as many are fully conscious that the rationalizations with which they justify their obsessions or compulsions to themselves and others are not 'reasonable' in an ordinary sense of that word.

In depression, examples are generally more of the good luck charm variety, where the magical thinking is used to create confidence. Self-confidence is one of the first casualties in depression, so a surrogate object is invoked to bolster confidence. Additionally, a more aggressive associative magic can be used to curse others, often to vent frustration and give the individual some feeling that they have acted against a perceived aggressor.

Magical thinking in children and adolescents
Magical thinking is especially common in children, which is consistent with the explanation that it represents the uncritical recognition of patterns, since critical thinking develops later than the ability to recognize patterns. In the management and treatment of long-term disorders in children such as diabetes, magical thinking by young patients must be understood and addressed by physicians. In adolescent psychiatry, assisting the adolescent patient in outgrowing magical thinking is sometimes a therapeutic focus.

Magical thinking in alternative medicine
Phillips Stevens writes "Many of today's complementary or alternative systems of healing involve magical beliefs, manifesting ways of thinking based in principles of cosmology and causality that are timeless and absolutely universal. So similar are some of these principles among all human populations that some cognitive scientists have suggested that they are innate to the human species, and this suggestion is being strengthened by current scientific research..." Some of the principles of magical beliefs described above are evident in currently popular belief systems. A common example is homeopathy; the fundamental principle of its founder, Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), similia similibus curentur ("let likes cure likes"), in which it is supposed as an explicit expression of a magical principle, of the sort called sympathetic magic by Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough.

The placebo effect may help to explain the persistent interest in alternative medicine, especially as conventional medicine has largely ignored the role of the patient's mental state and faith in the treatment in affecting the outcome.

Many of the alternative medicine practices such as homeopathy appear to be little more than placebo treatments, yet it is well known in medicine that the placebo effect is associated with real physiological healing. Therefore, to the degree that the placebo effect causes real healing, and to the degree that conventional medicine continues to ignore methods of stimulating the placebo response, alternative medicine may continue to serve a purpose as a vehicle for this type of healing.

However, it bears mention that studies to demonstrate the efficacy of a medical treatment take the placebo effect into account by performing a double blind study. Several well-arranged double-blind studies have been undertaken with respect to alternative therapies based on Faith or Magical Thought, and have given positive results (MacTaggard, Lynne: The Field).

Science and magical claims
Any scientific analysis of magical claims will be dogged by problems related to causality, coincidence and statistical validity.

Personal experience
When looking at the possible effects that magical thinking or actions may have purely on the individual concerned, science needs to be most careful. Issues related to self-confidence and other psychological influences on a person's body, mind or behaviour can be very complex. It is very difficult to entirely discount possibilities that magical thinking is capable of having quite profound and measurable effects on the practitioner him or herself.

Self-fulfilling prophecy, including the placebo effect, is an example of this in practice.

Interpersonal magic
When magical thinking and actions are meant or supposed to act on people other than the practitioner many are more skeptical, but again care must be taken before this is dismissed out of hand. In a social situation where magical beliefs are held in common between a group of individuals, and those around the practitioner are aware, or could become aware, or even could suspect, that magical processes are taking place that are meant to influence them, their luck or the outcome of their endeavours, it is easy to extend the argument above to see how this could, in fact, become so. Again the complexity of a person's view of themselves and the world and the intricacies of the relationship between mind, body and a person's actions are not, and probably never will be mapped in complete detail by science.

When a purely scientific and causal analysis becomes so formidably complex as it does in the case of groups of people living and working together, some would argue that the terminology provided by some magical thinking actually becomes a reasonable alternative, acting as a shorthand or a form of notation for dealing with this complexity.

A different example of this process, from the world of technology, would be to say that while it may be possible to understand the actions of a modern computer by electronic circuit analysis (e.g. current flows in this conductor, causing this transistor to conduct, which causes this one to switch off... etc), this is not nearly as helpful, given the complexity, as it is to think about behaviour in terms of software objects and their high-level interactions, such as we may see on the screen. Of course the difference is that no one involved in computer technology doubts the 'existence' of software.

More closely related, looking to the world of sport for two examples we could cite a player noticing that their opponent is, or is not, wearing a known 'lucky' charm after a break in play. A cricket captain sitting in a certain seat in the pavilion watching his or her batsmen doing well may be thought ill-advised to stand up and sit somewhere else just as crucial balls are about to be bowled.

Magical effects on other objects
It is harder to find any credible scientific basis for magical thinking having some direct effect on things, unless we take into account that if these things are considered important enough for magical thoughts to become relevant in one person's mind, then they, and perhaps others, probably have an ongoing relationship of interaction with these objects. Any process such as those described above that will have an influence on people's attitudes to these objects will also affect their behaviour in relation to them. It is likely that this in turn may influence the use the objects are put to and so on.

People washing what they believe to be a blessed and holy cup will take more care than they do when washing mugs at home. This 'magical protection' will in itself make the chalice less likely to be dropped or smashed by anyone, perhaps over many generations.