How many times a day do you either cross your fingers, knock on wood, or worry that your good luck will turn on you? These are common good luck superstition that people do nowadays. As a writer of this blog, I am also one of that, sometimes I do that especially when needed. It is true that we also readily believe in our own psychic powers. You’re thinking of a friend when all of a sudden your phone beeps to
announce a new text from that very person. Proof positive that your
thoughts caused your friend to contact you at that very moment. This are some examples that our magical thinking powers happen.
Magical Thinking is related to superstition. It is primarily because like superstition, in magical thinking powers we also believe. We consider our self that anything will possible to happen if we want. According to psychology writer Matthew Hutso,there are 7 laws of magical thinking.
These are the following:
1. Objects carry essences. According to this first rule, we attribute special properties to items
that belong or once belonged to someone we love, is famous, or has a
particular quality we admire. Perhaps you’ve got a baseball signed by
your favorite player or a pen that a rock star used to autograph your
concert ticket. The fact of the matter is that the objects are just those, objects, and
despite their connection with special people in our lives, they have no
inherent ability to transmit those people’s powers to us.
2. Symbols have power. Humans have a remarkable tendency to impute meaning not only to objects
but to abstract entities. We imbue these symbols with the ability to
affect actual events in our lives. According to the principle known as
the “law of similarity,” we equate a symbol with the thing it stands
for.We might also attribute qualities to an object on the basis of the word
used to label it or to a person on what that person is named. Hutson
points out that the popularity of the name Britney, for example, peaked after the release of her first album and has dropped ever since.
3. Actions have distant consequences. In our constant search to control the outcomes of
events in our seemingly unpredictable lives, we build up our own
personal library of favorite superstitious rituals or thoughts. We’re particularly likely to engage in superstitious thinking when the chances of something bad happening are high. It’s possible that this belief in luck causes people to perform better
because their inner self-confidence is boosted, even if only for bogus
reasons.
4. The mind knows no bounds. The more often this happens, the more likely we are to be convinced of our mind’s special powers. One reason we fall for this mental trap is the illusory correlation, but a second is that we’re poor statisticians. We count the hits but not the misses. Another manifestation of this rule is our tendency to believe that if we think positive thoughts about a person in trouble, our thoughts can truly help that person, even if that person is thousands of miles physically removed from us.
5. The soul lives on. On a more serious note, Hutson takes on belief in the afterlife from as much a philosophical as an empirical perspective. Even if you’re not into Cartesian dualism (the idea that the mind and body are two separate entities), you might find interesting the notion that even by the age of 3, children realize that an imagined cookie can’t be eaten. Even feeling identification with your favorite brand name product may be a way of protecting yourself from confronting your mortality.
6. The world is alive. Adults are supposed to grow out of the stage that Piaget called “preoperational” thinking- which is basically the logic of the child between the ages of about 4 and 7. However, as Hutson shows, we share the young child’s belief in animism, which is one key feature of preoperational thought. In other words, we attribute human-like qualities to everything from our pets to our iPhones. This is because we over-apply what’s known as the theory of mind, which is the process we use to understand and predict what other people are going to do.
7. Everything happens for a reason. The most insidious form of magical thinking is our tendency to believe that there is a purpose or destiny that guides what happens to us. It’s the thoughts that go through your head when you, for example, miss a bus that would have gotten you to a job interview on time but because you missed it, you didn’t get the job, but you did meet a person on the bus who you ended up going out with, who now has become your lifelong partner, and you then moved to a new home, and then had two children who never would existed if you hadn’t missed that bus. To do so gives us a sense of control, even if that sense of control is only illusory.
These laws that Matthew Hutso given to us is not really to convince us to believe his way of magical thinking. It is always depends on us, if we want to believe it or not. It is our ow decision to decide. As a writer of this blog, I can say that some of this magical thinking is bring us good luck. And no matter happens, It is always our own decision.
References:http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201205/our-superstitious-minds-the-7-laws-magical-thinking?page=2
4. The mind knows no bounds. The more often this happens, the more likely we are to be convinced of our mind’s special powers. One reason we fall for this mental trap is the illusory correlation, but a second is that we’re poor statisticians. We count the hits but not the misses. Another manifestation of this rule is our tendency to believe that if we think positive thoughts about a person in trouble, our thoughts can truly help that person, even if that person is thousands of miles physically removed from us.
5. The soul lives on. On a more serious note, Hutson takes on belief in the afterlife from as much a philosophical as an empirical perspective. Even if you’re not into Cartesian dualism (the idea that the mind and body are two separate entities), you might find interesting the notion that even by the age of 3, children realize that an imagined cookie can’t be eaten. Even feeling identification with your favorite brand name product may be a way of protecting yourself from confronting your mortality.
6. The world is alive. Adults are supposed to grow out of the stage that Piaget called “preoperational” thinking- which is basically the logic of the child between the ages of about 4 and 7. However, as Hutson shows, we share the young child’s belief in animism, which is one key feature of preoperational thought. In other words, we attribute human-like qualities to everything from our pets to our iPhones. This is because we over-apply what’s known as the theory of mind, which is the process we use to understand and predict what other people are going to do.
7. Everything happens for a reason. The most insidious form of magical thinking is our tendency to believe that there is a purpose or destiny that guides what happens to us. It’s the thoughts that go through your head when you, for example, miss a bus that would have gotten you to a job interview on time but because you missed it, you didn’t get the job, but you did meet a person on the bus who you ended up going out with, who now has become your lifelong partner, and you then moved to a new home, and then had two children who never would existed if you hadn’t missed that bus. To do so gives us a sense of control, even if that sense of control is only illusory.
These laws that Matthew Hutso given to us is not really to convince us to believe his way of magical thinking. It is always depends on us, if we want to believe it or not. It is our ow decision to decide. As a writer of this blog, I can say that some of this magical thinking is bring us good luck. And no matter happens, It is always our own decision.
References:http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201205/our-superstitious-minds-the-7-laws-magical-thinking?page=2
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