Unknown Speaker 0:00 Houlihan, Tim Houlihan 0:08 welcome grooves to a special episode on the spooky aspects of Houlihan superstitions. That's why we have a sound effect. Yeah, that's why we actually have a sound effects department to take care of, Kurt Nelson 0:23 that department that did not know that. If I would have known, I would not have done my own ghost impersonation there. But now that you tell me that I'm like feeling foolish, Tim Houlihan 0:39 well, here we are, and what we want to talk about are superstitions, and because Halloween is full of all kinds of superstitions. And of course, we also know that superstitions are much broader than just Halloween, but we want to talk a little bit about why superstitions are universal and why they make sense to our brains to have them in the first place. And then there's some positive aspects of having a superstition and some negative aspects of having a superstition, and we want to talk about those as well. And then, if we're lucky, I'm going to sneak in a little bit of a musical reference here, if we can, if, if, if, Kurt Nelson 1:22 you wear your lucky socks today in order to get that musical reference in there, Kurt, is it? What is this? You know, there you go. Yeah. All right, yeah, so, so. So, first off, Halloween is not necessarily universal, but superstitions are, is that correct? Tim Houlihan 1:37 Yeah, Halloween celebrate in a lot of countries around the world. It surprised. It surprises me Kurt Nelson 1:43 more, more than it used to be, but it's still, it's not, you know, but, but, yes, so I think there's an interesting aspect of this, right? So you think about all right? What are some of the superstitions around Halloween? You know, black cats? You know, you know, what Tim Houlihan 1:57 about black cats? What's wrong with black cats? Kurt Nelson 2:00 They're unlucky, like a black crap, black cat crosses your path. That's bad luck, right? Oh, it's bad luck. Yeah, it's kind of like the kind of seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror. Oh, yeah, that's the other one. Or walking underneath a ladder. You never walk underneath the ladder. Halloween, where they're, you know, having orange paint and painting your house orange. Tim Houlihan 2:25 I never understood why walking under a ladder would be bad luck. I just never made any sense to me. Okay, Kurt Nelson 2:33 well, because people are going to drop paint on you, it's not bad. I mean, well. Tim Houlihan 2:39 And then what about just general superstitions like knocking on wood to Kurt Nelson 2:44 avoid bad things, right? Yeah, I don't want that happen to me. There's a great, there's a great, great song like knock on wood. Yeah, no, I've never had to knock on wood. Whole different genre. There you go. But what else? What else? Like avoid 13, the unlucky number 13, right? Tim Houlihan 3:03 Yeah, carrying around fuzzy toy animals as a good luck charm. Kurt Nelson 3:09 You mean, like feet of dead rabbits? Well, I mean the dead the Tim Houlihan 3:13 rabbit foot thing is, is a particular thing, but I've seen a lot of like, high school students carrying around these little furry animals. And so I'm expecting there's some element of superstition involved in that. But you mentioned lucky socks. You are a lucky socks guy. You wear lucky socks to timber wolves, games. Kurt Nelson 3:34 I wear lucky socks to timber was games I wear. I wear socks that say, Hey, there they have Einstein on them, and they say you are smart, or I am smart on them. So then you're hoping to think that I am smart. So there you go. That's superstition. There, right? Some science backed by that, but we'll go with the superstition. So, yeah, okay. So what is a superstition? Kurt, what? What do? What do? How do scientists think about superstition? Well, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, right? Okay, let's start there. All right, superstition is defined as I'm going to read this beliefs that are inconsistent with the known laws of nature or with what is generally considered rational in a Speaker 1 4:27 society. So, okay, I like that. Kurt Nelson 4:32 I like that. That's That's mine. What? How would you describe would you describe it Tim Houlihan 4:36 differently? Well, a couple of French researchers, so this is popular enough to research in France. Just to let you know Eva Delacroix and guerilla and Valliere, they say that superstition can be defined as beliefs or practices without scientific or religious foundation, in which external events or objects are believed to bring good or bad luck. Yeah. So it's basically something that exists outside of the field of science that we still think correlates to some specific event or object, Kurt Nelson 5:10 so, so, but it's outside of religious foundation as well. That's very interesting. Like, yeah, Tim Houlihan 5:18 which kind of doesn't make sense to me. Like, no, why wouldn't? Why would? Why would organized religion get a pass on that? Kurt Nelson 5:26 Yeah, don't know. Don't you know my Yeah. Anyway. All right, so, okay, so that is that superstition. But why, Tim, why do we do you think we have superstition? Why? Why is this a universal concept? What is it about superstitions that make them like people, believe them, that they, they look for them, that they I'm gonna knock on wood, or I'm gonna stay away from the number 13, or I I'm not gonna walk underneath that ladder when they're painting, or the black cat crossing my path? Why? Why? Well, why? Well, Tim Houlihan 6:10 Dr Nelson, I think the answer starts with ignorance. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way or a mean way, but ignorance in the broad spectrum of not knowing, of of being in a state of not knowing is when we don't know what the actual reason is, which could be randomness, by the way, why something is happening. It's our mind filling in the blanks for what we don't know. Basically, I think that that's the first thing. And then the second thing is that fear of of the unknown. Yes, when things happen that don't automatically make sense to us, our brain wants to have a reason. We are reason seeking machines, and so our brain wants to have a reason. So we're, we're automatically a little bit afraid of, well, I didn't, I didn't easily see a reason why that happened to me? So there, but there must be a reason, like, there's this, this, you know, mythology of there must be a reason Kurt Nelson 7:07 we want to have control. We want to have that component of control. And by evoking these, these different superstitions around luck, we can maybe control those things, like, we don't want bad things to happen to us that are just, you know, random. So instead of just thinking that they are random, that there is some control. Thus, if I, you know, stay away from black cats, if I stay away from walking under ladders, then I have some control, imaginary or otherwise, over my life, right, Tim Houlihan 7:46 right, right? And, and yet, there's also this desire to believe in supernatural things. You know, something like 46 to 70% of all people believe in ghosts, what? And so, yeah, there's a large percentage of people that show. Kurt Nelson 8:06 Did you hear that? Did you hear that ghost in the show? I could see why I Tim Houlihan 8:11 didn't. It must be a very scary ghost, because I'm not seeing it in in your office. So that's Kurt Nelson 8:18 really right on the other side of the camera, staring at me, and it's very scary, Tim Houlihan 8:25 yeah, but and, and then lastly, there's this kind of getting back to the state of unknowing, is that we mistakenly attribute, you know, causation to things that were really just correlated, sort of like the way shark attacks and ice cream sales peak and decline the same way every year that the Yeah, did you ever think about that shark Kurt Nelson 8:48 attack? So ice creams cause shark attacks? Tim Houlihan 8:51 Exactly Speaker 1 8:53 or or or shark Tim Houlihan 8:56 attacks are causing increases in ice cream sales. Kurt Nelson 8:59 It's because everybody's so scared they need some comfort food. Tim Houlihan 9:04 So there is extremely high correlation between these two things. But reality is, they're unrelated. And so our brains will put together that correlation and go, that must be the cause, when that is probably not the cause, right? Kurt Nelson 9:21 And so there's been research on this, right? So research, Stuart, vice, different pieces of that, that the superstitions, are really those attempts to cope with uncertainty in a world that we can't control. And so that is a huge component of it. And I think we, we kind of talked about that. So are superstitions bad? I mean, should do? Should we? I mean, is this something that we really should care about? Because, you know, they're doing bad things to us. Tim Houlihan 9:55 Well, there's some benefits and there are some costs to it. Right there. There are some things that are sort of downsides to them, but, and if we, if we start with the bad stuff, they superstitions are shown to increase stress. It, it's likely that people who are superstitious are more, you know, have have more stress in their lives. Gloria, Giora keenan's research says that the frequency of Magical Thinking and superstitious behavior increases under conditions of stress. So so if you're in a stressful environment, you're also more likely to kind of go for, oh, there must be some kind of magic behind this. This couldn't be normal or random or anything that exists in the regular world. This is something outside. It's paranormal, and that that can get in our way, that increases our stress. Kurt Nelson 10:54 Yeah, and I think you know that the obviously, there's a correlational component, maybe not causation, but still, that idea that maybe those folks who are feeling that more stress you kind of have, that that's a response mechanism, is what I'm hearing you say, right? Yes, we have to figure out a way that I can, you know, rationalize away why I'm feeling this. Well, it's because, you know, black cat walked across my path, and therefore something bad is going to happen to me, and so I'm worried about it. Or is that it? Is it? Is there a causal component of it too, that if, if one of those negative factors, like I stepped on a on a crack, as my mom's back in a break now, and am I stressed about that? Right? Tim Houlihan 11:41 So, well, right? Like, and ironically, superstitious rituals, when they're intended to sort of manage anxiety or uncertainty, can actually be the cause of stress. So no, so they can kind of work against you, but there are some benefits to superstitious benefits. What are the benefits? Well, I think one of the one of the best things, of course, is one of your favorite things, is that it actually can increase performance. About that. What? Yeah, research in sports, right through the sports arena, is a great testament to all these superstitions can actually add up to something that contributes positively to our to the to the athletes, ability to perform. Kurt Nelson 12:28 And because I went through this, Richard, it's the, was it major league where the the Haitian guy had to have a special, you know, luck charms. And then he did, he would hit, hit home run. But if something was bad when he went in a swamp, it was because he lost that or wearing the women's underwear as the picture various different pieces, right? So you have all of those, those pieces I think that do and, and there's an, it's an interesting psychological concept, because there's the, if I have belief that I can do something, whether that belief is from Hey, the experience that I've had I have known in the past I was able to do this, or if it's a belief because there is some magical component in these socks that I'm wearing, or the underwear that I'm wearing, or the ritual that I go through, then it still doesn't matter. From our brain responds, our brain is responding, basically saying, I have a belief, and thus you're going to probably look at those things and respond differently. So Tim Houlihan 13:35 yeah, and relatively speaking, it's what, what's considered a cheap ritual. It's not, it's not costly, right? To do whatever you know, practice whatever superstition you Kurt Nelson 13:46 think you I don't know some of that underwear can get expensive, man, Tim Houlihan 13:50 but it is. It's relatively speaking, it's a cheap ritual. So there's sort of this aspect of, well, why not? Right? Yeah, yeah. In fact, there's a, there's a an American researcher named damish, and she found that research on four out of five professional athletes engage in at least one pregame ritual intended to boost performance at Kurt Nelson 14:14 least Yeah. Wow. Crazy. That's fascinating. Yeah. So, all right, so I think we've covered we've covered universality, we've covered some of the reasons why we've covered pros and cons. I think you had mentioned something about music. What was, what was some music? So if I listen to music, I'm more superstitious. Is that how that works? Or Unknown Speaker 14:38 is that Tim Houlihan 14:40 how going I'm going for 1972 Stevie Wonder here. This is the song that he wrote called superstitious. This is the, this is the connectivity here. And by the way, this song was released in 1972 and it was Stevie Wonder's 15th, 15th, one five studio record. Yeah. Now that might not seem such like such a remarkable thing, like, okay, so, so he released 15 albums. But in 1972 Stevie was only 22 years old, so by the time he was 22 he released 15 studio albums. I mean, the guy was amazingly prolific and successful from a very early age. So I just, I just want to call out Stevie Wonder for that. But the song superstitious, if you, if you haven't heard it, it's got this fantastic Clavinova hook that you're going to absolutely recognize right off the bat as soon as you hear it, because it's so memorable. But as in many things as the artist, as the the you know, the site into the world that we don't often call attention to. Stevie Wonder writes in the lyrics some fantastic wisdom. He says in the lyrics of the song, superstition, when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you will suffer. Superstition ain't the way. I think we can end it there. Kurt Nelson 16:04 Nice with that. Let's, let's do our superstitious ritual of ending everything with a rap. Tim Houlihan 16:14 Yeah, so it's a paradox, right? Superstitions reveal both our cognitive limitations and our adaptive brilliance, because we've figured out how to get along with things that we don't understand. It is a pretty terrific thing, and it shows us that our brain would rather make occasional errors than miss a potentially life saving pattern, too. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 16:36 I love that part, and I think they it also demonstrates how we unconsciously negotiate with uncertainty, right? That's this idea that we these aren't necessarily rational thoughts. Oh, I'm going to, you know, not the you know, think that black cats and correlation to negative pieces, these happen at a level of our subconscious all the time. So there are unconscious is negotiating with uncertainty, using tools that shouldn't work, but sometimes, just because they change how we we work. You know, it's like, Oh, I saw that black cat, so I'm gonna be more careful. And then you go, oh, there's a banana in the sidewalk. I could have stripped. I could have fallen on that, but now I was paying attention, because the way, by the way, I saw, I'm sorry, changing topic, there was a banana on the sidewalk the other day, and I'm looking at it and I'm going, why? How does that make it more slippery than any other something on a sidewalk? Why is that the one like, oh, there's a banana peel. I'm gonna now slip and slide like that doesn't make any more than, like, potato peels, or, you know what orange peels I mean? Tim Houlihan 17:47 Or Magnolia flowers. Magnolia flowers are the slipperiest thing I've ever walked on. Just Magnolia All right, so, but in what you're saying there, Kurt though, is that there is a double edged sword on Kurt Nelson 18:03 this. They are. I wasn't saying that, but that's but that's what we can go with. Yeah, okay, we're gonna go with Tim Houlihan 18:08 that because you it's possible that, in small doses, superstition might keep you safe, but it could also add stress to your Kurt Nelson 18:17 life. Yeah. And I think that's actually I will so, yes, yes, that is absolutely true. And, you know, I think it's really interesting, because it could be as we move into domains of AI, you know, predictions and ambiguous futures, and we may see new forms of superstition, rational superstitions emerge, you know, these algorithmic predictions that say, oh, here it is, you know. So I think that that could be an interesting thing to look up Tim Houlihan 18:53 for. That's a really interesting idea to think about. AI having access to all this, the large language models have access to all of the same content. Kurt Nelson 19:05 They already hallucinate, right? They already make shit up. So they might be making up more, more superstitions. Maybe, maybe it has its own superstition. There you go, if we think of AI as a as a thinking, kind of conscious component of Tim Houlihan 19:22 which I'm not there yet. So I would want to encourage listeners to think about what's the rational being willing to apply a more rational model to your life, if you've if you've got some of these superstitions that you're paying attention to or or especially if they're adding stress to your life. Think about sort of a more rational side and be curious. You know, ask yourself why you're doing the ritual. You know, what else could you be doing to address the same situation? And you don't even have to come up with a reason, just go, why am I thinking about it this way? I think, yeah, that's. You know, something to do. Kurt Nelson 20:00 So when you hear those, those ghostly oohs in your podcast, you know, go, is that really a ghost, or is it just Kurt making some noise, I think you'll probably realize that. No, it's a real ghost, and you should be scared and always listen to behavioral grooves. Otherwise that ghost will come after you see that. Look how that works. Look out. No, we hope that you take that advice. And I think there's some real good advice there of just examine those rituals, examine those beliefs about why do we do this and and we hope that this information about superstitions can help you this spooky Week, as you go out and find your group you Unknown Speaker 20:46 you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai