Forum Discussion: Superstition & Evolution
Wednesday July 16, 2008
That which characterizes "superstitious" behavior can be found in a variety of contexts — not just typical "superstition" but also religion, paranormal beliefs, and so forth. If superstition can be found in a variety of contexts as well as across both cultures and time, we should seriously wonder whether there are deeper, fundamental forces a work. I don't mean supernatural forces, of course, but rather evolutionary forces: have superstitious attitudes and behaviors evolved in humans for some reason? If so, then they will prove very hard to reduce, and perhaps impossible to eliminate.
I suspect that superstitious behavior is the result of evolutionary adaptation even though it seems counter productive now. Consider an animal which has either a positive or negative experience (finds food or encounters predator). Without the logical machinery to analyze how its actions lead to the result (or if they did) the simplest potentially beneficial behavior modification mechanism would be to either avoid or repeat whatever it was doing at the time of the event.
It may be completely unrelated, but with limited analytical potential it nonetheless increases the animal's survival advantage. In humans, this instinct still exists. Our intellectual brain may recognize that wearing a particular item will not repeat the situation that happened last time, but our animal brain still goes by this paradigm and tries to push us in that direction. Like many of our evolutionarily old behavior patterns, this appears to us to be an intuitive drive.
Do you agree that what we today call "superstitious" behavior is basically just the expression of ancient instincts that, for many animals in the past and even today, has probably had positive survival value? If superstition is a product of evolutionary needs, then how likely are we to overcome it? Add your thoughts to the comments here or join the discussion in the forum.
Comments
Yes, I do and I blogged a little bit about it here.
To Rock Or Not To Rock: That Is The Question…
http://beepbeepitsme.blogspot.com/2006/12/to-rock-or-not-to-rock-that-is.html
Yes, the root of superstition is a misunderstanding of cause and effect in specific cases, such as the ‘lucky shirt’. They grow as they become embedded in and reinforced by culture and weaken or change as culture goes in different directions.
Superstition is bad because it can be fed upon by con artists. It should be questioned wherever it is expressed, within reason. It is so pervasive in some people that it is almost pathological, especially if it helps them to feel special in some way.
Biological evolution happens very, very slowly in long-lived creatures like humans, so if superstition is a natural consequence of survival instincts, then it would seem pretty unlikely to go away any time soon. But then, culture is a huge part of human survival instincts, and culture can change much faster than biology. Superstition is really just faulty reasoning, that is typically adhered to for social and/or emotional reasons. We need to look to culture if we want to change anything, because our biology probably won’t change until it’s too late. If E.O. Wilson is right, it already is.