Magical Thinking: The Psychology Of Irrational Beliefs

Psychology Today:

You are wired to find meaning in the world, a predisposition that leaves you with less control over your beliefs than you may think. Even if you're a hard-core atheist who walks under ladders and pronounces "new age" like "sewage," you believe in magic.

Read the whole story: Psychology Today

Comments

[katmeyster]

And the most magical thinking of all: belief in god(s). Quite dangerous and violent throughout the generations, it should not be separated from other types of magical thinking. I may be on the most skeptical end of the spectrum, but I can still enjoy my life and my existence without magical thinking.

[RJC]

Religion is simply magical thinking. When will we start to become rational and treat religion for what it is? Instead we wink and act like these irrationalities have some basis in reality, no matter how absurd, no matter the damage done to humanity. The absudity is only a matter of degrees. Religion is the cult/mythology of the majority, cults follow the religion of the minority. All are equally invalid, without any empirical eveidnce whatsoever.

[mamacat]

This is a pretty good article, but.....

Our level of understanding of the universe is still so limited that it behooves us to be very careful when making grandiose statements about what is real, and what is not.
On the one hand, the author states "Survival requires recognizing patterns - "; "....missi­ng the obvious often hurts more than seeing the imaginary.­.."

On the other hand, the author affirms that there is something called "magical thinking," and "thought action fusion," which in general terms he defines as the belief that your thoughts can cause harm.

Proving a negative is a very difficult thing to do, and how can anyone know what everyone else's personal experiences in this realm involve?

I bring up this subject because there are millions of people who will testify to having experienced things in their own lives which our science cannot yet explain in the least. If we deny that something is real because it goes counter to our past assumptions about the world, is that not as bad as the Catholic Church ex-communicating Galileo for claiming that he believes the Earth is not the center of the universe? If we accept the assumption that that which we do not now understand is "magic," and therefore not worthy of investigation, will that assumption not be an impediment to scientific research?

[Darwin256]

Psychology is a science based on research. We know much more about "our" universe than many are willing to accept.

Hence, there are those in our society that seriously ask: "Do you believe in science?".

[Paradym]

There is a lot we don't know about the universe, that is true. But what you are alluding to are things that we do know about but people chose to ignore the evidence because it goes against their magical thinking, that it removes any supposed meaning to their experience. Citing that people experience things that science can't explain is disingenuous. Often science can explain, or at least present a much more probable explanation of some weird experience than the supernatural reason many people default to. Take Life After Death experiences for example: It has been explained as what happens when the brain starts shutting down, and can be replicated in controlled experiments. Yet people apply meaning (magical thinking) to the remembrances of the brain's coughing and sputtering as its neurons go guano loco from lowering oxygen supply. It's a well understood biological phenomena yet people still give lip service to the mystical belief that they experienced the afterlife. Magical thinking and logical fallacies lead us down some very odd paths of thought, hence the proliferation of religion, "alternative medicine", conspiracy theories, the list goes on.

[littlepuffycloud]

Fascinatin­g..