7Laws Magical Thinking

01 02 03 the 04 05 LAWS 06 07 of 08 7 09 MAGICAL 10 11 12 THINKING 13 14 How Irrationality Makes Us 15 Happy, Healthy, and Sane 16 17 18 19 20 MATTHEW HUTSON 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 N33 L34

A Oneworld Book

First published in Great Britain and the Commonwealth by Oneworld Publications 2012 Published by arrangement with Hudson Street Press, For my teachers – past, present, and future a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc This edition published by Oneworld Publications 2013

ISBN: 978-1-85168-957-6 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78074-109-3

Cover design by Dan Mogford Printed and bound by Nørhaven A/S Denmark

Oneworld Publications 10 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3SR

For my teachers – past, present, and future 01 02 01 03 Contents 02 04 03 05 04 06 05 07 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 06 08 07 09 Matthew Hutson is a science writer and the former news editor of the 08 10 magazine Psychology Today. His work has appeared in the New York Times 09 11 Magazine, Wired, Scientific American Mind, Discover, and many others. 10

12 He is an atheist and magical thinker. 11

13 12 13 14 Introduction: We’re All Believers 1 15 14 16 1 Objects Carry Essences: ‘Cooties’, Contagion, and 15 17 Historicity 11 16 18 17 Symbols Have Power: Spells, Ceremonies, and the 19 2 18

20 Law of Similarity 37 19 21 20 Actions Have Distant Consequences: Using 22 3 21 Superstition to Make Luck Work for You 61 23 22 24 23 4 The Mind Knows No Bounds: Psychokinesis, ESP, 25 24 and Transcendence 93 26 25 27 5 The Soul Lives On: Death Is Not the End of Us 125 26 28 27 29 6 The World Is Alive: Animals, Objects, and Gods Are 28 30 People, Too 163 29 31 30 Everything Happens for a Reason: You’ve Got a Date 32 7 31 with Destiny 195 32 33N N33 34L L34 01 02 01 03 Contents 02 04 03 05 04 06 05 07 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 06 08 07 09 Matthew Hutson is a science writer and the former news editor of the 08 10 magazine Psychology Today. His work has appeared in the New York Times 09 11 Magazine, Wired, Scientific American Mind, Discover, and many others. 10

12 He is an atheist and magical thinker. 11

01 Epilogue: The World Is Sacred: A Stab at a Secular 01 02 Spirituality 239 02 03 03 04 Acknowledgements 251 04 05 05 Notes 253 06 Introduction 06

07 07 Further Reading and Selected Bibliography 283 We’re All Believers 08 08 09 Index 287 09 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 n 2008, the leaders of a powerful clan presided over a ceremony on 15 16 Ithe grounds of their new house of worship. The clan’s warriors, 16 17 known for their fickleness and inconsistency – their success against 17 18 other tribes depending to a large degree on luck – worried that an 18 19 adversary had placed a curse on their home turf. Someone had hidden 19 20 a significant artefact – a symbol of their sworn enemy – under the 20 21 premises. The media, typically dismissive of voodoo, had a field day 21 22 with this little rite. As journalists looked on, two men friendly to the 22 23 warriors pulled the offending relic from the ground and raised it high. 23 24 Flashbulbs illuminated a ragged piece of cloth clearly reading the num- 24 25 ber 34 and the name Ortiz. The new Yankee Stadium had been cleansed. 25 26 Why should an enlightened society adhering to the rigours of 26 27 science care so much about a shirt buried in concrete? And why would 27 28 the president of the New York Yankees baseball team threaten the 28 29 offender with legal action and demand recompense for the cost of 29 30 replacing the concrete? The jersey – carrying the number and name of 30 31 David Ortiz, the top home-run hitter for the rival Boston Red Sox – 31 32 itself posed no structural threat to the stadium. So how could that 32 33N worker ‘force’ the Yankees to dig it up? Because magical powers were N33 34L attributed to that jersey. (We’ll revisit Yankee Stadium in chapter 2.) L34 viii Contents

01 Epilogue: The World Is Sacred: A Stab at a Secular 01 02 Spirituality 239 02 03 03 04 Acknowledgements 251 04 05 05 Notes 253 06 Introduction 06

01 Most of the world is religious, and millions more are openly super- universe, first with my father and then on my own, and saw that the 01 02 stitious, spiritual, or credulous of the paranormal. But in this book I Big Questions could be answered, or at least approached, by science. 02 03 argue that we all believe in magic – luck, mind over matter, destiny, God made less and less sense. 03 04 jinxes, life after death, evil, and heavenly helpers – even when we are I found more books on the big bang and the fabric of space-time 04 05 sure we don’t. and abandoned my belief in a personal creator – but not my obsession 05 06 Magical thinking can be quite banal. We find occult meaning with him. I became a strident young atheist, eager to debate anyone who 06 07 in the world all around us, every day. Do you own any sentimental stooped to have faith in an invisible guide. In the copy of Why I Am Not 07 08 objects – say, a wedding ring, a family heirloom, or an autographed a Christian by the philosopher Bertrand Russell that I purchased for 08 09 football shirt? Objects you’d value more than an identical duplicate? pleasure-reading when I was about twelve, I underlined passages such as, 09 10 That’s magical thinking. Do you feel that what goes around comes ‘It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in 10 11 around, through some universal principle of fairness? That’s magical religion are fear, conceit, and hatred’. I struggled to understand human- 11 12 thinking. Do you shout at your laptop when it erases your files? Magi- ity’s unshakeable hold on magical beliefs – its stock in miracles, gods, a 12 13 cal thinking. Do you hope to leave a legacy after you die? Magical soul – against all reason. 13 14 thinking. Do you believe that certain events were meant to happen? That’s just it: faith is unreasonable, an emotional reaction. But 14 15 Magical thinking. Or that you can lift your arm through the power of shouldn’t reason triumph in deciphering the workings of the universe? 15 16 your conscious thoughts? Magical thinking, even that. Why cry out for a daddy in the sky to explain things and keep you safe? 16 17 As you will see, those examples all derive from our ongoing flirtation (I have Freudian interpretations of my conversion, too, but I’ll save 17 18 with supernaturalism, a relationship we depend on for our very survival. those for psychotherapy.) In my Vulcan mind-set, I looked down on 18 19 the religious as stupid or weak or both. 19 20 But I knew too many intelligent, admirable people who went to 20 21 Giving Up the Ghost church. Besides, I never converted anyone to atheism using logic. So I 21 22 decided to chillax and pay more attention to what irrational beliefs did 22 23 For the first ten years of my life I went to church every week with my for people. Five billion faithful can’t be wrong! 23 24 family. Not by choice; I found it boring and hated getting up early and And I realized in myself a continued need for something more. 24 25 wearing uncomfortable clothes. But we got doughnuts in Sunday My teen years were dark, and I often thought that life would be easier 25 26 school, I enjoyed a modest version of stardom as a member of the choir, were I not an atheist. I looked for slivers of evidence to let me believe 26 27 and I was allowed to spend sermons drawing tanks and fighter planes that we are not simply mortal, finite, arbitrary collections of organic 27 28 blowing up the illustration of the church on the cover of the programme. molecules. I read Synchronicity, in which the physicist F. David Peat 28 29 And I did believe in, and fear, God. I hated being alone with him tries to ground Carl Jung’s ideas about meaningful coincidences in the 29 30 in the empty chapel – it gave me goose pimples. For a time I refused to world of quantum mechanics. I read The Physics of Immortality, in which 30 31 say the word God and would spell it out. I even wrote it ‘G-O-D’. the physicist Frank Tipler proposes that our descendants will use com- 31 32 But things changed when I was about ten years old, when I dis- puters to re-create all previous humans and continue our existences in 32 33N covered a copy of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking on my a virtual heaven. And I read The Archaic Revival, in which the ethno- N33 34L parents’ bedroom floor. I read his portrayal of the evolution of the botanist Terence McKenna considers psychedelics a window into higher L34 2 The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking Introduction 3

01 Most of the world is religious, and millions more are openly super- universe, first with my father and then on my own, and saw that the 01 02 stitious, spiritual, or credulous of the paranormal. But in this book I Big Questions could be answered, or at least approached, by science. 02 03 argue that we all believe in magic – luck, mind over matter, destiny, God made less and less sense. 03 04 jinxes, life after death, evil, and heavenly helpers – even when we are I found more books on the big bang and the fabric of space-time 04 05 sure we don’t. and abandoned my belief in a personal creator – but not my obsession 05 06 Magical thinking can be quite banal. We find occult meaning with him. I became a strident young atheist, eager to debate anyone who 06 07 in the world all around us, every day. Do you own any sentimental stooped to have faith in an invisible guide. In the copy of Why I Am Not 07 08 objects – say, a wedding ring, a family heirloom, or an autographed a Christian by the philosopher Bertrand Russell that I purchased for 08 09 football shirt? Objects you’d value more than an identical duplicate? pleasure-reading when I was about twelve, I underlined passages such as, 09 10 That’s magical thinking. Do you feel that what goes around comes ‘It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in 10 11 around, through some universal principle of fairness? That’s magical religion are fear, conceit, and hatred’. I struggled to understand human- 11 12 thinking. Do you shout at your laptop when it erases your files? Magi- ity’s unshakeable hold on magical beliefs – its stock in miracles, gods, a 12 13 cal thinking. Do you hope to leave a legacy after you die? Magical soul – against all reason. 13 14 thinking. Do you believe that certain events were meant to happen? That’s just it: faith is unreasonable, an emotional reaction. But 14 15 Magical thinking. Or that you can lift your arm through the power of shouldn’t reason triumph in deciphering the workings of the universe? 15 16 your conscious thoughts? Magical thinking, even that. Why cry out for a daddy in the sky to explain things and keep you safe? 16 17 As you will see, those examples all derive from our ongoing flirtation (I have Freudian interpretations of my conversion, too, but I’ll save 17 18 with supernaturalism, a relationship we depend on for our very survival. those for psychotherapy.) In my Vulcan mind-set, I looked down on 18 19 the religious as stupid or weak or both. 19 20 But I knew too many intelligent, admirable people who went to 20 21 Giving Up the Ghost church. Besides, I never converted anyone to atheism using logic. So I 21 22 decided to relax and pay more attention to what irrational beliefs did 22 23 For the first ten years of my life I went to church every week with my for people. Five billion faithful can’t be wrong! 23 24 family. Not by choice; I found it boring and hated getting up early and And I realized in myself a continued need for something more. 24 25 wearing uncomfortable clothes. But we got doughnuts in Sunday My teen years were dark, and I often thought that life would be easier 25 26 school, I enjoyed a modest version of stardom as a member of the choir, were I not an atheist. I looked for slivers of evidence to let me believe 26 27 and I was allowed to spend sermons drawing tanks and fighter planes that we are not simply mortal, finite, arbitrary collections of organic 27 28 blowing up the illustration of the church on the cover of the programme. molecules. I read Synchronicity, in which the physicist F. David Peat 28 29 And I did believe in, and fear, God. I hated being alone with him tries to ground Carl Jung’s ideas about meaningful coincidences in the 29 30 in the empty chapel – it gave me goose pimples. For a time I refused to world of quantum mechanics. I read The Physics of Immortality, in which 30 31 say the word God and would spell it out. I even wrote it ‘G-O-D’. the physicist Frank Tipler proposes that our descendants will use com- 31 32 But things changed when I was about ten years old, when I dis- puters to re-create all previous humans and continue our existences in 32 33N covered a copy of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking on my a virtual heaven. And I read The Archaic Revival, in which the ethno- N33 34L parents’ bedroom floor. I read his portrayal of the evolution of the botanist Terence McKenna considers psychedelics a window into higher L34 4 The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking Introduction 5

01 dimensions. (Naturally, I also tested some of those windows.) And here cessful. Once you’ve accepted that the brain constructs reality, and 01 02 is something I’ve never told anyone before. For a couple years after that the brain has evolved like any other organ to help its owner sur- 02 03 giving up God, I still occasionally prayed at night, sending my thoughts vive and reproduce, it follows that the brain constructs reality in the 03 04 out into the vast ether. most useful way possible for its owner. The key word here is useful, 04 05 I really, really wanted to believe in magic. which is not to say accurate. The brain doesn’t care so much what’s 05 06 In parallel with my search for meaning was the pursuit of the really out there; it just needs to stay alive and be replicated, which 06 07 meaning of meaning, which led me from physics to psychology. We might involve telling us a white lie now and again. 07 08 can’t interact with reality directly and in fact can’t even be sure it Over the past several decades, psychologists have documented a 08 09 exists; we experience it only through the filter of our own conscious- litany of cognitive biases – consistent misperceptions of the world – 09 10 ness. What you see, hear, taste, and touch is all a subjective construc- and explained their positive functions. For example, we overestimate 10 11 tion in your brain based on sensory input. (Or a neural jack, as in The heights when looking down, making us particularly cautious about 11 12 Matrix.) I decided the closest I could come to understanding the ulti- falling. In the social realm, men overestimate sexual interest from 12 13 mate nature of reality was to understand how the mind creates it. At women because the cost of hitting on someone and receiving a brush- 13 14 university I set out to design an independent course in consciousness off is small compared to the benefit of scoring and spreading one’s seed. 14 15 studies before settling on cognitive neuroscience, the rigorous analysis (A drink in the face is temporary, but a carrier for your genes lasts gen- 15 16 of the interface between matter and mind, existence and experience. erations.) And superstitious rituals such as crossing fingers may result 16 17 That pursuit has led me here. I can’t of course provide for you the from believing we have more control over the world than we actually 17 18 meaning of life, and might even speak dismissively (though not deri- do, a bias that prevents counterproductive feelings of helplessness. 18 19 sively) of the meaning you already hold dear. But I’m not ruining The behavioural economist Dan Ariely, who has designed many 19 20 Christmas just for fun. (And, arguably, I’m not ruining Christmas at clever studies to tease out our biases, calls the human mind ‘predict- 20 21 all; telling people why they’re biased to believe in Rudolph says nothing ably irrational’. Alternatively, the evolutionary psychologist Martie 21 22 about Rudolph’s actual existence.) I’m dissecting the sacred because the Haselton and her colleagues have written that ‘the mind is best 22 23 same magical thinking that leads to sentimentality, altruism, and self- described as adaptively rational . . . equipped with mechanisms that are 23 24 efficacy can also lead to vilification, fatalism, and irrational exuberance, constrained and sometimes imprecise, but nevertheless clear products 24 25 or even depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and psychosis. By of natural selection showing evidence of good design’. 25 26 tearing down everything holy and pointing out the sand it was built on, This design comprises two distinct levels of processing. The ratio- 26 27 I’m hoping we can learn how to build meaning back up in constructive nal system is slow, deliberate, abstract, and logical. The intuitive sys- 27 28 ways. I don’t want to eradicate magical thinking. I want to harness it. tem is quick, automatic, associative, and emotional. We have the second 28 29 system to thank for magical thinking. 29 30 Thinking and belief, as I use the terms in this book, include biases 30 31 The Rationality of Irrationality and intimations and feelings. Mere whiffs and glimmers of thought. If 31 32 you think conscious deliberation drives the car, you’re ignoring the vast 32 33N Far from a sign of stupidity or weakness, magical thinking exemplifies engine block beneath the hood at your own peril. We run largely on N33 34L many of the habits of mind that made humans so evolutionarily suc- autopilot, and overthinking things (as I and many others are wont to do) L34 4 The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking Introduction 5

01 can muck up the works. For example, when an injury disconnects emo- stir up in everyone some hidden mental forces, some lingering hopes in 01 02 tional brain centres from neural areas responsible for higher cognition, the miraculous, some dormant beliefs in man’s mysterious possibilities.’ 02 03 patients can’t listen to their guts and have trouble making even simple Malinowski spent several years in the southwest Pacific studying 03 04 decisions. Recall the millipede who was asked how he knows which leg the magical practices of ‘primitive man’. Much of today’s scholarship on 04 05 to move next and immediately froze. Sometimes intuitive thinking just magic derives from the anthropological efforts of the late nineteenth 05 06 gets the job done. And as we’ll see, magical thinking is not merely an and early twentieth centuries, in which the traditions of bushmen and 06 07 eccentric extension of healthy biases and shortcuts; it can provide ben- remote islanders were catalogued and scrutinized. Psychologists, soci- 07 08 efits of its own. Most prominently, it offers a sense of control and a sense ologists, and historians have still not agreed upon what counts as magic, 08 09 of meaning, making life richer, more comprehensible, and less scary. versus religion, versus science, versus technology. There’s plenty of 09 10 Often, the biologically modern deliberative system is powerless to overlap: magic and religion both deal with a spiritual realm. Magic and 10 11 restrain the ancient associative system it’s built on. It makes no differ- science both deal with uncovering hidden patterns in the world. And 11 12 ence how clever you are or how reasonable you try to be: research magic and technology both deal with mastering one’s environment. 12 13 shows little correlation between people’s levels of rationality or intel- ‘Although the word “magic” is common in both scholarly and lay dis- 13 14 ligence and their susceptibility to magical thinking. I ‘know’ knocking course’, the psychologists Carol Nemeroff and Paul Rozin have written: 14 15 on wood has no mystical power. But my instincts tell me to do it any- 15 16 way, just in case, and I do. A possibly apocryphal tale has the legendary the variety of things to which it refers is far-reaching, ranging 16 from a social institution characteristic of traditional societies, to 17 physicist Niels Bohr responding to a friend’s inquiry about the horse- 17 sleight-of-hand or parlor tricks, to belief in unconventional phe- 18 shoe he’d hung above his door: ‘Oh, I don’t believe in it. But I am told 18 nomena such as UFOs and ESP, to sloppy thinking or false beliefs, 19 it works even if you don’t.’ ‘There are many layers of belief’, the psy- and even to a state of romance, wonder, or the mysterious. One 19 20 chologist Carol Nemeroff, who has studied magical thinking exten- must at least entertain the possibility that there is no true category 20 21 sively, told me. ‘And the answer for many people, especially with regard here at all. Instead, the term ‘magic’ in current usage has become 21 22 to magic, is, “Most of me doesn’t believe, but some of me does”. ’ a label for a residual category – a garbage bin filled with various 22 23 odds and ends that we do not otherwise know what to do with. 23 24 24 25 Longings and Wisdom There is a common thread that holds together many of the things 25 26 we tend to call magic and excludes many of the things we don’t. One 26 27 ‘Magic – the very word seems to reveal a world of mysterious and unex- recurring theme in the literature – a theme I’m taking as the basis for 27 28 pected possibilities!’ the Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski my definition ofmagical thinking – is what the anthropologist Richard 28 29 wrote in 1925. ‘Even for the clear scientific mind the subject of magic Shweder called a ‘confusion of subjectivity and objectivity’ and the 29 30 has a special attraction. Partly perhaps because we hope to find in it the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss called ‘the anthropomorphism of 30 31 quintessence of primitive man’s longings and of his wisdom – and that, nature . . . and the physiomorphism of man’. There’s the world of the 31 32 whatever it might be, is worth knowing. Partly because “magic” seems to mind, defined by intention and conscious experience, and the world of 32 33N outside reality, defined by matter and deterministic forces. But we N33 34L L34 6 The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking Introduction 7

01 instinctively treat the mind as though it had physical properties, and else might divide the material differently to what I have done, with dif- 01 02 we treat the physical world as though it had mental properties. That’s ferent laws, or more laws, or fewer. And things I call magical thinking 02 03 magical thinking. We perceive mind and matter mingling together, someone else might dismiss as run-of-the-mill irrationality. Surely, I’ll 03 04 working on the same wavelength. also make what some consider omissions. I’ve tried to take a consistent 04 05 The psychologist Marjaana Lindeman similarly defines magical approach in mapping the terrain, but the borders remain debatable. 05 06 thinking as ‘category mistakes where the core attributes of mental, Here’s a rough guide: 06 07 physical, and biological entities and processes are confused with each In chapter 1, ‘Objects Carry Essences’, we’ll explore how every- 07 08 other’ and has collected evidence linking these category mistakes day items become emotionally significant by taking on the spirit of 08 09 under one umbrella. She and collaborators found that people who their previous owners or unique pasts. In chapter 2, ‘Symbols Have 09 10 describe phrases such as, Old furniture knows things about the past, or, An Power’, we’ll see that we confuse symbolic associations in our heads for 10 11 evil thought is contaminated, or When summer is warm, flowers want to causal relationships in the world. Chapter 3, ‘Actions Have Distant 11 12 bloom as more than metaphor also believe in feng shui and astrology Consequences’, takes up superstitious rituals and our attempts to chan- 12 13 (i.e., that the arrangement of furniture or stars can channel life energy), nel luck through physical acts. Chapter 4, ‘The Mind Knows No 13 14 see more purpose in natural and random events, and are more likely to Bounds’, covers belief in mind over matter and extrasensory percep- 14 15 be religious and hold paranormal beliefs. tion, as well as transcendent experiences. In chapter 5, ‘The Soul Lives 15 16 One advantage of defining magical thinking as the mingling of On’, we’ll look at how hard it is to believe that your mind dies when 16 17 psychological concepts with physical ones, rather than simply as holding your body does. In chapter 6, ‘The World Is Alive’, we’ll see that we 17 18 beliefs that contradict scientific consensus, is that what counts as magi- often treat inanimate objects as conscious. Chapter 7, ‘Everything 18 19 cal thinking is less prone to change as we learn more about the world. Happens for a Reason’, analyses our insistence that higher powers 19 20 We now know that our planet is a sphere, but learning that it has a per- guide natural events. Finally, the epilogue explores ways to find mean- 20 21 sonality would constitute a revolution an order of magnitude larger. ing in life by treating the world as sacred. 21 22 The current definition also distinguishes magical thinking from For the most part I don’t cover explicit and culturally transmitted 22 23 everyday false beliefs such as the notion that toilets tend to flush clock- beliefs in religion, magic, and the paranormal. Plenty of excellent 23 24 wise in the Southern Hemisphere or that toilet seats transmit HIV, from books exist on those. I’m more interested in our shadow beliefs – those 24 25 common biases and states of mind such as germ phobia and wishful inklings of the numinous that we deny – and beliefs we don’t even rec- 25 26 thinking, and from credence in possible but unlikely phenomena such as ognize as magical. These habits of mind guide us through the world 26 27 Bigfoot’s existence and alien authorship of crop circles. every day. In very basic ways they provide a sense of control, of pur- 27 28 pose, of connection, and of meaning, and without them we couldn’t 28 29 function. So here’s my gauntlet: even if you’re a hard-core sceptic who 29 30 The Agenda walks under ladders and pronounces ‘New Age’ like ‘sewage’, you 30 31 believe in magic. 31 32 With our promiscuous mixing of the mental and physical realms, it’s And that’s nothing to be ashamed of. 32 33N hard to break magical thinking into distinct laws, but I’ve tried. Someone N33 34L L34 8 The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking Introduction 9