3
The Belief in Real Magic

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, there were few individuals who could talk with the dead—at least, there were few who claimed that they could. But in 1848, a rather peculiar set of events dramatically changed our interactions with the spirit world. That year, two young sisters living in a small farmhouse in Hydesville, New York, discovered that they shared their room with a mysterious spirit.¹ The sisters, Margaret and Kate Fox, first became aware of its presence through strange nightly knocking. The spirit showed a clear fondness for the sisters: in their presence, the mysterious rapping began to occur even during the day, originating from the floor, walls, and even furniture.

To summon the spirit, Kate would knock several times on the floor; the spirit would then respond with the same number of raps. The sisters developed a form of Morse code that let them communicate with the spirit. The girls would ask it a question, after which the infallibly omniscient spirit would answer either yes or no, as indicated by the number of raps. This questioning eventually revealed that the spirit belonged to a man who had been murdered and was buried in their cellar.

The neighbors soon started dropping by to communicate with their deceased relatives, and news of the Fox sisters’ abilities quickly spread through the small town. Their older sister, Leah, recognized the financial opportunity that her sisters’ gift provided, and so with the help of a professional medium, the Fox sisters refined their skills. With the spirits no longer confined to the haunted farmhouse, the sisters organized public demonstrations that allowed paying customers to connect with the spirit world. People flocked to see the sisters, and the money followed. Of course, not everyone was convinced that their abilities were genuine. There were numerous investigations into the phenomenon, but any attempt at debunking the sisters only fueled publicity, spreading the news about them even further.

Because communing with the spirit world offered considerable financial gain, other mediums suddenly began to spring up throughout the United States. This fierce competition generated ever more sensational ways of communicating with the dead. Spirits now started responding in small sessions—paid, of course—that were known as séances. But the Fox sisters were not to be left behind in this battle of the spirits. They discovered ways to communicate by mysteriously moving the séance table and writing messages onto slate tablets. They even managed to cajole the spirits into playing musical instruments. These manifestations all took place under the cover of darkness, and they provided the believer with a “genuine” opportunity to communicate with their deceased loved ones. By the mid-1850s, spiritualism had become a mainstream movement, with many eminent men defending it in public.

In 1888, forty years after the Fox sisters’ initial claims, Margaret admitted that their spiritualist effects were a fraud: the spirits’ rappings were actually caused by cracking the joints in her toes and knees.² But although this revelation ended the Fox sisters’ careers as mediums, it did not end people’s belief in spiritualism. Believers became convinced that the retraction itself was a hoax, possibly due to less sociable spirits who wanted to lessen contact with their realm. And so the Fox sisters’ legacy lives on. Even in today’s world, spiritual readings and séances still take place, and a quick browse in your local New Age shop will verify that spiritualism is far from dead.

There is often a thin line separating what people consider to be real magic from what they designate as fake magic. We can only fully understand magic by understanding how some people can straddle this line—how they can genuinely believe in things they know to be impossible. In this chapter, we will explore the psychology underlying this phenomenon. Understanding magical beliefs certainly has implications for understanding magic itself, but perhaps more importantly, it provides rather surprising insights into our everyday behavior.

Magical Thinking

The story of the Fox sisters illustrates that some people endorse beliefs in things that they know to be impossible. Put another way, they genuinely believe in magic. Magical thinking refers to thinking based on the belief that certain actions can influence objects or events, even though no cause connects them.³ For example, scientists agree that we cannot communicate with the dead, meaning that beliefs in conversing with deceased people are therefore magical. Similarly, there is no evidence to support the existence of telepathy or remote viewing, and so beliefs in these are also considered magical. It is important to note that magical beliefs are not just beliefs that are scientifically wrong—they are scientifically impossible. For example, the mistaken belief that penguins can fly or that vitamin C can prevent you from catching the common cold are not inherently impossible, and we therefore don’t consider them to be magical.

As with most definitions, defining magical belief is rather tricky. One problem is that our beliefs about the world continually change. Due to increased knowledge, we now have rational explanations for things that would have appeared magical just a few decades ago. Moreover, we all differ in what we believe to be possible. For our current discussion, then, I will define magical belief rather broadly as a belief in something that has been shown to be impossible on scientific grounds. I hope that scholars from other disciplines will forgive me for my rather sloppy definition. But as there is no universally accepted definition, I am inclined to just use my own.⁴ Another interesting feature of many magical beliefs is that people often know that the phenomenon in which they believe is entirely impossible.

Let us start by briefly looking at one aspect of our lives that is heavily influenced by magical beliefs: religion. Much of religious experience (even of the modern kind) includes a sense of awe about the forces that cause seemingly inexplicable events in the world—similar to the sense of wonder created by a magic trick. And many religious scriptures describe miracles that seem much like magic tricks: the book of Exodus, for example, has a detailed description of Aaron turning the water of the Nile into blood and making a plague of frogs descend upon the land. The power by which religious figures are believed to act on the world seems a lot like the “magical stuff” discussed in chapter 2. Many of our thoughts and concepts about magic have come from studying religions and religious rituals.⁵ However, for some strange reason, religions generally try to distance themselves from magic.

The classical scholarly view on magic sharply differentiates between magic and religion, and it considers the former to be a much more primitive institution.⁶ This view assumes that although magical rituals and beliefs may have played an important role in so-called primitive societies, modern society has replaced such beliefs with causal thinking, resulting in modern religion and eventually modern science.

However, many people still believe in religion, including its more fantastical aspects, such as angels, gods, and other assorted beings. For example, 77 percent of Americans believe in angels.⁷ There are many reasons for these beliefs, and although a full discussion of these is beyond the scope of this book, it is nonetheless clear that magical beliefs are still alive and well in our society. As an atheist, I have always struggled to understand how people can simultaneously endorse religious and scientific beliefs. But as we will discover in this chapter, all these beliefs can happily cohabit inside a single brain.

Do You Have to Be Mentally Unwell to Believe in Magic?

Researchers often consider magical thinking to result from people not thinking about things correctly, either because of cognitive problems or because they are simply too young to know better.⁸ In fact, many of our contemporary ideas about magical beliefs originate from the study of clinical disorders. For example, magical beliefs are related to the intrusive thoughts observed in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Individuals with OCD engage in repetitive behaviors, such as handwashing, checking that the stove is turned off, or touching a door handle a specific number of times before entering a room. Such behaviors are a form of magical thinking, as there is no reason for people with OCD to connect their behavior to the misfortune they are trying to ward off. A person can fully understand that repeated checking is not necessary yet still feel compelled to do so before leaving the house.

There may also be a link with schizophrenia, which involves a wide range of symptoms, including delusional thoughts, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and extreme social withdrawal. It often includes the belief that one’s thoughts are being broadcast or that one can read others’ minds. Psychologists typically consider these beliefs to be magical because they contradict our understanding of the world. But delusional thoughts may simply be mistaken beliefs and so would not necessarily be magical. On the other hand, schizophrenia has been linked to a psychological variable known as schizotypy, which in turn correlates with belief in the paranormal (i.e., phenomena such as telekinesis and clairvoyance that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding).⁹

Based on the above, it would be tempting to argue that those who endorse magical beliefs must suffer from some form of psychopathology. But although links do exist between magical thinking and some psychopathological symptoms, these links are generally rather weak.¹⁰ Another thing to keep in mind is that magical beliefs are extremely common in the normal population. For example, a 2005 survey found that three-quarters of the American population endorsed at least one paranormal belief: 31 percent of respondents believed in telepathy, 32 percent in ghosts, and 41 percent in extrasensory perception (ESP).¹¹ If a connection between such beliefs and psychopathology were true, it would imply that most people are mentally ill.

Of course, you don’t have to endorse paranormal beliefs to believe in the impossible. Many of our superstitions, such as the belief that walking under a ladder can bring bad luck, are common magical beliefs in the general population. For example, more than half of respondents in a 1984 poll conducted in London admitted that they avoided walking under ladders and touched wood for good luck.¹² Similarly, a survey of college students found that nearly one-third regularly engaged in exam-related superstitious behavior.¹³ Superstitious rituals are also well documented and particularly prevalent in sports.¹⁴

Over the past five years, my colleagues and I have carried out research on magical beliefs among undergraduate students, and I have been truly amazed—or maybe I should say dismayed—by the results. We were inspired by Victor Benassi and his colleagues, who used magic tricks to study magical thinking back in the 1980s.¹⁵ In collaboration with Christine Mohr and her PhD student, Lise Lesaffre, we have used magic tricks to create anomalous experiences and then asked observers to report on their experience.¹⁶ These experiments, which are based on a fake demonstration of psychic abilities, have been some of the most fun and intriguing that I have ever done.

I told the students that they would be part of an experiment investigating a psychic medium.¹⁷ I explained that the Anomalistic Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, had a long tradition of investigating spiritualist and other paranormal claims. Although most of these claims had not held up under close scientific scrutiny, I said, we had recently found an individual who, although not perfect, had a hit rate significantly above chance. At this point, I introduced them to my friend Lee Hathaway, a professional magician with whom I have performed for many years.

On this occasion, Lee transformed from a polished magician into a campy soothsayer, using his conjuring skills to create a convincing séance. He used gimmicks to trick participants into believing that he could read the color of their aura. He also used cold reading to give people the impression that he was reading their soul, and he finished the routine by contacting a dead relative of a randomly selected volunteer. This last part was entirely staged; the volunteer was actually one of our stooges.

Describing this demonstration in words does not do it justice. Lee and I are both experienced performers, but we never imagined that this demonstration would have such a powerful effect. Whenever I perform magic, my audience knows that what they are seeing is not real. But this time, I used my scientific authority to deceive students into accepting magic tricks as real. The first time we ran the experiment, we were both rather shaken. Most of our participants genuinely believed that Lee possessed real psychic powers! We were particularly unsettled by just how easy it had been to manipulate highly educated people. When you run experiments on human subjects, it is important to debrief people thoroughly once the experiment is over. Most of our participants were genuinely surprised and somewhat disappointed when we told them that they had been tricked.

We used a range of tests to measure participants’ beliefs, and we also asked them to write down their thoughts about the experience. The majority of our participants believed that Lee’s psychic abilities were genuine. It is important to note that all of our participants were undergraduates at a prestigious UK university, and yet over half of them were willing to believe something that was impossible. These results vividly exemplify that we cannot simply attribute magical thinking to cognitive deficits.

One of our most surprising findings was that people were happy to endorse magical beliefs even when we told them that Lee was a fake.¹⁸ Prior to seeing the demonstration, half of our participants were informed that Lee was a magician who used tricks to pretend that he was a psychic. To our absolute astonishment, this information had virtually no effect on their beliefs. Some of our participants, who just moments before had copied out instructions telling them that Lee was a fraud, were fully convinced that he was a genuine psychic. We have since run several similar experiments, with similar results. It was only when we told people how the tricks had been done that they started questioning the psychic’s powers.¹⁹

It is important to note that not all of our participants were convinced by Lee’s powers. There was a strong correlation between people’s preexisting beliefs and the extent to which they attributed the demonstration to Lee’s genuine psychic abilities. People who believed in spiritual phenomena were more likely to interpret the anomalous event as genuine, regardless of what they had been told beforehand.

Why do people believe in spiritual phenomena, even though these are scientifically impossible? Part of the answer may involve memory distortions that render the phenomena consistent with prior beliefs. Back in the 1880s, Richard Hodgson and S. J. Davey showed that people often struggled to remember crucial details of a séance.²⁰ They did this by holding fake séances and afterward asking the sitters what had occurred. Hodgson and Davey reported that many sitters omitted important details about the event and even reported witnessing genuine paranormal phenomena.²¹ More recently, Richard Wiseman and his colleagues also showed that believers in the paranormal are more likely to misremember paranormal events.²² They set up a fake séance and used trickery to create various effects (e.g., a hidden assistant moved objects with a long stick). The sitters were later asked about what they had witnessed. The results showed that believers in the paranormal were more likely to have memories of events consistent with their beliefs. For example, they were more likely to claim that the handbell had moved, even though it had not. A later study similarly found that believers in the paranormal were more likely to interpret and remember ambiguous events in ways that confirmed their preexisting paranormal beliefs.²³ But such memory biases are not the whole story.

To show this, my colleagues and I recently carried out our own experiment to measure people’s memories of spiritual performance.²⁴ We asked our volunteers to judge the accuracy of different types of readings, and we evaluated the extent to which they felt that the phenomena could have occurred by chance. We expected that believers in the paranormal would be more likely to misremember inaccurate information that supported their beliefs. Curiously, though, we found no difference between skeptics and believers; both groups were surprisingly good at remembering what they had seen. Why might this be? Our demonstration used more sophisticated deception and so created a more anomalous experience than those of previous studies. It is therefore possible that this was sufficiently powerful to elicit paranormal beliefs in most of the individuals, not just the believers. It is also likely that people’s momentary beliefs about the experience will influence how they remember the event in the future, for as we will see in subsequent chapters, our memories of events are much more malleable than we think.

The traditional view of cognition assumes that magical beliefs are restricted to a small group of individuals. But as has been shown here, this assumption does not stand up to scrutiny. Paranormal and superstitious beliefs, which are both magical, are held by large segments of our society. By using trickery and deception, we can even manipulate large numbers of highly educated people into endorsing magical beliefs. Moreover, as we shall now see, magical beliefs exert a surprisingly large influence on our everyday lives.

How Magical Beliefs Influence Our Lives

Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have played an important role in developing our ideas about magic.²⁵ For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sir James Frazer and Marcel Mauss wrote influential books about magical practices and rituals in cultures across the globe.²⁶ They also proposed laws—known as sympathetic magic—to explain many of these practices. One of these was the law of contagion, which states that things that have been in contact may influence one another via the transfer of a magical essence. This influence can remain after the physical contact has been broken and may even be permanent. Importantly, this form of magical contagion applies to situations in which there is no scientifically plausible reason for one entity to have influenced the other. For example, the Indian caste system asserts that food touched by anyone from the dalit caste is contaminated (hence the term “untouchable”), even when there is no possible way any contamination could have happened. The law of contagion can also manifest itself in more positive ways. In many religions, for instance, being physically touched by a holy figure is thought to transfer a positive essence, such as a blessing.

It is tempting to believe that these forms of magic are only found in non-Western cultures, but the law of contagion plays an important role in our own society. Many of us use alternative medicine even though the mechanisms by which it is claimed to work conflict with our scientific understanding of the world. For example, in 2007, the National Health Interview Survey estimated that approximately $2.9 billion is spent on homeopathic medicine in the United States every year.²⁷ Such medicine involves the repeated dilution of a solution that contains an “active” ingredient, resulting in tinctures that are barely distinguishable from water. Indeed, it is believed that the greater the dilution, the more potent the medicine. Interestingly, homeopathic medicine uses two principles to account for this, both with similarities to sympathetic magic. The first relies on the belief of “like cures like,” whereby a substance that causes a symptom can cure the same symptom when taken in a more diluted form.²⁸ The second principle relies on a form of contagion in which the substance’s essence is transmitted from one solution to the next by contact.

There is no scientifically plausible mechanism that can explain why these principles might work. Indeed, the suggestion that a substance diluted to such extreme levels could still affect us goes against much of current science.²⁹ Yet there are countless studies showing positive homeopathic effects for a wide range of symptoms.³⁰ How can this be? An interesting possibility is that homeopathic medicine works not because of its magical tinctures but because of our belief in those tinctures. Large-scale meta-analysis has shown that a homeopathic tincture has exactly the same healing power as a placebo, suggesting that its effects are all in our mind.³¹ Simply believing that you can be cured by an impossible or magical process can sometimes turn out to be rather effective.

I am deeply skeptical about the rationale underlying most forms of alternative medicine. When suffering from a headache, I always reach for paracetamol rather than a homeopathic tincture. More generally, I am often cynical about all principles that have not been scientifically proven. I like to think of myself as a rational person, immune to magical beliefs, but I am deluding myself. I am just as susceptible to the placebo effect as anyone else, and many of my own thought processes rest on deep-rooted magical beliefs. Let me give a quick example that many readers can likely relate to: I have been happily married for nearly nine years. Like most married men, I am strongly attached to my wedding ring; losing it would be devastating. Why am I so attached to my ring? There is nothing particularly special about it, and I could easily replace it with an identical one. Yet somehow, the replacement simply would not feel the same. Could it be that I am attached to some form of metaphysical magical essence?

Most of us have objects that we are attached to, but in most instances, what we actually treasure is the nonphysical essence that we associate with these objects. This magical attachment develops at an early age. Most children have a special teddy bear or blanket that they use as a comforter; losing such an object can be very distressing. Bruce Hood and Paul Bloom have carried out fascinating experiments to investigate this phenomenon.³² They invited parents and children (aged three to six years) to their lab and asked them to bring along several toys, some of which the children were attached to and some of which they were not. The researchers then demonstrated a magical copying machine that let them duplicate different kinds of items. For example, they placed a toy rabbit into a box, closed the lid, and pressed some buttons. When they opened it, an additional rabbit appeared inside. Although the magic box would not have won a prize at any magic competition, all of the children were convinced of its effectiveness.

The children were invited to place their own item into the box and were then asked whether they would like to take home the original or the replica. For a nonattachment item, 62 percent chose the duplicate. But for an attachment item, such as their comforter, only 23 percent did so. In fact, 20 percent of the children refused to place their beloved item into the box at all, for fear of it being duplicated. These results clearly show that children value the original object much more highly than a physically identical replica.

In a subsequent experiment, the researchers duplicated a precious metal spoon and asked the children whether they preferred the original or the duplicate. Here, the spoon contained no magical essence, and 82 percent of the children valued the items equally, demonstrating that they believed the copy to be a true replica. But in another scenario, the children were told that the original item had belonged to Queen Elizabeth II. They were now over three times more likely to choose the original over the copy. Mere ownership by the queen apparently lent the metal additional value—a value that was magically tied to a particular object.

Adults are far from immune to these forms of contagion. Such magical thinking reveals itself in various ways, such as our irrational attachment to particular objects and our obsession with products that have been endorsed or touched by celebrities. A few minutes surfing the internet reveals just how much people are prepared to pay for magical essences that have transmitted by contagion: A fan paid $394,000 for the chair that J. K. Rowling sat on while writing the first two books in the Harry Potter series.³³ Scarlett Johansson’s used tissue sold on eBay for £3,320.³⁴ These may be extreme cases, but the same principle affects us all.

Paul Rozin and his colleagues have carried out numerous studies showing just how susceptible we are to this form of sympathetic magic. For example, normal undergraduate students valued a T-shirt that had been worn by a loved one much more highly than one that had been worn by a less desirable person, which illustrates that this form of magical thinking is the norm rather than the exception.³⁵

The principle of negative contagion is even more powerful than positive contagion, and there are some wonderful experiments illustrating the mechanism at work. Imagine sitting at a table with a nice cold drink in front of you, and your friend suddenly dips a sterilized cockroach into your beverage. I consider myself to be very skeptical about magic and am fully aware that a sterilized insect cannot contaminate my drink, yet the sight of the cockroach would certainly put me off my beverage. Paul Rozin and his colleagues showed that I am not alone.³⁶ Likewise, students preferred a drink containing the label “sucrose” over one with the label “cyanide,” even though they were aware that the labels were applied randomly after the drinks had been poured.³⁷ Such results clearly show that even though we like seeing ourselves as rational individuals, our behaviors are instead deeply rooted in magical thinking.

A second law of sympathetic magic, the law of similarity, states that things that resemble one another physically share fundamental properties. This law assumes that images of an object, person, or animal are somehow equal to the object itself. For example, Frazer describes tribes who avoid eating the flesh of slow animals for fear of becoming slow and people in northern India who believe that eating the eyeball of an owl will allow them to see in the dark.³⁸ Voodoo magic involves both laws of similarity and contagion. Here, parts of your enemy, such as a hair or fingernail, are incorporated into a voodoo doll, and the process of contagion transfers your enemy’s essence into the figure. The physical similarity between the voodoo doll and the person’s body further ensures that any harm done to the doll will magically result in physical pain experienced by the person.

Few of us consciously admit to believing in the law of similarity, yet research has shown that this principle influences much of our behavior. If you are not convinced, ask yourself this question: would you rather eat a piece of chocolate shaped like a muffin or one shaped like dog feces? I know which one I would go for, and indeed Paul Rozin and his colleagues have shown that feces-shaped chocolate is overwhelmingly rated as less pleasant than muffin-shaped chocolate.³⁹ Similarly, people do not enjoy holding a piece of imitation vomit, even if they know that it is entirely made of clean rubber.⁴⁰ Although we rationally know that there is no relationship between the perceptual similarity of an object and its other physical properties, we simply cannot inhibit the emotional reactions that these objects elicit.

There is much evidence to support this idea. In the same paper, Rozin and his colleagues show that people often treat pictures of objects as if they were the real thing.⁴¹ For example, students were required to throw darts at a picture of a person they liked (John F. Kennedy) or one they disliked (Adolf Hitler), and the researchers measured the accuracy of throwing the darts at the picture. The darts strayed about eleven millimeters farther from the bull’s-eye when participants targeted JFK compared to Hitler. Similarly, people are rather hesitant to throw a dart at a picture of a baby’s face.⁴²

But surely people do not mistake a picture for reality? Although I am perfectly capable of recognizing the difference between pictures and reality, there are times when this boundary becomes more blurred. For example, while watching a horror movie, you become scared even though you consciously know that you are merely seeing a movie. Similarly, people are generally reluctant to tear up photographs of people they are close to, and I even feel bad about deleting pictures of my kids from my phone.⁴³

Bruce Hood and his colleagues have conducted research that nicely illustrates this blurred distinction between pictures and reality.⁴⁴ They asked people to bring sentimental childhood items to their lab and then took a photograph of these items. They then blurred each photo so that it could no longer be recognized by anyone who did not already know what the object was. Participants were then asked to cut these pictures in half while their anxiety level was measured. Results showed high levels of anxiety for pictures of sentimental objects but not for pictures of other familiar objects. This effect was even found when participants were not being observed, suggesting that their anxiety was not due to a public display of destruction. Hood and his colleagues suggest that these findings support the notion that although most adults explicitly reject the principles of sympathetic magic, such principles still remain in the adult mind and can occasionally influence our behavior and emotions.

So far, we have seen that magical beliefs play a much more dominant role in our daily lives than we think they do. Let us now look at the origins of these magical beliefs and the reasons why we are so reluctant to abandon them.

Magical Thinking in Children

I regularly perform magic tricks for my own children, and I am fascinated by how their reactions have changed over the years. For example, at the age of five, both Ella and Joe were pretty convinced that I could do real magic. This belief was quite apparent on Ella’s fifth birthday. She was excited when she unwrapped her present, which contained a magic wand. But she was adamant that I would have to put some magic into the wand before she could use it properly. Three years later, Ella is much more skeptical about my magic powers. For example, as I demonstrate my mind-reading powers at the breakfast table or make the odd piece of toast disappear, she is pretty sure that I am simply tricking her. But she has not yet abandoned all her magical beliefs; she still believes in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and even the Easter Bunny. My youngest daughter, Mae, on the other hand, has just turned two, and even though she enjoys seeing balls disappear, I doubt she has a clear understanding of magic. Let us now look more closely at how magical beliefs change as children grow up.

Magical thinking plays an important role in Jean Piaget’s developmental theories. He argues that magical beliefs are typically found in younger children, but as they learn more about the true causal relationships in their environment, children replace these magical beliefs with a scientific thinking process.⁴⁵ For example, Piaget observes that younger children often attribute consciousness to inanimate objects, such as a string that wants to unwind because it is twisted. Similarly, Piaget also observes that younger children often believe that desires can magically influence reality, such as when a young boy believes that “birds and butterflies in his father’s illustrated manuals would come to life and fly out of the book.⁴⁶ Piaget’s view on child development has been extremely influential. His observation that children’s magical beliefs change as they get older is correct, but he misses several important aspects of human cognition. As we have seen in this chapter, adult cognition is strongly influenced by magical beliefs, showing that our belief systems are not entirely replaced by scientific thought processes. Let us now look at these magical beliefs in more detail, as well as the reasons why they develop in the first place.

Once you observe your children’s everyday activities more closely, it becomes more obvious as to why they believe in magic. Most parents, including myself, actively encourage their children to believe in magical figures by reading them stories that contain fairies and other supernatural beings.⁴⁷ I go to great lengths to foster these magical beliefs and provide my children with false evidence to enhance them. For example, on Christmas Eve, I dress up in a Santa Claus outfit just to cover my tracks in case one of my kids wakes up as I sneak into their room. It is not only parents who encourage these magical beliefs, as most children’s television programs are packed with magic.

Given that adults continually deceive their children, it is little surprise that most preschoolers believe in fictional magical characters. These magical beliefs generally peak when children are five to six years old, after which they gradually decline.⁴⁸ Experiments have shown that around that age, children can be easily convinced into believing in a new fictional character. Jacqueline Woolley and her colleagues invented a magical character called the Candy Witch, a nice witch who visits children’s houses on Halloween night and replaces the candy that the children have collected with a new toy.⁴⁹ Teachers and parents helped propagate this myth, and several parents replaced the candy with a toy at night. Within about two weeks, most of the children believed in this magical creature, and their belief in the new Candy Witch rivaled better-established figures such as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

I sometime question my older daughter’s belief in such mystical creations and wonder if it might be driven by alternative motivations. Most of the fantastical figures in which my children believe bring some sort of gift (e.g., presents, chocolate, or coins), so it is conceivable that their magical beliefs are driven by these positive rewards. In a clever manipulation, Woolley and her colleagues measured children’s excitement about getting a new toy versus their disappointment about losing candy to the Candy Witch. Their analysis revealed that among younger children (three to four years old), belief in the Candy Witch was independent of their preference for a toy versus candy. However, for the older children (four to five years old), the expected reward (gaining the toy) and the expected consequence (losing the candy) correlated with their belief in the Candy Witch. These results clearly show that as children get older, they become more strategic in the beliefs that they endorse.

As children grow older, they develop a greater understanding of the real world and the natural physical explanation of events. For example, they learn that objects don’t simply move or disappear on their own. At the same time, they also become aware of conjuring tricks that can be learned by anyone.⁵⁰ For example, I have noticed that when I use sleight of hand to vanish a ball and make it reappear for my youngest daughter, Mae, she will grab the ball and blow on it in the hope that it will disappear. My older children, on the other hand, will take the ball and use some form of sleight of hand and misdirection to create the illusion that the ball is disappearing. Unlike Mae, they clearly have some understanding of trickery.

Even though children have some rudimentary understanding of magic tricks, children’s magical beliefs are very strong. For example, I have fond memories of receiving a Superman outfit for my sixth birthday. Despite the fact that I was fully aware that the cape would not allow me to fly, there was still some doubt at the back of my mind. Wearing my cape and the rest of the suit, I climbed up my bunk bed ladder and took a step into the unknown. Even though I knew that the cape was unlikely to work, I was still rather disappointed when I immediately plummeted to the ground. At the time, I would have told everyone that I did not believe in magic. Yet the magical thoughts were still present.

Eugene Subbotsky has conducted some preliminary research showing just how strong the belief in magic is at that age.⁵¹ In his studies, children aged four to six years were told a story about a girl who had a box that could turn pictures into real objects. When questioned, most children denied that this was possible. But when the experimenter left the room, 90 percent of them tried to turn pictures into objects and were bitterly disappointed when it did not work. In a follow-up study, the researchers placed a plastic lion on the table and explained that the magic table could turn toy figures into real ones. When directly questioned, most children above the age of four claimed that this was not possible. The experimenters then used a concealed device to animate the lion, after which most of the children either ran away (fearing that the lion was coming alive) or used a magic wand that they had been given to stop the lion from moving. Although older children often explicitly deny that they believe in magic, their behavior suggests otherwise.

As children grow older, they give the impression that they no longer believe in magic. But it does not take much to change their beliefs. Subbotsky has shown this nicely in a series of experiments using a magic box.⁵² The researchers placed a stamp inside this box, after which the magician cast a spell ordering the stamp to be burned. When the box was opened, the children found a half-burned stamp. Before seeing this trick, most of the children claimed that this type of magic could not happen in real life. But after seeing the trick, most of the five-to-six-year-olds abandoned their skeptical view and acknowledged that this was real magic. The nine-year-olds were more cynical, and only half of them acknowledged that the trick had been created through real magic. After the trick was exposed, the nine-year-olds quickly recovered their initial skepticism. However, only half of the five-year-olds accepted the nonmagical explanation, with the others continuing to believe in magic. Subbotsky suggests that when questioned, children show rational and logical thinking because this is what is expected of them. However, this disbelief in magic is only superficial; as these experiments demonstrate, children are easily persuaded that magic is real.

Thus far, we have seen that adults often deny believing in magic, but on closer inspection, much of our behavior is more magical than we think. Subbotsky suggests that in adults, magical beliefs are simply suppressed and can be reactivated given the appropriate conditions.⁵³ He also suggests that when denial of a magical belief is costly, adults are happy to give up their belief in the power of physical causality and view the world in terms of magical explanations.⁵⁴ More importantly though, these results clearly show that magical and scientific beliefs can happily coexist inside our minds.

Why Do We Believe in Magic?

Now that we have established that magical thinking is deeply ingrained in our day-to-day thoughts and behaviors, let us take a look at why such thinking might exist in the first place. A full discussion of why people believe in magic is beyond the scope of this book, but I would like to briefly discuss some of the most prominent ideas on this topic.

Several people have suggested that magical beliefs offer an adaptive strategy for dealing with the complexity of our everyday lives. Most aspects of our lives are driven by science and technology, and as we grow up, less and less becomes possible. Teenage years represent one of the most exciting periods of our lives, a time with seemingly endless possibilities. As we become adults, we get bogged down by work and other responsibilities, and for many of us, magic offers a chance to escape the mundaneness of everyday life. Magic pushes the boundaries of what is possible, and many find the idea of entering a world that is less constrained by the laws of reality to be a very appealing proposition. We are strongly drawn to magic in film and literature because entering a magical world offers a very interesting alternative reality, which many of us find comforting.⁵⁵

In children, magical beliefs provide fuel for imaginary role playing and fantasizing that helps them to cope with the chaos of their subconscious desires and to master difficult problems.⁵⁶ This helps children maintain a feeling of independence and power, and similar concepts also play a role in our adult lives. Magical beliefs can help us adults deal with complex situations that we would otherwise simply fail to understand, and they can make the inanimate world more understandable and humane.⁵⁷ For example, human-computer interactions rely on a deep-rooted magical belief that is typically known as the user illusion.⁵⁸ Every time you empty your computer’s trash folder, you happily accept the magical belief that the files within have been deleted. Accepting this magical user illusion is far more manageable than having to deal with the complexity of computer programming.

Another aspect is the illusory sense of control that magic provides, with magical beliefs offering a helping hand in situations beyond our rational control. Control is an important coping strategy, and a lack of control can lead to mental health issues such as depression. Bronisław Malinowski argued that magical beliefs and superstitious behaviors allow people to reduce the tension created by uncertainty and help fill the void of the unknown. Malinowski noticed that the behavior of fishermen in the Trobriand Islands changed depending on where they fished. In the inner lagoon, fishing was straightforward, with little ritual. When fishermen set sail for the open sea, however, there were much higher levels of superstitious behavior, often involving elaborate rituals. The water in the inner lagoon was always calm and the fishing consistent, with little risk and, consequently, a high level of perceived control. Fishing in the open sea, on the other hand, was more dangerous, with prospects that were much less certain, resulting in a lower sense of control.⁵⁹

More recent studies have provided further support for this connection. During the 1990–1991 Gulf War, researchers observed more magical thinking and superstitious behavior in people who lived in areas under direct threat of a missile attack, compared to those in low-risk areas.⁶⁰ In their study of superstitious rituals employed during high-stress examinations, Jeffrey Rudski and Ashleigh Edwards observe that the frequency of students’ exam-related magical rituals increases as the stakes increase.⁶¹ Intriguingly, students report that they frequently use these rituals while denying any causal effectiveness. Superstitious behavior therefore seems to give us the illusion of control, which can reduce anxiety during stressful situations and consequently improve performance. As with homeopathic medicine, many of these rituals might actually work, albeit through unintended or indirect mechanisms.

Few doubt that magical beliefs can provide an illusory sense of control, but why do normal people also develop and maintain magical beliefs in ordinary, nonstressful contexts? Jane Risen suggests that magical beliefs result from some of the shortcuts and heuristics that our minds use to reason about the world.⁶² According to her, there is nothing intrinsically special about magical beliefs; they simply reflect some of the biases and quirks found in our everyday cognition. Let us now examine this theory in a bit more detail.

In recent years, psychologists have proposed that we use two fundamentally different mental processes to solve cognitive tasks. In his influential book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman proposes that our reasoning and decision making rely on two separate mental processes. One of them, System 1, operates quickly and requires little cognitive effort. Rather than analyzing a problem in all its detail, it uses simple heuristics to come up with quick, intuitive answers. In many situations, this is an effective and reliable strategy. But as with any shortcut, it can lead to errors.⁶³

An example of this is the availability heuristic, a cognitive shortcut that that helps us evaluate the importance or prevalence of an event based on the ease with which we can remember the appropriate information. Information that comes to mind more easily is weighted more heavily. This is why, for example, most people vastly overestimate the likelihood of dying from a shark attack. Such attacks are extremely rare; you are far more likely to be killed by a cow.⁶⁴ Yet unlike cow attacks, shark-related deaths are widely reported in the press and so pop into your mind more easily, thereby influencing your beliefs.

Although System 1 is fast, it is not necessarily accurate, whereas accuracy is much better with System 2, the other mental process. But System 2 operates in a controlled, step-by-step manner, making it rather slow and effortful. According to Kahneman, most of our day-to-day decisions are made through System 1, with System 2 intervening to override these intuitive assessments when they go wrong.⁶⁵ Unfortunately, however, System 2 is often too effortful, so that many of these wrong answers go unnoticed, especially when they seem like they’re correct.

Let me illustrate this using a famous problem-solving task.⁶⁶ Try to solve the following problem: The combined cost of a bat and a ball is $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Before reading on, take a few moments to solve the problem. (No, really. Give it a try.) The answer that immediately springs to most people’s minds is $0.10. But this is incorrect. If the ball cost $0.10 and the bat cost $1.00 more, the total would be $1.20, not $1.10. The correct answer is actually $0.05. Even though solving this problem does not require sophisticated mathematics, more than half of the participants at elite universities and more than 80 percent of participants at less selective universities answered it incorrectly.⁶⁷

If you came up with $0.10 as the answer, you relied on System 1 and did not invest enough cognitive energy to check your answer. Had you done so, you would certainly have spotted the error because the problem is not particularly challenging. The fact that most people fail to check their answer suggests that System 2 is often lazy and inattentive. As we will learn throughout this book, there is huge pressure for the brain to save its cognitive resources. System 1 requires less effort and is much more likely to be used, even though it occasionally makes mistakes. People who come up with $0.10 as the answer have replaced “the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball” with a simpler statement: “the bat costs $1.00.” According to Kahneman, most of our cognitive reasoning is carried out by System 1, but once System 2 spots a mistake, it corrects it and enables us to come up with the correct answer.

Jane Risen recently suggested that, in many situations, System 2 notices the mistake but still does not correct it, acquiescing to the erroneous conclusion.⁶⁸ The idea that you would continue to believe something that you know to be wrong sounds rather odd, but of course, this is exactly what we observe during magical thought processes. For example, when participants refuse to drink a beverage labeled “cyanide,” they know that they are making an error, just as they know that cutting up a picture of a loved one causes no real harm. It is clear from participants’ verbal reports that people realize that their feelings toward these objects are unfounded but that they feel them anyway. For example, I know that there is nothing special about my particular wedding ring, but I feel strongly about it nonetheless.

Jane Risen argues that superstitions and other powerful intuitions can be so compelling that we simply cannot shake them off, despite knowing that they are wrong. According to her, System 2 is not simply lazy and inattentive, it is also “a bit of a pushover”; it will not override the result of System 1 if the feelings associated with that result are too strong.⁶⁹ Many of the magical beliefs discussed so far, such as the law of contagion, occur because we rely on System 1’s simple heuristics and employ them in situations where these rules do not apply. Even though System 2 knows they are wrong, it fails to correct the erroneous logic and thus acquiesces to magical beliefs.

The idea that you would believe something that you know to be impossible seems rather counterintuitive. However, this is only one of many strange and counterintuitive properties of our mind. It is important to note that Risen’s new model of cognition does not apply exclusively to magical thinking and can explain a wide range of rather irrational behaviors.

For example, in 2015, British gamblers lost a staggering £12.6 billion.⁷⁰ In 2016, American gamblers lost even more: $116.9 billion.⁷¹ People’s probability judgments clearly have some rather irrational characteristics. Many of these judgments are based on System 1 responses, which people often know are wrong.⁷² Imagine that you can win a prize by selecting a red marble from a bowl that contains both red and white ones, and you can choose whether you’d like to pick from a small bowl or a large one. The small bowl has ten marbles, one of which is red (a 10 percent chance of winning). The large bowl has one hundred marbles with fewer than ten that are red (a less than 10 percent chance of winning). You know the odds, which are clearly marked on each bowl. So which bowl would you choose? Rather surprisingly, over 80 percent of people chose the large bowl, even though they knew that the odds of winning would be lower.⁷³ We are evidently compelled to choose this bowl because it contains the larger number of winners. This is one of numerous situations in which System 1 makes a decision based on a heuristic (i.e., choose the situation with largest number of winners), while System 2, which knows the odds, fails to override this intuitive yet suboptimal decision. Likewise, sports gamblers are reluctant to bet against the favorite, even if the potential winnings of the underdog are higher.⁷⁴ Again, System 2’s failure to override such decisions contributes to the astronomical profits made by casinos and bookmakers and influences consumer behavior and stock markets around the world.⁷⁵

In this chapter, we have explored our beliefs in “real” magic and the important role these play in much of our day-to-day behavior. The current research on magical thinking challenges many traditional views of cognition—in particular, the view that childhood magical beliefs are replaced by rational and scientific reasoning in adulthood. Instead, it has become apparent that rational and magical thoughts cohabit deep inside our minds. Most previous models of cognition have struggled to accommodate the coexistence of magical and scientific thought processes, hence the need to revise our models of cognition.⁷⁶

Understanding our magical beliefs also helps us understand the experience of performance magic, because witnessing a magic performance results in a coexistence of contradictory beliefs. As previously discussed, Teller describes magic tricks in terms of experiencing things as real and unreal at the same time, while Jason Leddington suggests that the experience of magic results in a conflict between our beliefs about the world and the automatic alief that the trick itself elicits. These ideas share many similarities with the theories of magical thinking discussed in this chapter. In light of this new research, the idea of simultaneously holding contradictory beliefs or experiences seems entirely plausible. It is tempting to think of magic as simply a form of fringe entertainment that deals with unique experiences rarely encountered during day-to-day life. However, as we have seen in this chapter, magical beliefs play an important role in our everyday cognitive processes.