Biggie Smalls… Biggie Smalls… [Sigh, clears throat] Biggie Smalls... Biggie Smalls... Biggie Smalls. K. I think... [Poof] What the [beep] is this?! I was just trying to make a video about superstitions. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I mean, who would know?! Right? [Intro music] Whether you're talking about luck or curses, you’re talking about
superstition. Some sort of supernatural or cosmic influence that you hope to harness for yourself
or avoid entirely. In psychology, we call this magical thinking. It doesn’t always have to be
religious, and in fact most of the time it’s not. Superstitions come from the fact that our
brains are natural pattern seekers. Even when there isn’t one, our brains try to find one. We’ll
dismiss coincidences, count things that are close or good enough, and in the end we have what we
believe to be the cause and effect relationship. I used to teach about the development of
superstition in my classroom and it doesn’t really work here in the YouTube environment. But what
I would do is tell my students that they had ten minutes to earn 100 points. I wouldn’t tell them
how they earned the points other than that normal school rules applied, so no touching. Then I’d put
on a pair of sunglasses and just enjoy the show. Admittedly, I got the idea from a British
television show called Trick or Treat. The episode where they discuss this happens to guest star
David Tennant. And now I’ve lost half my audience. Anyway, once the class earned their 100 points,
I asked if any of them figured out the rules. Half the class raised their hands and said stuff
like every time they picked up a piece of trash, or every time they blinked three times
in a row. I asked them if it was every single time and they said no. They thought
I was switching between them and some other student. So they had incorporated the time
they were wrong into their own rule system. This is how superstitions are born. The
students thought that their actions were causing them to earn points. In truth, I
was wearing the sunglasses because I wasn’t watching the students at all. In fact, I
was watching my screensaver and everytime a new fish appeared on screen they were earning a
point. It had nothing to do with them whatsoever. But in that case they were being told that their
actions were directly awarding them points, which wasn’t the case. Here in the real world, we
aren’t earning points and we don’t really know if there even are rules. So we’re just all sort of
figuring it out and hoping that there’s a pattern. The theory on how superstitions are born comes
from B.F. Skinner and his pigeons. Skinner is famous for his work on operant conditioning, which
plays a huge role in superstition. Some of his pigeons were fed on a fixed ratio, which means
they were fed after a certain number of actions were performed. Or on a fixed interval, which just
means they were fed on a certain time interval. He found that the pigeons who were on the
fixed interval time schedule would perform the same actions that they were doing the
last time they were fed, thinking that this would influence when they get fed again. And
eventually that was true, they would get fed, reinforcing that superstitious behavior.
Like my students, and the pigeons, you’ll forget all of the times that you were
wrong, and only remember the times that you were right. This will happen over and over until you’ve
become convinced that you know what the rule is. Now there are two types of superstition;
there’s good luck, which comes from finding four leaf clovers, carrying around rabbits feet,
throwing coins into a fountain or wishing upon a shooting star. And then there’s bad luck,
or curses, which come from breaking mirrors, walking under a ladder, having a black cat walk
across your path, or opening an umbrella indoors. All of these are rules that we’ve constructed in
order to figure out the cosmic feeding schedule. But this is just normal everyday
life. What about situations where you purposefully need an extra boost of luck?
Some athletes will wear the same pair of socks or unmentionables over and over because they won with
them once before. Other people might carry around a lucky coin or other souvenir believing that it
brings them good fortune. But this doesn’t even come close to the king of superstition, gambling.
Craps is by far the most superstitious game in any casino. While you’re at the table, you
are not allowed to say the word seven. Much like the Scottish play, just saying the name
is bad luck. Even the dealers won’t say seven. And if you’re explaining to a new player
how to play the game, like oh how do I lose, you just say, you don’t want to see one number and
you don’t see it on this layout. On the layout it has four, five, six, eight, nine, ten. You know?
So seven doesn’t even appear on the layout? Seven not even on there. It’s
the only number you don’t want to see but you don’t even talk about it.
Along with the superstition surrounding the number seven, players will often have their
own way of imbuing the dice with luck. Most often by blowing on them. I suppose if you’re
gambling, in addition to the normal gases, there is some sort of luck molecule you can exhale.
In games like blackjack, it’s usually seen as bad luck for someone to come in in the middle of
a shoe. The shoe is the current set of shuffled cards. The idea is that the luck of the shoe has
already been set up and someone coming in in the middle will mess up the feeding schedule
and now we’ll all lose. Some players will even [slap] slap the table as their card is
being dealt to them in order to cosmically change it into the card that they need.
In other card games, like poker, people use card protectors that they believe
are lucky. Card protectors are what you put on top of your cards in order to indicate
to the dealer that you haven’t folded, even though you’re not actively holding your
cards. Some people will bring multiple card protectors because eventually the luck imbued
within them runs out and they need to be replaced. The easiest superstition to spot in a casino is
called the gambler’s fallacy. As an example, let’s pretend that a coin has a 50-50 chance of landing
on heads or tails. It’s actually 51-49, but we’re pretending, remember? [Coin drops] Anyway, I
flip it four times and it lands [coin drop] on heads all four times. What are you gonna
bet next? [Coin drop] Most normal people, including heavy gamblers, are gonna bet on tails,
because it’s bound to happen eventually. But this is the fallacy. The previous flips have no effect
on the next one. It’s still a 50-50 chance. Falling into this fallacy is easiest on
games of pure chance like roulette. If the table rolls red five times in a row, people
will start placing bets on black because it’s bound to happen. What happens in the past
will not affect what’s going to happen in the future, the table could still roll red.
Another fun thing to do at the casino is to watch the slot machines. That’s where you’ll
find all the old ladies with their fanny packs. They aren’t playing though. They’re just
watching all the college kids throw away their money. Why aren’t they playing? Because
they’re waiting for the birthday girl to lose enough money that she gives up and walks
away, so that they can take their spot. She believes that the feeding schedule of
the machine has run up and it is due for a payout. If only that naïve college girl had
stuck it out just a little bit longer. But believing the machine is due for a payout is no
different that thinking red or tails is bound to hit. Nothing the previous player did has
any affect on what the next player will get. But even people who work in casinos and
know these things aren’t true eventually find themselves believing in superstitions.
Yes, I truly believe in beginner's luck. Oh okay.
Oh my god, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s uncanny.
You may think these things are confined to the casino or at least to the gambling or
superstitious world. And you couldn’t be further from the truth. Everyone participates in
this, even you. It’s part of the psychological theory of the illusion of control. The tendency
of people to overestimate their ability to control events. You may scoff at that idea, but
you very likely participate in a ritual well. These may be for luck or for some sort of
practical purpose, like a pre-game stretching routine, or prayer, or some sort of specific meal.
But these are all rituals. Even I have a ritual for every time I watch a new Game of Thrones
episode. I watch the previous episode while making whatever junk food I’m gonna have for dinner. I
turn off the internet and silence my phone because that’s the only way to avoid any spoilers. And
then I sit back and enjoy. But that doesn’t mean I have any control over what happens in the episode.
This is where quasi-magical thinking comes in. This is when you know your actions
don’t have any effect on the outcome, but you do them anyway. Like when you shout “no!”
at the TV because your favorite character is about to die. Again. Or when you close your eyes and
wish while you open up what you hope to be an acceptance letter to a university. You know
your actions aren’t going to go back in time and change the dean or the writer’s mind. But
you do it anyway because you have some cosmic hope that maybe your actions do have some sort
of control. Or at least maybe there is someone out there who does have control who can help you.
And that’s the overarching point of superstition. Trying to figure out the rules of this random
universe so that we feel like we have some sort of control, or at least understanding of it. But
the truth is, none of us have the answers. None of us have control. And there’s nobody out there that
we can ask to change the cosmic feeding schedule for us. So the next time you want to toss a coin
into a fountain, or wish upon a falling star, or break a mirror, don’t worry, nothing is
going to happen, because now, you know better. Hey guys, if you learned anything from this
video, go ahead and give that like button a click. If you’d like to see more from me,
I put out new videos every weekend, so go ahead and give that subscribe button a tickle.
If you don’t, a dead girl is gonna crawl out of your TV and haunt you for the next five years.
Because of all of your help, I’m about to hit 250 subscribers. So I figured along with a couple
challenges, I’d give you guys the opportunity to ask me anything you wanted about the channel
or the content I’ve created down in the comments below. I’ll do a more personal Q&A later on down
the line. But in the meantime, if you’d like to see one of my older videos, how about this one? [Outro music]
