Are you afraid of black cats ?
What would it feels if you broke a mirror ?
Would you open an umbrella indoors and how do you feel about the number 13 ?
Whether or not you believe in them you're probably familiar with a few of these superstitions, so how did it happen that people all over the world knock on wood or avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks ?
Well although, they have no basis in science.
Humans are superstitious because we fear and we feel what we became powerless.
There’s the famous experiments performed by B.F. Skinner . He put pigeons in a box and fed them at random intervals. When the pigeons were observed later, they were exhibiting odd behaviors like turning in circles or bobbing their heads. They believed that something they were doing influenced the food to appear.
The experiment might be said to demonstrate a sort of superstition. The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food, although such a relation is lacking. There are many analogies in human behavior. Rituals for changing one's fortune at cards are good examples. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances.
Many of these weirdly specific beliefs and practices do have equally weird and specific origins.
They involve supernatural causes. Many superstitions are based in religion for example the number thirteen was associated with the biblical Last Supper where Jesus Christ dined with his twelve disciples just before being arrested and crucified the resulting idea that having thirteen people at a table was bad luck.
The fear of 13 is called triskaidekaphobia and so common, that many buildings around the world get the 13th floor with the numbers going straight from 12 to 14.
People believed that trees were home to various spirits so touching a tree would invoke the protection or blessing of the spirit within and somehow this tradition survived long after belief in these spirits. Many superstitions are common today in countries from Russia to Ireland are thought to be remnants of the pagan religions that Christianity replaced. But not all superstitions are religious some are just based on unfortunate coincidences.
Many Italians fear the number 17 because the Roman numeral XVII can be rearranged to form the word VC meaning my life had ended. Similarly the word for the number four sounds almost identical to the word for death in Cantonese as well as languages like Japanese and Korean that have borrowed Chinese numerals and since the number one also sounds like the word for the phrase meaning "must die". That's a lot of numbers for elevators in international hotels are avoided. Believe it or not, some superstitions actually make sense or at least they did until we forgot their original purpose for example, if a cat cross our way, mostly people fear that something will go wrong and full of anxitey. And if some bad incidence happened, then they realtes that the incidence was caused by the bad luck, the cat which crossed their way.
Many people superstitions are based more on cultural habit than conscious belief. After all no one is born knowing to avoid walking under ladders or whistling indoors but if we grow up being told by our family to avoid these things chances are they'll make us uncomfortable even after we logically understand that nothing bad will happen.
Do you belive on the superstitions ? If any bad experience on your life, then share it.
...