Website review: Psychology Today: Magical Thinking
Mopster discovered this in Psychology
•5 reviews since Mar 6, 2008
psychology, magic
•psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php
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Mopster discovered 4 months ago- Magical thinking is good for you.
- aliasinkhorn rated 3 months ago
- From the page: "Magical thinking can be plotted on a spectrum, with skeptics at one end and schizophrenics at the other. People who endorse magical ideation, ranging from the innocuous (occasional fear of stepping on sidewalk cracks) to the outlandish (TV broadcasters know when you're watching), are more likely to have psychosis or develop it later in their lives. People who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder also exhibit elevated levels of paranoia, perceptual disturbances, and magical thinking, particularly "thought-action fusion," the belief that your negative thoughts can cause harm. These people are compelled to carry out repetitive tasks to counteract their intrusive thoughts about unlocked doors or loved ones getting cancer. But more magical thinking does not necessarily mean more emotional problems - what counts is whether such thinking interferes with everyday functioning. You wouldn't want to be at the skeptic end of the spectrum anyway. "To be totally 'unmagical' is very unhealthy," says Peter Brugger, head of neuropsychology at University Hospital Zurich. He has data, for example, strongly linking lack of magical ideation to anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. "Students who are 'not magical' don't typically enjoy going to parties and so on," he says. He's also found that there's a key chemical involved in magical thinking. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter that the brain uses to tag experiences as meaningful, floods the brains of schizophrenics, who see significance in everything, but merely trickles in many depressives, who struggle to find value in everyday life. In one experiment, paranormal believers (who are high in dopamine) were more prone than nonbelievers to spot nonexistent faces when looking at jumbled images and also were less likely to miss the faces when they really were there. Everyone spotted more faces when given dopamine-boosting drugs. Brugger argues that the ability to see patterns and make loose associations enhances creativity and also serves a practical function: "If you're on the grassland, it's always better to assume that a tiger is there." "
- PcsBear rated 3 months ago
- From the page: "But you are wired to find meaning in the world, a predisposition that leaves you with less control over your beliefs than you may think. Even if you're a hard-core atheist who walks under ladders and pronounces 'new age' like 'sewage,' you believe in magic.
Magical thinking springs up everywhere. Some irrational beliefs (Santa Claus?) are passed on to us. But others we find on our own. Survival requires recognizing patterns -- night follows day, berries that color will make you ill. And because missing the obvious often hurts more than seeing the imaginary, our skills at inferring connections are overtuned." - From the page: "But you are wired to find meaning in the world, a predisposition that leaves you with less control over your beliefs than you may think. Even if you're a hard-core atheist who walks under ladders and pronounces 'new age' like 'sewage,' you believe in magic.
- XenZ rated 4 months ago
- Magic thinking is hardwired
- gavinski rated 4 months ago
- A very interesting article on how many magical beliefs have gained some element of scientific validity: * Magical contagion: Germ theory has shown that we have reason to fear that something invisible and negative can be transmitted by contact. Bacteria are the new curses. * Holographic existence: The idea that the whole is contained in each of its parts is born out by biology. Every cell in your body contains all of the DNA needed to create an entire person. * Action at a distance: Can voodoo dolls and magic wands have an impact? Well, gravitational pull works at a distance. So do remote controls, through electromagnetic radiation. * Mind over matter: The placebo effect is well-documented. Just thinking that an inert pill will have a medical effect on you makes it so. * Mana: Mana is the Polynesian term for the ubiquitous concept of communicable supernatural power. There is indeed a universally applicable parcel of influence that is abstract and connects us all: money. Stumbled by Mopster
