Chapter 26 Lottery, Full Moon Crazy and Thirteen Club

Proponents of superstitious thinking argue that there must be some truth to these beliefs because they have all stood the test of time.They are not without reason.Lucky charms, talismans, and talismans have been found throughout the history of nearly every civilization for which records are available.The superstitious belief in banging on wood dates back to the pagan rituals of praying for help from the benevolent and powerful tree gods.A ladder placed against a wall would form a natural triangle, which would be seen as a symbol of the Holy Trinity. The reason why 13 is considered an unlucky number is because there were exactly 13 people who attended Jesus' Last Supper.

Skeptics of superstition do not see these historical data as proof that the superstition is valid. They see it as nothing more than a worrisome, deep-seated irrationality that scientific experimentation has been unable to prove is true. established.Of course they have some truth in saying that.The relationship between superstitious behavior and national lotteries is a good example.Every week, millions of people around the world play lotteries of all types in the hope of being lucky enough to receive a large sum of money that will drastically improve their lives.The winning numbers in the lottery are drawn at random, and there should be no reliable way to predict the outcome of the lottery.However, that doesn't stop people from trying to improve their odds of winning the lottery in all sorts of weird ways.Some people buy the same set of "lucky" numbers every week.Still others choose numbers based on significant events, such as their own birthday, the age of their children, or their house number.Some people have even come up with more convoluted methods, which involve writing each number on a piece of paper, scattering the papers on the floor, and then letting their cats walk into the room, and the cat touches Those numbers became their final choice.

When the UK first issued a national lottery, two other psychologists, Peter Harris and Matthew Smith, and I decided to test out different ways of picking numbers.We ran a large-scale experiment on the BBC TV show Out of Time.We asked 1,000 players to send us their numbers ahead of the draw, tell us if they considered themselves a lucky person, and describe how they picked their numbers.We quickly received lottery questionnaires filled out by players.In the end, 700 lottery players submitted questionnaires, and the number of lottery tickets they wanted to buy exceeded 2,000.The day before the draw, Matthew and I entered everyone's numbers into a general data sheet.After doing all this, we suddenly realized that we had collected some extraordinary information.If it is true that lucky people pick more winning numbers than unlucky people, then the numbers that lucky people pick but unlucky people don't are more likely to be winning numbers.We hadn't thought of this before, but if the theory is correct, the data we collected for the experiment could potentially make us millionaires.

Matthew and I discussed whether it was ethical to do so for at least a few seconds, and then began analyzing the information gathered.We noticed that some numbers were picked by the lucky ones, but not by the unlucky ones.We slowly settled on the "most likely" winning numbers - 1, 7, 17, 29, 37 and 44.For the first and only time in my life, I bought a lottery ticket for myself.The UK National Lottery draws are drawn every Saturday night and are broadcast live on prime-time television.As usual, 49 balls are put into the lottery machine, which draws six numbers and one "special" number in turn.The final winning numbers were: 2, 13, 19, 21, 45 and 32.We didn't get a single number right.So, did the lucky and unlucky people who participated in the experiment perform better?In fact, everyone behaved the same way.The lucky people picked the right numbers no more than the unlucky ones, and those who picked their numbers using various superstitious methods were no luckier than those who picked their numbers at random.And those who picked their numbers based on their birthday, their child's age, or their pet's behavior didn't fare any better.In short, in this contest, rationality defeated superstition 1:0.

Other researchers have taken a more ad hoc approach to this topic.One of my favorite experiments came from an American high school student named Mark Levine.Levine and his friends put a popular superstition to the test: seeing a black cat walk by brings bad luck.First, they had people play a simple coin toss computer game, measuring their luck by guessing which side of the coin came up.Next, the experienced cat trainer had a black cat walk in front of the people as they walked slowly down the hallway.Finally, all participants played the coin toss again to assess their luck again.After many coin tosses and "chance encounters" with black cats, Levin came to the experimental conclusion that black cats have no effect on luck.To make sure nothing was missed, the researchers repeated the experiment with white cats, again with no effect.Levine wrote at the end of the research report: Critics of this experiment may say that the bad luck brought by black cats will only appear in real life scenarios, and the coin toss game for experimental purposes cannot explain what.Levine offered his own counterargument to this: "I own a black cat myself, and even though she's walked past me hundreds of times, neither my academic performance nor my social life has deteriorated in any way. signs."

Researchers have also conducted similar experiments in what seems to be the most rational place—hospitals.It may sound surprising that doctors are also a superstitious bunch, but research on behavior associated with full moons at least bears that out.A team of researchers in the United States analyzed the medical records of about 1,500 injury patients throughout the year and found that the full moon did not have any relationship with the number of visits, mortality, type of injury or length of hospital stay.Still, a 1987 survey called "Full Moon Crazy" found that 64 percent of emergency room physicians believed the full moon would affect patient behavior.In addition, 92% of nurses also said that they are more stressed at work during the full moon.Skeptics have reason to question this latter finding, however, since the nurses also argued that the extra stress was a valid reason for their "full moon allowance".

Superstitions don't stop there.It is considered unlucky to say blessings in the theater (so actors will say "break your leg" to their partners, which actually means to send blessings to each other), the same reason, if the doctor working in the emergency room Hearing things like "tonight looks calmer," they assume that new patients are bound to flood in.Andrew Arne of Massachusetts General Hospital and his colleagues tested the superstition and described their experiments in the American Journal of Medicine. Thirty doctors were randomly divided into two groups. The "unlucky" group received the message "Good luck with your shift," while the control group received a blank sheet of paper.

The results showed that the unlucky group received no more visits and slept no less than the control group (in fact, the group that received the blessing message received fewer patients than the group that received the blank paper, and sleep more time than the latter).Like all important scientific discoveries, this experiment is being repeated today all over the world.One of these is the validation done by British physicians Patrick Davies and Adam Fox.They divided the ER workday into two types: control days and "problem days."On control days, the work team talked about weather conditions, but on "problem" days, they all said the night should be calm.The experimental results they obtained were no different from those of American doctors, and there was no significant difference in the number of visits between the two different days.

In the practice of verifying superstitious statements, the most systematic and comprehensive experiments should probably be traced back to the end of the last century. In the 1880s, Captain William Fowler, a veteran of the American Civil War, decided to challenge fate and created the Thirteen Club in New York.What he did was actually very simple.On the 13th of every month, he invites 12 guests to dinner with him and breaks all kinds of well-known superstitions, such as spreading salt on the table, crossing forks, and opening umbrellas indoors.Little did Captain Fowler expect that the Thirteen Club would become an instant hit and quickly become the hottest social club in New York City.This prompted him to find a bigger room to accommodate more tables, each with 13 people.In the following 40 years, the membership of the club has ballooned to thousands of people, and the list of honorary members includes at least five consecutive US presidents.The mentality and power of members to challenge superstitious thinking cannot be ignored. In a speech to the club on December 13, 1886, the statesman, orator and atheist Robert Greene Ingersoll said:

In this world, the most important thing is to break the superstition.Superstitions stand in the way of human happiness.Superstition is a terrible poisonous snake, writhing its terrible shape and descending from the sky, piercing people's hearts with its fangs.As long as I live, I will do my best to destroy this terrible monster. Ingersoll further explained that if he died and found out that there was indeed an afterlife, he would still be committed to arguing with superstitious people who believe in supernatural powers.Members of the Thirteen Club have been shown to live healthy and happy lives despite engaging in practices that are said to bring bad luck, death, and disease. At the club's 13th dinner in 1895, Fowler reported that the death rate among club members was actually slightly lower than the average for the general public. In 1936 Arthur Lehman Jr., who had been club leader, commented on the positive effects of breaking superstitious taboos as follows:

My advice to anyone looking for true luck, happiness and health is to start today and break all known superstitions... as far as I know, all members of the club are lucky... I am 78 years old Well, I don't think you'll find anyone happier or healthier than me. So, if superstitious claims are untenable, why have they survived the test of time?Why is it passed down from generation to generation?Perhaps the islanders off the coast of New Guinea and the Israelis trying to deal with Scud missiles in the first Gulf War can provide us with some answers.