Why Evolution Allowed for Superstition to Endure

Humans, as well as other species, are superstitious creatures, even though there is no evolutionary benefit to being so. Or is there one, researchers ask, in light of new studies that explain how the behavior caught root and endured over the ages.

In humans, superstition is more widespread than in other species. Many carry luck charm around, or do things in a specific order when they want to affect the outcome of a future action. Such behaviors obviously bear no influence on the future, so how come evolution allowed them to persist?

Additionally, it is also costly to carry such behaviors out, especially in terms of lost opportunities and energy expenditures. Yet, numerous species do it, including pigeons, regardless of evidence which indicate their inefficiency.

“From an evolutionary perspective, superstitions seem maladaptive,” explains Canadian biologist Kevin Abbott, who is based at the Carleton University, in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a coauthor of a new study on the issue, alongside colleague Thomas Sherratt.

The research the two and their team conducted appear in the latest issue of the scientific journal Animal Behavior. The work lists numerous reasons for why such behaviors appeared and developed.

Social bonding and the placebo effect are reasonable explanations, researchers say. Abbott explains that superstition may be “the outcome of traits that were adaptive in ancestral environment; sort of like cognitive wisdom teeth.”

“Their work is helpful. It shows how these adaptive learning mechanisms can be leading us to places we shouldn't go,” explains University of California in Santa Cruz (UCSC) professor of mathematics Marc Mangel, who was not a part of the study.

“Sometimes simpler answers suffice; for beasts like us who are never quite sure that we are well enough informed, taking that multivitamin and knocking wood puts the semblance of control back in our hands, and that feels good,” former Arizona State University professor of psychology Peter R. Killeen explains.

Superstition might have also come in handy for our distant ancestors, whose lives were a lot more precarious than our own, and who did not know whether they would return from the hunt.

Finding (even unfounded) methods of encouraging themselves and lifting their morale could have given them the confidence boost needed to say “not today” when faced with the prospect of death, Inside Science reports.