10 24 2013 Wade Boggs really superstitious baseball player Magical Thinking Magical beliefs give the illusion of control over mysterious and threatening forces o Can provide comfort when a phenomenon is not understood o Can blind the thinker to reality when the phenomenon comes to be clearly understood Superstition Superstitions are beliefs or practices groundless in themselves and inconsistent with the degree of enlightenment reached by the community to which one belongs Superstitious behavior Post hoc ergo propter hoc Contiguity and coincidence Post hoc ergo propter hoc Events that occur in close temporal proximity Contiguity When two things come together in space they are contiguous When two events come together in time they are coincident Shaping behavior Conditioned Classical Pavlov dogs salivation experiment Reflexive behaviors o Blinking yawning salivating etc Pair a reflexive behavior with stimulus The unconditioned stimulus reliably produces a reflexive behavior o A puff of air will cause eye to blink The neautral stimulus is unrelated to the behavior o A tone will not cause the eye to blink The eye blink to the tone without the air is the conditioned response Operant B F Skinner father of operant Behavior is reinforced will persist Positive reinforcement o Something good happens after a behavior is performed Negative reinforcement o Take away a bad stimulus after behavior is performed o Noxous stimulus Superstitious behavior Thorndikes Puzzle Box o A hungry cat is placed in a box with food clearly visible outside the box o Escape from the box is accomplished by pushing a lever o After several times they get out almost immediately o Every cat escapes in the same way o Whatever was initially successful will persist Animals will repeat complex behavior after it is rewarded Children and adults are just as likely to do this as animals o Bobo Ono Classical is passive effective mostly for reflexive behaviors Operant conditioning is active not limited in its range Playing it safe Are people conditioned like pigeons or o Is there a reasoning error Do people believe their superstitious behaviors actually cause the events OR o Are people hedging their bets If its easy to do it why not Vyse Three kinds of superstitions o Simple superstitions o Sensory superstitions Ascribes particular importance to features of our surroundings Ex Taking a test with your lucky pencil Morse and skinner pigeons given access to food if they pecked for the key Mostly orange but sometimes switched to blue When the key changes colors the behavior changed Either ignore the key entirely or peck at the key very rapidly o Concurrent superstitions Results when rewards for one action encourage another unrelated action ex The effect of the broken remote control works when I shake it always shake it to change Catania and Cutts channel times after a behavior Experiment A variable schedule of reinforcement delivers a reward at differing o Using two push buttons accumulate points on counter Only the right button produced points of a variable schedule and the left button did nothing All students used sequences Why are we superstitious superstitions We often are unaware of our conditioned behaviors simple When the reward is great and the cost of the behavior is minor the tendency towards superstition is increased Sports illustrated jinx If you pose for the covers you end up not The regression effect doing well Regression towards the mean Tall people tend to have tall children short people tend to have Very very tall people tend to have children that are shorter than short children they are Implication for extreme measurements we should see subsequent measurements that are not so extreme Alternative medicines Take medicine start to feel better Two events are contiguous o Therefore we think that the medication is making us better but it is really just the natural course of the disease o Have to be testing under double blind anecdotal evidence does not matter Summary Superstitions are learned Conditioning occurs when events are contiguous Contiguity influences perception of cause Conditioned behaviors are common and normal 10 24 2013 10 24 2013