![]() They need to feel safe in the world they live in, and they don't want to feel powerless and out of control.They need to know why something big happened: they need an explanation and they want to feel certain of that truth.According to Douglas, people are drawn to conspiracy theories because: I know, I know, this does sound like a Pindaric flight, but bare with me. This reminded me about another article, where Karen Douglas, PhD of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, discusses psychological research on how conspiracy theories start and why they persist. "superstition has its roots in our species' youth when our ancestors could not understand the forces and whims of the natural world." Our predecessors thus created and delivered to us a whole set of instructions to survive any kind of event, especially "in conditions of absence of confidence, insecurity, fear, and threat." ![]() To quote an article that appeared in the International Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences: The sentence refers to the fact that all societies developed their own sets of superstitions, which often are the best starting point to get to the most authentic features of their cultures.Īccording to psychologists, the reason why we keep touching wood or crossing our fingers to get good luck - even though on some level we know they're not actually going to improve our chances - is that sometimes superstitions help us relieving anxiety about the unknown, thus giving us a sense of control over our lives. "Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either". In Following the Equator, Mark Twain wrote: What do you think about superstition? Whatever the answer is, it left a mark in our language with idioms like "break a leg","fingers crossed" and "touch wood".
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