If someone breaks out the Ouija board at the Halloween party
you’re attending in attempts to contact and converse with their late Uncle
Bernie, do them a favor, and tell them any movements they make on the board can
be explained by the theory of ideomotor action (I’m sure it’ll make you the
life of the party). The gist of ideomotor action is that people are prepared to
initiate movements they think about performing even if they are not going to
actually enact the movement, and most importantly, that there is a tendency to
enact the movement the more vividly it is imagined. [1]
Ideomotor action has been used as far back as the 1800s to
explain various psychic phenomena such as water witching (using a diving rod to
find water underground, a debunked practice which is still very much in
practice today), magic pendulums (used to ascertain the sex of an unborn baby;
also debunked), and yes, those seemingly involuntary movements made on Ouija
boards.[2] There is
support for a particular type of ideomotor action that is called intentional
induction, which entails the greater likelihood of instigating a movement if it
results in something we would like to see happen.[3] One could
liken intentional induction to a confirmation bias or self-fulfilling prophecy.
Applied to the Ouija board, if your friend expects Uncle Bernie’s psychic
powers to move their hands, the intentional induction facet of ideomotor action
theory suggests their hands will be more likely to move across the board and
spell out what they think is Bernie’s message. It turns out Bernie’s message is
merely what you would like to hear from Bernie.
Interestingly, there is some knowledge to be gleaned from Ouija
boards. In a study involving a memory task that specifically examined implicit sematic
memory, which is not accessible to conscious recall, participants
providing volitional responses to questions they had to guess the answers to were
accurate at chance levels (about 50%).[4] However, participants who used a Ouija board
to respond to questions they were guessing the answers to were accurate 65% of
the time, a significant difference from the volitional response group. It turns
out ideomotor actions can tap into knowledge we have but don’t know we have. Ouija
boards can be a useful tool to communicate information about ourselves to
ourselves, but falls short of tapping the communication lines of ancestral
ghosts. In short, belief in the traditional powers of Ouija boards is plain,
old superstitious.
Superstitions. What are they? Why do so many of us believe
in them? And how is it that people will do seemingly irrational things in order
to continue their good fortune and not invite misfortune? Superstition is defined
as an irrational belief that an object,
action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of event influences
its outcome. It’s October, and it seems the month of October is bombarded
with superstitions like “playoff beards” in baseball and the ominous sign of black
cats on Halloween night. What these things have in common are people engaging
in behaviors to support the belief that they are somehow in control of the
outcome.
Fifty years ago, one of the greats in Experimental
Psychology, B.F. Skinner shaped superstitious behavior in pigeons. In his paper
published in 1948, titled "Superstition in the Pigeon," Skinner
explained how reinforcing pigeons on an interval schedule (delivering a treat
after a certain amount of time has passed) produced superstitious behavior in
the pigeon. For example, Skinner would deliver a food pellet to the pigeon
after a certain amount of time. He found that the pigeon would then continue to
perform any behavior that occurred immediately before the food pellet was delivered.
The pigeon's behavior did not control the delivery of the food pellet, but the
pigeons began to walk in counter-clockwise circles, bob their heads, or toss
their heads as if the pigeon was lifting an "imaginary lever."[5] Although
the pigeon's behavior had no control over the outcome, the pigeons continued to
engage in the behavior that may have resulted in their fortune. The pigeon’s
behaviors sound a lot like lucky socks before a game, a lucky tie before a job
interview, never again wearing the shoes that resulted in a particularly bad
day. Want to make someone engage in irrational behaviors in their attempt to
control the outcome of an event they actually have no control over? Just deliver
treats on a time schedule and see what types of behaviors you begin to
see.
And if you want to get a gruesome image stuck in someone’s
head while they are performing these irrational behaviors, just tell them not to think of flesh-eating
zombies of The Walking Dead ilk. In a study of thought suppression,[6] where
participants were instructed not to think of a white bear, what do you think
happened? You guessed it, they reporting
having intrusive thoughts of a white polar bear. This is explained by ironic
process theory, which states that there is a dual process of cognition: one is
automatic and effortless and is responsible for looking for a failure of
control, while the other is the conscious operating process.[7] In the
polar bear experiment, participants tried to consciously think of something
else, but the automatic, effortless process of looking for a failure of control
(thinking of a white bear) often kicked in and this restarted the cycle of
consciously attempting not to think of the bear yet again…until the automatic,
effortless process looking for failure of control forced the white bear back
into consciousness (hence the name ironic
effects of mental control). It is important to note that these effects are most
pronounced under high cognitive load where resources are taxed thereby making
those automatic, effortless processes much more influential. This doesn’t take
away from the effects of ironic processing theory because in everyday life, we
are typically cognitively taxed with the billions of bits of information
flooding our senses. In point of fact, the ironic effect of mental control has been
demonstrated in several facets of life such as depression, sleep disorders, and
even sexual deviancy,[8] which
makes this theory one of clinical relevance.
So there you have it, the psychology behind Halloween-related
phenomena. Hopefully, a black cat will not cross your path this Halloween night
as you are stepping on a crack on the sidewalk, fingers crossed! -just in case. Boo!
[1]
http://www.percepp.com/idmoimac.htm
[2] Pfister, R., Janczyk, M., Kunde, W. (2013), Action Effects in Perception and Action: The Ideomotor Approach. Frontiers in Cognition.
[3] Knuf, L., Aschersleben, G., Prinz, W. (2001), An Analysis of Ideomotor Action. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 130(4): 779-98
[4] Gauchou, H.L., Rensink, R.A., Fels, S. Expression of Non-conscious Knowledge via Ideomotor Actions,Consciousness and Cognition: An International Journal, Vol 21(2), Jun, 2012. pp. 976-982
[6] Wegner, D. M. (1989), White
bears and other unwanted thoughts: Suppression, obsession, and the psychology
of mental control, New York: Viking/Penguin
[8] Johnston, L., Ward, T., Hudson, S. (1997). Deviant Sexual Thoughts: Mental Control and the Treatment of Sexual Offenders, 34(2).
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