Stay lucky

Well, whaddya know... it turns out that keeping your fingers crossed does help after all!

A study to be published in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science reveals that 'activating a superstition' by for example, saying "keep your fingers crossed" can have a real effect and enhance subsequent task performance.

The German researchers had female university students engage in a 'motor dexterity task', which involved getting 36 small balls into 36 small holes by tilting a perspex cube backwards and forwards (you know the kind of thing... those infuriating little puzzles that require a delicate hand!). The students were separated into three conditions. In one condition, just as they were about to start the task, the researcher said the German equivalent of "I keep my fingers crossed!" (which in fact is apparently "I press the thumbs for you!"... but in German). The other two conditions were control conditions. The students in the experimental condition went on to complete the task significantly faster than those in either of the control conditions!

Damisch, L., Stoberock, B. & Mussweiler, T. (in press). Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science.

Unlucky for some

Today is Friday the 13th, the first of three this year. And it would seem that on Friday the 13th there really is an increased chance of being involved in an accident even though there is less traffic on the road. A study conducted in the early 1990's*, compared the number of traffic accident casualties admitted to hospital in the South West Thames region of England on Friday 13th's with the number of admissions on Friday 6th's during the same period. The researchers found that there were consistently more admissions on Friday 13th's than on Friday 6th's (a total of 65 in the period examined compared to 45, an increase of more than 50%). The difference was statistically significant.

The researchers did a similar comparison for the amount of traffic on the roads on these days (specifically certain sections of the M25 London orbital motorway). They found that there were actually a little over 1% fewer vehicles on the road on Friday 13th's compared to Friday 6th's.

If these data reflect a genuine difference between the two days, then maybe Friday the 13th really is an unlucky day! What I think it might reveal is that people's beliefs about Friday the 13th could become a rather neat example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, a small percentage of people (around 1%) may be sufficiently superstitious about Friday the 13th being an unlucky day that they avoid driving (or at least motorway driving). Those drivers that still decide to get in their car may still be aware of the superstitions surrounding Friday the 13th and this may actually increase their fear and anxiety enough to affect their concentration while driving.

I stayed at home today.

*Scanlon, T. J., Luben, R. N., Scanlon, F. L., Singleton, N. (1993). Is Friday the 13th bad for your health? British Medical Journal, 307 (6919), 1584–1586.