The Gamblers Bookshop

Researchers used images like this one to test if volunteers accurately saw hidden images or if they made up images where none existed.

Those who felt powerless were more likely to see patterns where they didn’t exist, a recent study found.

As written by Dan Charles for NPR’s All Things Considered on October 3, 2008:

Humans are always looking for patterns in the world around us. Anthropologists say superstitions are most common among people who feel that their lives depend on things that are beyond their control. They point to Pacific islanders who fish out on the open ocean, for example, or baseball pitchers. [Listen to story]

Researcher Jennifer Whitson authored a report which supports a link between the feeling of lack of control and belief in illusions and superstitions, such as the popular Redskins Predictor.

(the researchers) recruited volunteers and tried to induce in half of them the feeling of powerlessness. One device was a rigged intelligence test, conditioned to make the group feel a lack of control.

“No matter how hard they tried, half the time they were told they were correct, and half the time they were told they were incorrect; there was no correlation with their actual correctness,” she says.

The remaining volunteers got to experience the opposite: a feeling of control. … “We literally found people seeing images in static — they were given pictures that were just pure noise, like static on a television set — and we had those who felt that they lacked control saying that they saw significantly more images,” … the powerless group was significantly more worried and superstitious about trying to reverse these patterns in the future. They were definitely going to stomp their feet next time.

In short, people who felt that the world was beyond their control became so hungry for patterns and connections that their minds started just making them up.