The modern world bustles with magical thinking. Some of us pick up pennies for good luck, believe we missed a flight for a reason or become convinced that a computer tried to ruin our day by crashing.

In his new book The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking, science writer Matthew Hutson argues that we’re all believers — even the staunchest of skeptics. The book isn’t a diatribe against irrational beliefs, despite Hutson’s admission of being an atheist and a skeptic since the age of 10.

“I started wondering why people adamantly believe strange things. I began to apply psychology and cognitive science to the question of how we find meaning in the world and how we decide what’s reality and what’s illusion,” Hutson said. “Embracing irrationality, as it turns out, isn’t always a bad thing.”

Wired chatted with Hutson about his book, how it changed him and what kind of magical thinking even über-skeptic Richard Dawkins subscribes to.

Wired: Magical thinking encompasses a lot of quirky human behaviors, but what’s your favorite example?

Matthew Hutson: The construction worker who secretly buried a Red Sox jersey in the new Yankee stadium, in the wet concrete. A year later the Yankees found out and made a big deal out of it. The fans were calling for blood and for it to be removed, and the Yankees didn’t want the stadium to be cursed, so they jack-hammered it out of several feet of concrete and pulled this thing, this shirt out of the ground in front of media.

The fact people were concerned that a shirt bearing the name and number of a Red Sox player could curse a stadium by sitting in the concrete of a floor? To me that is weird, funny and illogical behavior.

But by looking at that kind of thing, you get a chance to explore: What do you mean by cursed? Why do we care so much about symbols? How do we judge cause and effect? It gives you a great window into human cognition.

Wired: Do you have a favorite law of magical thinking?

Hutson: The chapter that turned out to be the longest and covered the most ground was chapter seven, Everything Happens for a Reason. This is something that is really broadly applicable. We’re always thinking about why things in our lives happen and what the meaning is.

Let’s say you miss your bus. It’s easy to take that as meant-to-be. Perhaps you think you have really bad luck and the universe is out to get you. But then you can also turn that around and maybe say, “I was meant to miss this thing for a positive reason. Maybe on the next bus or train, I’m supposed to strike up conversation with someone interesting and something good will come out of that.” There are everyday scenarios where we tend to read meaning into things automatically, without thinking, just because we have this teleological bias that leaves us to see intentionality in the world.

'Magical thinking is a natural human instinct that we all have, even the Richard Dawkins of the world.'

You can apply that to bigger and broader things. Maybe you lose your job, or get dumped by your girlfriend or boyfriend, or someone close to you dies. If you see that as meant to happen, that can help you see the silver lining and cope with whatever has happened and grow in the aftermath. It can help you avoid the sense that you’re living in a chaotic universe that doesn’t care about what happens to you. Which is probably the truth, but is not a comforting thought. It’s sometimes better to see meaning in things.

Wired: What do skeptics think of your book?

Hutson: I’ve received some negative feedback through comments on blog posts or articles online. These are most frequently by skeptics, and — critically — skeptics who haven’t actually read the actual book. It turns out a lot of skeptics don’t like hearing that they aren’t as rational as they think they are. They also don’t like hearing that there are some benefits to irrationality.

Richard Dawkins is an example of kind of an über-skeptic. He would probably deny that he demonstrates any kind of magical thinking, but in the book I mention one example where he does demonstrate magical thinking. There’s a documentary about Darwin, and in it Richard Dawkins goes to museum in England that’s housing some of the bird specimens that Darwin used in his research. And so Dawkins is picking up and touching these birds and saying, “Wow this is crazy, these are the actual birds that Darwin handled!”

This fits into chapter one of my book about objects having essences. So he apparently believes, on some level, that objects can carry the essences of people who have touched or owned objects beforehand, this sort of non-physical property — as if some part of Darwin was still in the birds. That underscores how magical thinking is a natural human instinct that we all have, even the Richard Dawkinses of the world.

Wired: Did magical thinking somehow evolve as beneficial for humans?

Hutson: I think it’s safe to claim that magical thinking emerges from basic underlying cognitive mechanisms — shortcuts that we take, biases, heuristics. For instance, the way that we assess causality. If A happens before B, A is related to B and there is no other obvious cause of B, then we assume A caused B. Even if A is just a thought, for instance. So if you think about an event and then it happens, you will automatically feel a little bit responsible for the event. As if your thought went out there and caused the event. So that’s an example of magical thinking in the form of mind-over-matter just emerging from this basic mental shortcut.

A more controversial claim, which is very possible, is that magical thinking is an exaptation. An exaptation is some adaptation that emerged as a byproduct of something else, but became so useful that evolution started to select for aspects of that in addition to the initial thing.

Wired: What’s a good example of an exaptation? And how might magical thinking have emerged and become beneficial?

Hutson: The feather is a good one. Feathers emerged as a form of insulation, but became so useful for flight that now their shape is guided by how useful they are for flight.

Some people have argued that belief in god probably emerged from dualism, anthropomorphism and teleological reasoning. But then it became such a useful idea on its own that now we’re evolving to have a stronger belief in god, because belief in god is evolutionarily adaptive.

'It’s very possible that belief in god or belief in some of these other things are adaptive in themselves.'

That’s still a controversial claim, but it’s very possible that belief in god or beliefs in some of these other things are adaptive in themselves. Over the last recent period of evolution, they may have become stronger over that period of time in a noticeable way. There are also more obvious benefits. The anthropologist Stewart Guthrie has written, for example, that it’s better to mistake a boulder for a bear than to mistake a bear for a boulder.

Wired: If magical thinking helps us, should we all embrace it — even if we despise it?

Hutson: I think it can be good for us, but it can also be bad for us. It’s a complicated subject.

There are a lot of dangers to magical thinking. It can lead to dangerous health choices if you rely on energy healing or alternative medicines, that sort of thing. It can lead to conflict if two people or cultures have sacred values and they can’t find compromise. It can lead to fatalism if you think your life is completely controlled by supernatural forces. It can lead to anxiety if you think that you’ve been cursed or jinxed somehow.

So there are a lot of downsides to magical thinking. But if used carefully, magical thinking can have benefits, such as a sense of control or a sense of meaning in life. So I take this somewhat paradoxical stance of using irrationality rationally.

Consider the magical belief, for instance, that this or that lucky charm is going to help me accomplish something. There’s one study where subjects were given a golf ball and asked to make 10 golf putts. Half the subjects were told their golf ball was a lucky golf ball. And these subjects made 35 percent more successful putts than the half told nothing. The researchers did other studies where subjects had a lucky charm or they were wished good luck, and they performed better on other physical or cognitive tasks.

Feeling lucky is irrational because the charm or wish itself isn’t lucky. But feeling lucky gives you a sense of control, which increases your confidence and increases your performance in various challenges. So it’s rational to hold onto that irrational belief, on some level, because it can benefit you — even if the charm can’t.

Wired: You became an atheist and a skeptic at a young age. Did writing this book change you?

Hutson: Writing the book has changed me somewhat. I’m just as skeptical about the existence of magic as I used to be. I still don’t believe in God, or luck, or destiny, or free will. But I’m less cynical about these beliefs. I’m now more aware of what they can do for people and how we’re all susceptible to them and it’s not a sign of being stupid or crazy. These types of beliefs aren’t necessarily bad or things we should avoid at all costs. So in that way my thoughts have shifted after going through all of the research.

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