Narrator: People avoid walking under ladders, because it will supposedly bring bad luck. One popular theory behind this is that a ladder propped against a wall creates three sides of a triangle. The number three is holy, particularly in Christianity with the Holy Trinity. When you walk under a ladder, you're violating the Trinity, and therefore causing bad luck. Stevens: The simplest explanation in this case, is the best one.
It's potentially dangerous. Narrator: Basically, if people are working on a ladder, there's a chance that something could fall on your head.
Narrator: A number of superstitions can be traced back to early religious beliefs, which are intertwined with magical thinking, like the unlucky number Stevens: This derives from the Christian story of the last supper, that Seder meal in that upper room on a Thursday night. Narrator: There were 13 people at the table, with a 13th person being considered either Judas, who betrayed Jesus, or Jesus himself.
Jesus of course, died on the cross the next day, a Friday. Hence, the unlucky nature of Friday the 13th. When you pass by a cemetery, do you hold your breath? The origin of this superstition comes from the ancient belief that the breath and spirit are the same. In Hebrew, breath and spirit are the same word, Ruach. Spirits are thought to hang around cemeteries, and there's a chance you could breathe in their spirit, which would not be a good thing.
As you can see, the origins of many of these common superstitions are a little absurd. Jane Risen says there are both motivational, and cognitive reasons why people are superstitious. Rise: The motivational side is that superstitions can help us manage the uncertainty, and the stress and tension that comes from not knowing what's gonna happen. Narrator: On the cognitive side, there are two systems of thinking that help explain them. System one, and system two. System one refers to things like your intuition, which helps you make quick decisions about your surroundings.
Risen: Some set of mental processes are super fast, and efficient, don't require and cognitive resources, don't require working memory, just kinda work like this, and they're basically, you know, most of life is in that system one space, and you couldn't function without it. Narrator: But your intuitions can also encourage superstitious behavior.
You've always been told to avoid cracks in the street, so you're going to do it just in case, since it doesn't take much effort. Risen: In the sort of, slower, deliberate system two, these are the mental processes that require more working memory, and more effort, and that's what you need to sort of, recognize that these beliefs don't necessarily make sense, but they still don't stop the intuitions from coming. Right, so even when you can, sort of, recognize that this doesn't make sense, it doesn't stop you from having the feeling that if I do this, blank will happen.
Rozin: People are very reluctant to eat a piece of good chocolate shaped to look like a dog doo. Now, you could call that a superstition if you want, it's irrational. Sign up now or Log in.
Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English. Click on the arrows to change the translation direction. Follow us. Choose a dictionary. Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English. Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English. Grammar Thesaurus. Word Lists. Choose your language. My word lists. Another possibility? That it simply came from a Victorian-era children's game called Tig Touch-Wood.
As described in the book The Boy's Modern Playmate , "Tig" is the person who is "It," and after a number of trees have been chosen as bases, "as long as the player is touching one of these authorized posts, Tig cannot touch him; his only chance is to catch him while flitting from one post to another.
BY Matt Soniak. This piece was updated in March
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