Childish egocentrismīetween the ages of 2 and 7, during the preoperational stage described by Piaget , children believe that they can modify elements of the world with the mind, either voluntarily or involuntarily. At this age, thought is characterized by difficulty in understanding abstract concepts and by self-centeredness, or inability to adopt the perspective of others. We can find signs of magical thinking in a large number of everyday situations, although in some cases this type of reasoning can be a sign of pathology, particularly when beliefs occur in adulthood and are not shared by the environment. One of the main functions of magical thinking is the reduction of anxiety. When people find themselves in a stressful situation that they cannot solve, it is easier for them to associate the reduction of anxiety with arbitrary elements in order to obtain a certain sense of control. For example, in agoraphobia the use of “amulets” is common.Įven in today’s world, where we think logic predominates, magical thinking still has a significant presence and is sometimes even useful. A good example is the placebo effect, whereby believing that a false remedy is going to be useful in curing a disease causes an improvement in symptoms. Magical thinking has been attributed mainly to two facts: the contiguity between events (eg “My father died because I wished him death the day before”) and associative thinking, which consists of establishing relationships based on similarities. For example, the Mapuche believed that they would gain the strength of their enemies if they ate their hearts.Īuthors like Claude Lévi-Strauss or Thomas Markle have affirmed that magical thought has adaptive functions in certain circumstances . However, when it comes to attributing causes, this type of reasoning tends to fail much more frequently than that based on empirical evidence. Related article: ” Dualism in Psychology“.The belief that the mind has power over matter , as if it were a separate entity rather than a consequence of it, may be at the basis of many cases of magical thinking. However, it is a concept with a very broad meaning, which is why it has been used to refer to very diverse processes. Thus, a girl who believes that if she misbehaves the man in the bag will kidnap her, she is falling into this logical error. The same is the case with tribes that perform ritual dances to invoke the rain or with people who think that their wishes will be fulfilled if they light a candle and entrust themselves to a certain saint. Magical thinking is present in the vast majority of cultures in the world. It is a natural process, probably with a biological basis similar to that of classical conditioning, by which we rely on similarity or temporal or spatial contiguity between elements, for example, to establish a non-demonstrable causal relationship between them. The concept “magic thinking” is used in psychology and anthropology to describe illogical attributions of causality that are made without empirical evidence , especially when the person believes that his thoughts may have consequences in the external world, either by his own action or by the intermediation of supernatural forces. Related article: ” The 9 types of thought and their characteristics“.In this article we will define magical thinking and explain what its causes and functions are , according to the existing literature. To finish, we will present some significant examples and contexts in which this type of reasoning appears regularly. Magical thinking has accompanied humanity since the beginning of time. We have a natural tendency to establish cause and effect relationships without logically checking them This predisposition is very marked in childhood and is maintained if the context in which we find ourselves promotes it, as has happened in many cultures.
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