For students who have played those games, it may have surprised them to learn that with a group of just 23 people there is a 50 percent chance of having a duplicated birthday and that a piece of paper folded 100 times would be significantly thicker than the distance between the earth and the moon, Psychology Professor Martin Bolt said. In the same way, convincing people that colds do not come from being cold and wet, but that being cold and wet merely lowers a person's resistance to a cold virus can be a difficult task. Bolt added that these types of beliefs, which fall under the category of superstitions, are often an extension of the human desire to be in control of one's environment. One is primarily motivational. We have a strong need to be able to predict and control our environment and our world.
Superstitious beliefs tend to emerge when life becomes unpredictable and uncon-trollable.
The second reason for superstitions comes from an inability to properly calculate and understand the chances of an event or concurrent events happening. Superstitious beliefs are often a byproduct of predictable errors we make in processing our world. We're trying to find explanations for things that are pretty commonplace. Most people, once they have developed a belief, tend to look for experiences that support the belief but do not acknowledge experiences that run contrary to that belief. What we notice are confirmed instances of our beliefs and ignore what would challenge our beliefs.