Magical thinking

{{magic}} {{logic}}
'''Magical thinking''' is a form of [[fallacious]] [[reasoning]] that [[Correlation does not imply causation|assumes causative relationships from correlation alone]]. [[Science]] and the [[scientific method]] are designed to elucidate causal relationships through careful [[Experimental control|controlled]] experiments; magical thinking, given a correlation with an observed effect, [[PIDOOMA|pulls a causation out of thin air]]. An example of magical thinking is  [[Hasty generalization|coming to believe that a particular piece of jewelry is lucky because a few good things happened when it was worn]].

==The lazy way==
In the 1950s, Horace Mitchell Miner took the then-popular method of looking at a "primitive" people and dismissing their ways as magical thinking and turned it on the then-current [[United States]]. His darkly satirical paper "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"<ref>[http://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema.pdf Body Ritual among the Nacirema] by Horace Miner, ''American Anthropologist'', 1956, 58(3), 503-507.</ref> showed how with this mindset, even the most scientifically-based, technologically-advanced society could be portrayed as believers in magic:

*[[Water chlorination|Chlorination of water]] to prevent disease is reduced to "the Water Temple of the community, where the [[priest]]s conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure".
*The {{wpl|hospital}} with all its hard-learned scientific advances is reduced to a temple "that is where you go to die", with the nurses now "vestal maidens" and the doctors now "medicine men".
* Scientific [[medicine]] is reduced to "ceremonies" of "discomfort and [[torture]]" with "magic wands" (thermometers) and "magically treated needles" (antibiotics and medicines).

After this, Miner's fellow [[anthropologist]]s got the hint and actually looked at magic: they discovered that the only real differences between the magical [[worldview]] and science was that magic didn't have a self-correcting mechanism nor a set procedure for determining which concept best fit what was being observed.<ref group=note>To put that another way, magic and science both look for cause and effect, but magic just sloppily throws a loosely-plausible explanation together and calls it a day, whereas science looks into things several times over, strives to control for unforeseen variables, and otherwise strives to make sure that it's arrived at the ''right'' answer rather than [[Truthiness|the right-''sounding'' answer]].</ref>

Miner showed that slapping the "magic" label on something was the lazy way to do things.

==Alternative medicine==
{{main|Alternative medicine}}
Another common example of magical thinking emerges in alternative medicine. Many diseases have a natural progression and [[Spontaneous remission|will go away on their own]]. If someone gets a headache and swallows some water provided by a [[homeopathy|homeopath]], when the headache goes away, they may assign the cause to the water rather than natural progression. This form of magical thinking combined with the [[placebo effect]] and [[regression to the mean]] explains a large amount of supposedly positive [[anecdotal evidence]].

==Skinner==
[[Skinner box|B.F. Skinner's]] studies of how pigeons reacted to stimuli shows a similar phenomenon, in that the [[birds]] frequently repeated the same actions they had been making at times when food was released, as if seeing a pattern, when in fact the food was released at random intervals. This suggests that [[superstition]] and behaviours often characterised as "magical thinking" may be more closely connected with blind instinct than with sapient thought.

==Psychiatry==
Patients diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder (a personality disorder with a similar presentation to [[schizophrenia]]) are said to have "magical thinking" as a common thought process.<ref>http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Schizotypal-personality-disorder.html</ref>

==See also==
{{collist|2|
*[[Apophenia]]
*[[Astrology]]
*[[Cargo cult]]
*[[Coincidence]]
*[[Correlation does not imply causation]]
*[[Hasty generalization]]
*[[Improbable things happen]]
*[[Name it and claim it]]
*[[Pareidolia]]
*''[[Post hoc, ergo propter hoc]]''
*[[Wishful thinking]] and especially the [[Law of attraction|"law" of attraction]], which literally relies on thinking [[Supernatural|actually being magical]].
*[[Superstition]]
}}
{{otherlang
|pt=Pensamento mágico}}

==External links==
*[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/happiness-in-world/200911/magical-thinking Magical Thinking: How to avoid an insidious thought error]
*[http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-superpowers-everyone-thinks-they-secretly-have/ "4 'Superpowers' Everyone Thinks They Secretly Have"] (from ''[[Cracked]]'')

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

[[Category:Fallacies]]
[[Category:Folklore]]
[[Category:Magic]]
[[Category:Psychology]]

Categories: Fallacies, Folklore, Magic, Psychology