Episode 261: Matthew Hutson
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The Magic of Magical Thinking
How does magical thinking help or hurt us in our everyday lives?? What would we lose if we removed the enchantment that it provides? Magical thinking is inherent in the human experience and persists even in an era dominated by the scientific worldview.
Matthew Hutson is a journalist who writes for The New Yorker and other publications. Matt is also the author of the book The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane. He shows us how magical thinking is hardwired into our brains and how we use it to both our benefit and detriment depending on the circumstance.
Matt and Greg discuss Matt’s book and his different examples of magical thinking in scientific and practical environments. They discuss different experiments and trials which include lucky golf balls and sweaters worn by Mr. Rogers and the feelings of those who were nearly struck down by lightning. Matt discusses how error management theory and conditioned response theory help illuminate the roots of magical thinking.
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Episode Quotes:
Pattern-finding enhances when you’re anxious
20:08: Pattern-finding can be enhanced when we're anxious. When you feel out of control, when you feel scared, when you feel stressed out, you try to regain control. And one way to regain control is to look for patterns in the world to try to understand the world better so that you can predict what's going to happen next or find some way to gain leverage to control your fate. So there's a lot of evidence showing that when people are stressed out or anxious, they see various patterns.
What is magical thinking?
03:25: The way that I define it [magical thinking] in the book is by applying attributing mental properties to non-mental phenomena or non-mental properties to mental phenomena.
Attributing your mind to things around is not necessarily magical thinking
43:59: In order to make sense of the social world, you need to attribute your mind to the fleshy objects moving around you. You have to see them like yourself, as having thoughts, emotions, hopes, dreams, and fears, which is not necessarily magical thinking.
What is the error management theory?
19:20: The error management theory is the idea that if there are two opposing types of errors, like false positives versus false negatives, it's often better to make one kind of error than the other.
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