phenomena, that is, rainfall and earthquake, the occurrence of which is
governed by a common pattern. This pattern, in turn, provides a special
type of variable-ratio reinforcement schedule. Making rain and causing earth-
quakes thus can be“learned”because their schedule makes them excellent
reinforcers of putative magical influence.^3
6.3 HOW PEOPLE THINK ABOUT MAGICIn terms of our definition, there is no magic without explanations and theories
of why and how it works. We will especially deal with two types of explan-
ations and theories.Intuitionsabout the mechanisms and effects of magic
belong to thefirst category. Such intuitions seem to be largely consistent across
cultures and can be called“universal”—in the sense of being maturationally
natural, as discussed above in section 1.3. The other type of thinking about
magic involves explicit and often more culture-specific theorizing. In different
cultural contexts, explicit theories of magic can assume radically different
forms, while the intuitions that underlie first-hand reactions remain the
same. For example, a fanatic UFO believer can explain changes in his or her
mental or physical condition by abduction by aliens, whereas the same
changes would be attributed to favorable response to a sacrifice, demonic
attack, or the influence of evil eye (depending on the positive or negative
nature of the experience) in an ancient Mediterranean context.
From the experiments discussed in the previous section, it has become clear
that superstitious conditioning can appear even in a single session. But why
would such behavior become ingrained in one’s behavioral repertoire? Why
do people not realize that their actions have in fact no influence on the state of
affairs? It has been argued that superstitious conditioning (or its psychological
foundation) might be an adaptation to situations where some recurrent danger
or other salient event seems to be connected to some other event by causality
(Foster & Kokko, 2009). In some cases it might be beneficial to systematically
overestimate causality, even if it does not exist, rather than underestimate it.
Such“hypersensitivity”in dealing with environmental stimuli also underlies
the detection of agency, which presents a more obvious case of evolutionary
adaptation (see section 2.2.1). When dealing with stimuli in the environment,
it is a crucial skill to identify self-propelling, intentional agents, that perceive
what is going on around them, react to those events, have goals and
form plans.
(^3) Learning by conditioning has been traditionally studied in connection with individuals. The
connection of individual learning to cultural patterns (such as rainmaking as a collective ritual) is
an unexplored area.
128 Cognitive Science and the New Testament