The Science of Superstition

Introduction

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1:00No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet, so Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs to help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now Hank's has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at m365copilot.com slash work. Paige, what is your superstition? Which is a hard word to say, by the way. The

1:34more you say it, like, the weirder it gets to say. Superstition? Like, it's not a word anymore. Yeah. Superstition. Superstition. I don't know. I just can't. So I couldn't say it more than, like, twice fast, probably. I'm Paige. And I'm Megan. And this is Spooky

Podcast Introduction

1:53Science Sisters. Hello, you're listening to Spooky Science Sisters, a podcast where we present to you a science-based and probably very giggly discussion on all things strange and unusual. Today we are going to talk about a super fun topic, superstitions, which is sort of another topic that I was surprised we hadn't already done. Yeah. Like, it feels like something that we would have done in the earlier days, but nope, today's the day. But

Spooky Stories

2:23before we get to today's topic, we got to do something spooky. So, Megan, do you have anything spooky to share? Yes. My something spooky is related to a superstition because I was looking up possible topics for this episode, and apparently a superstition from India is that you shouldn't get a haircut on a Tuesday because it will cause bad luck. And I, like, read about that superstition on Monday. And I had a haircut on Tuesday. But the good news is it wasn't bad luck for me. It

3:00was bad luck for Paige. Yeah, fuck you. I've just done some sort of ancient curse to pass it on to you. Yeah. So I was going to hop into mine because this is kind of the perfect segue. Anyway, I have two something spookies to share. And one is that I have unwanted powers. And the other is that Megan has cursed me with her powers. So the last time we recorded, which was about a

3:33month ago now, maybe three weeks ago. Yeah, we're killing it. Yeah, we're doing a great job. We talked about how we had kind of fallen off our recording schedule because there had been a lot of illnesses and stuff. Well, here's the thing. It has now been three weeks and it has only gotten worse for me. Long story short, we kind of went through all the fun stuff I was going through before. But since then, I ended up on antibiotics, which I had definitely taken before and was like totally fine taking.

4:06And this time I took them and my entire body broke out in hives because surprise, I'm allergic to them. So I've gone another couple of weeks now with like, this is so much fun. So I'm currently on steroids trying to deal with the allergic reaction I had to the antibiotics. Yeah. So in case everyone was wondering about Paige's medical history, it's been an epic run of back injury, COVID, getting her wisdom

4:39teeth out, getting her wisdom teeth infected, having to get antibiotics, and then being allergic to them. So her entire body turning against her. So now you all know. Listen, you just gotta laugh about it. It's fun. Yeah, it's just comical at this point. Anyway, so yeah, super fun. So those, that's Megan's, I guess, power, superpower, whatever it is she's cursing. And then we, I think I've also talked before on some like previous episodes about how Megan always

5:12says that I'm a witch because I have like a number of stories where people who have been around in public have like had a stroke or a heart attack or just like randomly go down. But it's happened to people around me. I don't know. Some are probably just in like five and 10 times at this point. And I was at the grocery store last week and the guy at the register next to me just like all of a sudden goes down and they have to call like the EMTs and everything in. And I was just like,

5:45what is happening? Like, what am I doing to people? Yeah. So yeah, my powers, I don't want them, but I have them and I'm sorry for those I've affected.

5:59It is weird. I think you're into health and safety just so you could curse people and then rescue them. Yeah. Every time I'm just like, oh, I feel bad because somehow I feel like this is my fault. Yeah. I don't know how. It's fine. Yeah. So things are going well. Yep. Things are going really good. So anyway, our creepy powers aside, mine that specifically affect page and pages that affect strangers, which is unclear which one is worse. We're going to talk about superstitions today and

Superstition Origins

6:33we each picked a superstition and then we're going to talk a little bit about the science behind people believing in superstitions at the end. So the superstition that I picked for today is that you should not walk underneath a ladder. And I honestly started looking into this one thinking this is going to be nothing. This is not going to be that interesting because I really figured that it just, you know, was a practical thing where people are up on ladders and they don't want some jerk to

7:07walk underneath it and bump it and knock them off or they don't want people to walk under there and drop things on them. Yeah. But there's actually more to it than you might think. So many people think that the superstition about walking under ladders actually originates in ancient Egypt and is around 5,000 years old, which is crazy. I was, I don't know. I was just, I went into this thinking like, and I guess I also went into it thinking, having no concept of like how long we've been using ladders, which is stupid because I know we've been using ladders for a long time. But

7:42regardless, I was like, someone made this up a hundred years ago, whatever. Not true. Okay. So there's a couple of reasons that people think that ancient Egyptians may have been superstitious about ladders. So the first is that the triangle shape was sacred to the Egyptians and represented the trinity of the gods. And obviously that's reflected in them building the pyramids as their tombs for significant people. So to pass through a triangle, which if you think about a ladder leading up against

8:17a wall, you create a triangle in the negative space beneath the ladder, right? The wall, the ladder, and the ground beneath would be a desecration. You're breaking the triangle. That's no good. It may also have been related to the Egyptians placing ladders. And some things said actual ladders. Like if they had a ladder in a tomb, they would just leave it behind. They wouldn't take it with them after they were done building. Or they also had ladders in the form of carvings or art or

8:50amulets or models that they specifically placed into tombs to assist the deceased with their ascent to the afterlife. And there was also a connection to a specific god with ladders. And again, some sort of like ascent up to the afterlife. So in that case, to disturb the ladder, including walking beneath it, might prevent the deceased from making their journey to the afterlife, which was a big deal. So you couldn't walk beneath ladders because of that.

9:22That's like way cooler than just, oops, someone knocked something off the ladder, which I'm with you. I'd like assume that that's what it was. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say like, we'll sort of come back around to this, but it's not a hundred percent, right, that this is the origin of ladders. But there were, I mean, there are a lot of people who think that it is related to this idea of like the triangle being sacred and the ancient Egyptians having to think about it, which is awesome. Okay. So this idea of ladders was then supposedly co-opted. The idea of ladders, the idea of superstition

9:54about ladders was co-opted. The question stole the ladders. Damn it.

10:07Anyway, the idea of superstitions about ladders was co-opted by Christians for whom the triangle of shape may have been associated with the Holy Trinity. And to break that, to walk into the ladder to disturb it, again, was blasphemous. The association for Christians may also have been to do with ladders being used to place Jesus up on the cross, which, hey, we like

10:38just had Easter a few days ago. So this is a surprise Easter crossover episode.

10:45Yeah. But they got weird about ladders because someone had to like, you know, put a ladder up in order to do the crucifixion. But I also was like, that's a little odd because like everybody uses ladders to put up their Christmas lights. I was like, clearly we've gotten over that a little bit because it'd be like, hey, we know these have a really bad association for you, dude, but we have to put them up on your birthday because we got to put these twinkly lights up. Anyway. Okay. So yeah, we go from the Egyptians to the Christians and it's sort

11:22of like a, you know, they take this idea and they co-opt it or adapt it for their own religion. And then apparently in medieval England, ladders had some connection with the gallows. So it was either that a leaning ladder sort of resembled a gallows, which I'm not clear that I see, but sure. Or that prisoners would have to climb a ladder to get up to the gallows. So ladders in general just became a symbol of misfortune and walking beneath one was thought to invite

11:56bad luck. But on the other hand, some sources said that in the 17th century, prisoners headed to the gallows were forced to walk beneath a ladder on the way. So it seems like there's maybe some sort of like chicken or the egg situation happening here. I don't know. Like either the walking beneath it when they're headed to the gallows is because of earlier superstition about ladders or they started doing it because they got the negative association with the gallows.

12:29So they were like, let's just co-opt that and have them walk beneath one. Unclear if that's even a real thing. But it is sort of an interesting tidbit if that was a thing that was happening. So here's the thing. These are like three sort of religious or morbid origins for why people are weird about walking beneath ladders. But it is very possible that the superstition actually started for practical reasons, which is sort of what I expected going into it. So for ladder

13:00safety, but that all these extra layers to the superstition got added because they wanted to justify or encourage people to take it seriously by giving it significant ties to like religion or mythology. And this is why I mentioned like, you know, obviously I was not thinking about how long people have been using ladders. We know from rock art that humans have been using them for at least 10,000 years. So that's like a lot of time that we've had to think about ways to trick people

13:36into being more safe about ladder usage. I love this so much. So yeah, so I suppose like I sort of came back around because so much of the stuff about the Egyptians and the association with like the crucifixion and even the thing with the gallows, like all sort of seemed a little bit nebulous and like there were several different versions of it. Like I'm pretty sure that's what's going on is that they're taking this practical superstition and turning it into something that's like very memorable for people. Sure. And to like make people extra cautious about it, you like add this extra layer,

14:11which, you know, we all do, right? It's like Santa Claus all over again. You tell your kid you got to be good because Santa Claus isn't going to come or you got to be good or the boogeyman's coming out of the woods, whatever. Anyway, so that said, it is understandable because ladders in general are apparently pretty unlucky all on their own. And I looked this up for safety page in particular, but according to OSHA, falls from ladders account for around 20% of all fatal and lost workday injuries,

14:46which I imagine is a lot of injuries because like I am sure there's like thousands and thousands of injuries or lost work days happening in a year. Yeah. And so I obviously had to pull the numbers because I was like, well, she put the stat in here. So that's why I need you to just do the extra leg work. So I pulled the Bureau of Labor statistics numbers on ladder injuries in 2020. And there were

15:17a total of 161 ladder related fatalities in 2020 and 22,710 non-fatal loss day ladder related injuries. So like, there you go. In a year. That's a lot of days of work lost just because of ladders. Yeah. Like 160 fatalities, like in the scheme of things, in terms of how many people are on this planet and how many people are probably using ladders on a day to day basis. Yeah. Like, isn't that much, but like, that's,

15:54that still feels like a lot. Yeah. That's 160 people who went to work and didn't come home because of a ladder. Yeah, exactly. So take ladder safety seriously. Yeah. It's the point of the superstition. I should share this with all the people that I work with who look at me like cross-eyed when I try to tell them that they shouldn't just be like willy-nilly climbing up and swinging around on ladders. They're like, it's not scary. I'm like, well, maybe not to you.

16:24Yeah. Stephen always talks about your dad being super cavalier about ladders and like going up on ladders to work on the roof or work on windows on the house and like not getting down to scoop them over. Just sort of like- Just like shimmying them over. Just like stilt walking or shimmying them over. It's like, oh my God. So my father. Don't be my father. Meanwhile, I can't even like go up to the top of a ladder without being terrified. I can't do like a stationary ladder. I can get up

16:56with enough like pep talk, but I pretty recently got up on the roof using a stationary ladder and then got to like the opening to get back down and just completely panicked and had to have one of my co-workers like pep talk me through it to get me down. Or I was just going to live up there. I think there's a good chunk of us who saw the Final Destination movies at like a very formative age. So like very simple, like slip and fall injuries or ladders or whatever. Like we're like,

17:33you got to take that seriously. I've seen what can happen.

17:41Yeah. Yeah. I do think though, it was some sort of stat about simple injuries, about like the number of fatalities or very serious injuries that occur just from like people falling down stairs or like slipping when they get out of the tub and stuff like that. I've heard at one point, like years and years ago, probably over a decade ago now, and like I've forgotten what the exact stat was, but it has made me nervous about it ever since. Yeah. I'm like death gripping the stairs. It's not going to be me.

18:13Literally, this is like my entire experience in my profession is I learn about something new that can hurt you. And then that's just the thing I get to panic over for the next like five to 10 years. It's great. Yeah. And when we do it to ourselves on the podcast, would you say though, that you feel like it could go either way, right? Do you feel like it makes you feel worse about stuff or do you feel like you have the knowledge to be safer so you feel better about it?

18:39Depends on the thing. Okay. Okay. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. It can be me. I'm not doing safety.

18:47There are things I don't need to know. Yeah. There are. There are definitely things that I don't need to know, but here we are. Well, that's enough about letters.

19:04Paige, what is your superstition? Which is a hard word to say, by the way. The more you say it, like the weirder it gets to say. Superstition? Like it's not a word anymore? Yeah. Superstition. Superstition. I don't know. I just can't. So I couldn't say it more than like twice fast, probably. So I'm covering the don't place new shoes on the table superstition.

New Shoes Superstition

19:27Which I've literally never heard of. Yeah, me either. I basically just like picked one that I hadn't heard of and was like, we're going to learn about it. Great. So yeah, the idea is that it is considered bad luck in a lot of English speaking countries to place shoes and some, some people say specifically new shoes on the table. And like Megan with the latter superstition, I sort of just assumed that this one was going to come down to it being like a hygiene or sanitary issue. Like people associate shoes with dirt and

20:01don't want shoes or dirt placed on an eating surface like that. Yeah. I just assumed that's where we were going with this. Yeah. But like Megan found, it's a little different than that. So while there are a couple different versions of the story, what seems to be the most widely accepted story suggests that this originated during the early 19th century in coal mining communities in Northern England. When coal miners died in workplace incidents, their boots were often returned to their families

20:31as a sign of, as a sign of respect. Oh no. Yeah. And then families would place those used boots on the kitchen table. And the placement kind of feels similar to me to like the idea of leaving an open seat for loved ones at the dinner table. And again, in some versions of the story, it may have been more about depicting the workers like final shift, which is very sad. I did not read this at all. And that's a real bummer. Yes. Thanks, Paige. I'm here to bring the mood up.

21:05So 19th century England saw a significant growth in the mining industry as people moved towards more industrial jobs and coal extraction became more important for industrial power. And so as a result of this, longer working hours and increased working speeds inevitably cause more accidents. And a lot of those resulting in fatalities. So I thought it was kind of funny because not like this isn't funny, but. Yeah. Not funny. Ha ha. Per usual, the laughter is just like, I am sad. So I'm going to laugh about

21:40it because that's the coping mechanism. But like, I definitely thought it was funny that like you sort of picked one that had workplace, a workplace safety tie. And then like naturally, I just like randomly picked one and it happened to be one with, with also with workplace safety origins. So I'm like, well, this is basically superstitions workplace safety episode. Yeah. What was this? Yeah. I went into this thinking like, oh, there was, it was going to be

22:12more ghosts or demons or spooky stuff that people were worried about. And it's like, nope, it's workplace safety. Yeah. Surprise. Workplace safety. So as mining practices and safety regulations improved, stories about this would have been passed down between generations. Something that started as a way to honor the dead seems like it just kind of became something that was associated with death and sadness. And so it quickly turned into something that people were viewing as like a bad omen or believed by some to like call death

22:47to the family or negatively, or like in, in one version of the story, negatively impact marriages. Now, a part of this superstition is that apparently there is a way to reverse the bad luck by, I believe it's like spitting into the shoes and then removing them from the table. Though the person who removes it has to be the same person that placed it there. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure where that part of it came from. I didn't find much on that. But I suppose if, if ever you feel

23:19like you've been bad lucked by the shoes on the table, that is something you could do to reverse it. But importantly, I don't think this rules out the hygiene theory. I think, remember, we were running right up to the Victorian era here at the end or during some of this mining stuff. And right around that time is where hygiene practices start to shift and germ theory really starts gaining traction. So it is believed by some. And I have to believe that a part of this is that at this time,

23:52people started realizing, like, maybe putting shoes on the table isn't super hygienic and it just became less and less acceptable as time passed. Yeah. I don't know. I think that makes sense. A little bit of both. I mean, yeah, you always tell people, like, don't put your feet on the table. But I guess I would, like, I've heard people say that, but I always assumed that it was just like a, yeah, like that's sort of rude. Your feet are dirty. Like they shouldn't be up on the table. I didn't realize that it was like actually connected to a superstition and anything beyond

24:26that. So that's pretty cool. It was pretty cool. I was excited about it. And yeah, surprise workplace safety episode. Surprise workplace safety. Who knew? So yeah, those are like sort of two unusual ones. And I think we'll have to come back to superstitions again to do, because like I would love to come back to like why we hold our breath when you pass a cemetery, break in a mirror, stuff like that. But who knows? They could be surprised workplace safety ones too. We'll find out.

25:00You never know. But we did want to talk a little bit about the science behind superstition and like

Science of Superstition

25:10why people believe in superstitions or like why, how they affect people or how believing in them affects people because there is actually science behind that. So research shows that almost everyone has at least some superstitious beliefs or practices they engage in. So yeah, Paige, are there any that you continue to do as an adult? I mean, definitely as like a theater kid, the whole like break a leg thing was like a must.

25:42And we had some like sort of like studio superstition type things when I was in dance. But as an adult, a couple, I guess. Okay. But I would say that the one that I use like far more often than anything else is the whole like knocking on wood thing. Yeah. It's like one of where somehow we're taking it back to workplace safety. Like when people will say something like, oh, we haven't had any injuries in the last six

26:13months or man, it's been a quiet week. It's like the whole safety team will knock on wood at the same time. You're like, you don't say that here.

26:22I use that one pretty often. What about you? Yeah. So similarly, yeah, I'm sure that safety people can tend to be a superstitious bunch or sort of weird about that stuff. And I put in here that lab scientists are surprisingly superstitious as a group, like for a group of people where everything is supposed to be evidence-based and empirical and, you know, scientific. There are so many weird little things that go on in labs where, I don't know, like people

26:56just have weird little habits that they do, but it's like they don't really make any sense scientifically. They shouldn't make a difference, but they continue to do them. So I have a very specific example, which isn't a, like I still do, like I'll still do the knock on wood thing, whatever, stuff like that. But when I was in grad school and was running one of our mass spectrometers, we had this detector on it that would sometimes short out and you had to click a button to turn it back on. And if you didn't turn it back on, then like, you know,

27:28and you didn't check the instrument, you could just lose all of the data for the night. Like anything that you collected was just worthless. So one night I was getting stuff set up and I was just going to like, going to run a bunch of standards overnight to check the stability of the instrument. So it wasn't like totally crucial that I stayed there to monitor it the whole time because it wasn't going to be losing sample data. But I swear that the second that I turned out the lights in the lab that night to leave and close the door and left, like it was within minutes,

28:03like within seconds maybe of me doing that, that detector shorted out and I got no data for the rest of the night. Oh no. Yeah. And it was like, it was fine because, you know, I just did the same test for a few hours in the morning. But, and I'm telling you right now, like that type of instrumentation has like its own power supply. It's got special power conditioners. It's got battery backup attached to it. So there's literally no way that me flipping off the lights in the lab did anything to the power of that instrument. But I'm going to tell you right now that for the four

28:39years after that, every time I was running that instrument and using that detector, I would leave a note on the outside of the lab to say, Hey, please leave the lights on overnight. Don't turn them off because I'm worried it's going to make this short out. And like I told the lab manager, I was like, I know it doesn't make any sense, man, but this is what I'm doing. Cause I'm telling you that it happened at the exact same time that I turned no sense at all. Like it, the electronics don't

29:11work that way. It was just a coincidence, but I held on to that for the four years afterwards and did it every time those lights were staying on. I love that. Yeah. So it's like little things like that where it makes no sense, but you know, we get weird about it because, and I think part of it is, you know, you're working on samples that you've spent a lot of time on or experiments that you've spent a lot of time on and to have something go wrong at a critical point is just like, you could waste a lot

29:46of money. You could waste a lot of your time. So you get a little bit weird about it. So yeah, anyway, people are, people are weird, including scientists. Okay. So yeah, there's a couple, like I mentioned, there's a couple of studies that back this up. There's a 2018 article in the Asian journal of social psychology titled the effect of superstitious thinking on psychosocial stress responses and perceived task performance. That's a fancy way of saying that the participants

30:20in this study were placed in a stressful situation, which included an interview for some sort of like fake job and then performing mental arithmetic in front of a panel of two judges. They would kill me. Yeah, right. That would kill me. So this was specifically stressing them out and then seeing what happens when they try to activate this like superstitious thinking. So the participants that were given a quote unquote lucky pen or a pen that

30:54they were told was lucky were less anxious and felt that they performed better, which, you know, makes sense. But it's cool that there's an actual study that shows this. It's going to give you confidence just to have like a lucky pen or a lucky penny or whatever, some sort of good luck charm with you. And you don't just feel better about your performance, though, because there is earlier research from 2010 that says that you actually perform better due to superstition. So this is an

31:27article in the journal Psychological Science titled Keep Your Fingers Crossed How Superstition Improves Performance. So in this case, the participants weren't like in any sort of stressful situation. They were just performing tasks that were being monitored, but like with or without some lucky aspect to it or quote unquote lucky aspect to it. But they found that participants who were told I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you or were given a lucky charm actually improve their performance in golf, motor dexterity, memory, anagram games. And the authors attribute this to the confidence boost

32:06that they got from activating the superstition. So it's like this old cliche, like, oh, you make your own luck is like literally true. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. If you feel lucky and you feel good about yourself, then I think the idea is that you're not second guessing yourself. You're making the decisions you need to make to, you know, accomplish whatever task you're trying to accomplish. And my guess is that negative superstitions would like have a

32:37similar effect in the opposite direction because you do something that you believe is bad luck and now you're worried and you're second guessing your decisions. You're maybe more likely to make mistakes because you're sort of stressed out and you're not taking chances that you would need to take in order to be successful. So you make your own luck. I think that makes sense. Yeah, I love that. Although now I feel like now that I know that, can I not do it? Is it like now a thing that I'm aware

33:07so I can't, I don't know. No, it's fine. It's fine. Okay, so I did have a little bonus superstition before we wrap up today. So US astronauts play into this idea of making your own luck because right before they head to the launch pad, the commander plays rounds of a game they call Possum Fargo with the tech crew. So it's described as a low hands win poker variant where the winning hand, or I guess the losing hand, depending on how

33:43you're going to look at it, is 2, 3, 4, 5, 7. So the lowest cards you can have in poker without it being a straight. And the commander for the mission has to get the low hand in order to ensure that they get their last bit of bad luck out before the launch. And they take this very seriously. Like I guess they've like run late before because they were trying to finish up this game. I love that. Yeah. And there are actually a bunch of other superstitions associated with like the space

34:14program that have been perpetuated all this time. But yeah, we like literally two hours before recording this, we watched the splashdown of the Artemis 2 crew and cried about it. But there are pictures of Reed Wiseman, who's the commander and the Artemis 2 crew playing this Possum Fargo game before their launch last week. So they got their bad luck out of the way and everything went perfectly on their launch and their mission. And now they're back home safely. So yeah, it's awesome.

34:49I love that so much. It worked. And I like very much wanted to look up the pictures because these are some of the few pictures I feel like I haven't seen. Oh, there you go. With the Artemis 2 crew. But I'm just like, I literally can't anymore because I've been crying about this stuff for like 10 to 3 days now. So I was like, I need a break. You and me both, sister.

35:09Yeah. I texted the group chat earlier and was like, this must be what it felt like to watch the Apollo mission. Yeah.

35:20Because it's just so exciting and it's so awesome. So it's been a real bright spot. Out of those quotes that I sent you the other day, the one was like, nobody told me that watching competent people do a hard thing correctly would be the most therapeutic experience of my adult life. It's like, fucking yes. Yep.

35:39Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's the same reason that, I mean, also space related, but like why I really love The Martian and Project Tale Mary. It's like just watching competent, smart people solve problems is so soothing. Chef's kiss. Other than a bunch of stupid assholes creating them.

36:04Well, you have anything else? I got nothing. All right. Well, that wraps up our 102nd episode. If you like this episode, hit subscribe and share with a friend. Check the show notes for links to all of our social media accounts, our Discord server, and Patreon. If you have any questions about previous topics or ideas for future episodes, email us at thesisters at spookysciencesisters.com. As always, thank you for listening and stay spooky. Spooky Science Sisters is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network. For more information

36:40or to check out other shows, please visit evergreenpodcasts.com. See you next time.