Participation in magical practices may not necessarily indicate genuine belief in their efficacy, because individuals may hold attitudes ranging. These attitudes may differ across cultures, among individuals, and within the same person over time, according to the researchers.
The article published recently in Evolution and Human Behavior was a conceptual synthesis rather than an empirical study with a defined population or prespecified outcomes. Researchers examined evidence from ethnography, cognitive science, political psychology, and philosophy to evaluate 2 broad explanations for magical practice. Intellectualist accounts hold that practitioners genuinely believe magic works or might work, whereas non-intellectualist accounts suggest that participation may instead involve imagination, symbolism, make-believe, or other attitudes that do not amount to ordinary factual belief. The researchers argued that both accounts capture parts of the available evidence.
The analysis focused on whether reports and behaviors associated with magic were consistent with genuine belief or could instead reflect skepticism, expressive endorsement, insincerity, or mistaken self-ascription of belief. The researchers argued against treating either genuine belief or non-doxastic attitudes as the default attitude toward magic. A person might genuinely believe in 1 magical practice while approaching another skeptically, and attitudes toward the same practice might change over time.
Evidence for genuine belief included behavior in settings where the stakes were substantial. People may seek magical assistance for illness or other consequential problems, prefer shamans with better track records, or change methods following failures. The researchers noted that shamans themselves may seek assistance from other shamans when they become ill, despite being aware of the trickery and showmanship involved in their practices. The persistence of such practices when people are highly motivated to achieve an outcome suggests that at least some practitioners genuinely believe magic works or might work.
Other evidence, however, suggested that participation does not invariably indicate belief. The researchers cited ethnographic evidence of skepticism toward supernatural agents and their powers among people who nevertheless continued participating in associated practices. In 1 example involving Burmese spirit practices, all but 1 skeptical informant still participated in rituals intended to appease spirits known as nats, sometimes contributing financially. The researchers suggested that such behavior could reflect social obligations, efforts to maintain relationships, or attempts to hedge against the possibility that a practice might work rather than straightforward belief in its efficacy.
The researchers also drew on evidence outside traditional magical practices to illustrate why verbal reports cannot always be interpreted as literal statements of belief. In a previously published study of political expressive responding, 15% of Trump voters selected a photograph that clearly depicted a smaller inauguration crowd, compared with 2% of Clinton voters and 3% of nonvoters. The researchers cited the finding as evidence of insincere responses intended to express partisan attitudes rather than factual beliefs.
The researchers identified trolling as another form of insincere responding, in which individuals report beliefs they do not hold to provoke reactions or disrupt research. They cited a previously published survey suggesting that approximately 4% of Americans were drinking household cleaning products to prevent COVID-19, following remarks by President Donald Trump. However, a subsequent study that excluded problematic respondents and required confirmation of intentional ingestion found no respondents who appeared to be sincerely reporting the behavior.
The article also discussed a separate study examining endorsement of a deliberately implausible conspiracy involving a genetically engineered army of giant raccoons, which was strongly predictive of reported belief in other conspiracy theories. The researchers cited these findings to support the possibility that some extraordinary belief reports may reflect insincere responding or trolling rather than genuine conviction.
Not all discrepancies between reported belief and behavior are necessarily insincere. The researchers described “shmelief” as a sincere but potentially mistaken self-ascription of belief: a person may genuinely report believing a proposition even though the attitude does not consistently guide behavior or respond to evidence in ways ordinarily expected of belief. Researchers proposed that genuine belief, expressive responding, trolling, and shmelief may all help explain apparently implausible belief reports.
The analysis could not determine how common each attitude was or reliably classify particular practitioners. The same behavior can have multiple explanations: a skeptic may participate to preserve social relationships, for example, or because the person considers a small possibility that the practice could work. Distinguishing among these possibilities would require detailed observations of behavior, particularly when meaningful consequences depend on whether a purported belief is true. Such evidence is usually lacking from the ethnographic record, and obtaining it may require prolonged observation that could be impractical or ethically difficult, the researchers noted.
Neither genuine belief nor non-doxastic commitment can fully explain magical practice on its own. Instead, the available evidence led the researchers to propose a heterogeneous account in which attitudes can differ across cultures, among people in the same culture, and within the same person. “We think a mixed attitude picture is needed to account for the full range of data,” wrote lead study author Neil Levy, PhD, of the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University, Australia, and colleagues.
Levy received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council; Robert M. Ross received a Macquarie University Research Fellowship; and Ryan McKay received funding from the NOMIS Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust. The authors reported no competing interests.
Source: Evolution and Human Behavior
