Improve Mental Performance with Lucky Charms

And I don’t mean the cereal.

Research just reported in Psychological Science, Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstitions Improve Performance, provides strong evidence that believing in lucky charms might not be so irrational. Indeed, they may be important for improving performance.

“Specifically, Experiments 1 through 4 show that activating good-luck-related superstitions via a common saying or action (e.g., “break a leg,” keeping one’s fingers crossed) or a lucky charm improves subsequent performance in golfing, motor dexterity, memory, and anagram games.”

Good luck superstitions don’t require magic or any supernatural forces to work. They work by boosting your confidence or belief that things will go your way.    Your lucky quarter,  shirt, number, and all of that can in fact enhance your brain function and cognitive performance. This in turn can improve your outcomes but only when the outcomes depend upon confidence. So this effect will not work for picking lottery tickets.

Interested to hear from readers about the lucky charms they use to get through intellectually or cognitive challenging situations.