Magical thinking

Magical thinking is a term used in anthropology and psychology, denoting the fallacious attribution of causal relationships between actions and events, with subtle differences in meaning between the two fields. In anthropology, it denotes the attribution of causality between entities grouped with one another (coincidence) or similar to one another. In psychology, the entities between which a causal relation has to be posited are more strictly delineated; here it denotes the belief that one's thoughts by themselves can bring about effects in the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it. In both cases, the belief can cause a person to experience fear, seemingly not rationally justifiable to an observer outside the belief system, of performing certain acts or having certain thoughts because of an assumed correlation between doing so and threatening calamities.

In religion, folk religion, and superstitious beliefs, the posited causality is between religious ritual, prayer, sacrifice, or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense. The use of a lucky item or ritual, for example, is assumed to increase the probability that one will perform at a level so that one can achieve a desired goal or outcome.

Two principles have at times been identified as the formal causes of the attribution of false causal relationships, one being the temporal contiguity of two events, the other being "associative thinking", the association of entities based upon their semblance to one another. Prominent Victorian theorists identified associative thinking (a common feature of practitioners of magic) as a characteristic form of irrationality. As with all forms of magical thinking, association-based and similarities-based notions of causality are not always said to be the practice of magic by a magician. For example, the doctrine of signatures held that similarities between plant parts and body parts indicated their efficacy in treating diseases of those body parts, and was a part of Western medicine during the Middle Ages. This association-based thinking is a vivid example of the general human application of the representativeness heuristic.

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