Study Highlights Dangers of Superstitious Beliefs

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In the popular imagination, and often even in scholarly research, superstitious beliefs are predominantly associated with more traditional cultures in developing nations around the world. This conceptualization, as a recent study shows, is inaccurate. Superstition continues to thrive in even the most developed, industrialized nations. Moreover, these beliefs are associated with other irrational perspectives that are even more problematic—and potentially dangerous—in nature.

The study, which examines the correlates of superstitious beliefs in Germany, appeared in the academic journal World Affairs (Pelizzo & Kuzenbayev, 2023). The authors point out that Germany is an interesting place to examine this topic. It is an economically wealthy and technologically developed nation with a very secular population. In other words, it is not the sort of nation commonly associated with a more traditional mindset or way of life (Inglehart & Baker, 2000). It also differs significantly in character from nations in the Global South, which are more frequently, and unfairly, associated with widespread superstitious beliefs.

Measuring Superstition

The authors examined data drawn from the German General Social Survey (GESIS 2019). First launched in 1980, the GESIS is a broad instrument aimed at measuring and tracking trends in the German population using a representative, random sampling methodology. First, they selected several items to estimate superstitions. These items asked respondents about the extent to which they agreed with the following statements:

• “Good luck charms sometimes do bring good luck.”
• “Some fortune tellers really can foresee the future.”
• “Some faith healers do have God-given healing powers.”
• “A person’s star sign at birth, or horoscope, can affect the course of their future.”
• “Do you believe in the supernatural powers of deceased ancestors?”

For each of these items, respondents could state their level of agreement on a 4-point scale, with higher values indicating greater agreement. Since these five items were highly correlated with one another, the authors merged them into a single measurement of superstitious belief. They then used this as their independent variable and examined how it correlated with other select items in the survey while controlling for other possible factors.

Troubling Findings

The results of the analysis were troubling, to say the least. Respondents who reported higher levels of superstitious beliefs were also more likely to 1) distrust Germany’s current political institutions, 2) express more positive attitudes towards Nazism and Adolf Hitler, and 3) hold anti-Semitic views.

Political trust was measured by asking respondents to rank their level of trust in various German political institutions, such as the German Parliament or German Constitutional Court—and averaging their rankings. Attitudes toward Nazism were measured by asking to what extent an individual agreed with the statement, “National Socialism also had its good sides.” Support for Hitler, meanwhile, was measured by the level of agreement with the statement that “If it hadn’t been for the Holocaust, Hitler would be regarded as a great statesman today.” Finally, anti-Semitism was gauged by asking the extent to which respondents agreed with two additional statements: 1) “There is something particularly different about the Jew which stops them from fitting in with us” and 2) “The Jews still have too much influence.”

Making Sense of Strange Beliefs

There remains, of course, an important question: What is causing all of these factors to correspond with one another? The authors suggest it could have something to do with the increasing popularity of Neopaganism and new religious movements in Germany. Many of these advocate superstitious beliefs like those measured (e.g., good luck charms and fortune telling) and some are disproportionately associated with the far right, especially Odinism (Smith, 2021). However, the data do not include the necessary measures to test this possibility.

Another potential explanation is that the same underlying factors that lead people to believe in one irrational idea are likely to make them find other unsubstantiated claims feasible. For example, research has found that paranormal beliefs, conspiracy beliefs, and anti-science attitudes all correlate with one another (Rizeq et al., 2021). Similarly, people who rank higher on populist attitudes are more prone to accept unsubstantiated claims uncritically (van Prooijen et al., 2022). This is true even when the claims are non-political ones. This suggests that greater credulity, and not simply motivated reasoning, might play an important role. In the current study, the authors found that superstitious beliefs were negatively correlated with education, which lends further evidence to this possibility.

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Whatever interpretation one prefers should be treated with some caution, though. Given the correlational design of the study, it is possible that none of the variables actually cause a change in the others at all. Moreover, even if causation could be established, we shouldn’t assume that the same relationship between variables would necessarily exist in the populations of other countries with different social, historical, and political conditions.

That being said, the research has important implications for understanding the current cultural climate and for possibly addressing problematic attitudes. Superstitious beliefs are not limited to developing countries. Moreover, they might cause, or at least indicate, that people are more willing to entertain non-democratic governance, hate, and extremist policies. This link further underlines the urgency in addressing and combatting superstitions and unsubstantiated claims like conspiracy theories that tend to travel along with them.