THE MAGIC THAT BINDS US: MAGICAL THINKING AND INCLUSIVE FITNESS

Magical thinking has often been viewed as a cognitive mistake rooted in a poor understanding of causality, which can be fixed with education and experience. However, an alternative interpretation is that magical thinking may be highly adaptive in specific situations. This article attempts a theoretical argument that although magical thinking may be illogical, it does provide survival benefits, specifically the modification of anxiety. Based on the previous assumption there would exist an asymmetric survival cost between magical and logical thinking for situations dealing with unmanageable threats. Given that unmanageable threats cause anxiety, and are unlikely to be influenced by human action, and anxiety has a negative influence on an individual’s health, memory, and task performance, we can conclude magical thinking could be viewed as something more than a cognitive mistake. Instead magical thinking should be viewed as an adaptive and functional cognitive tool which is an evolutionary by-product or adaptation.