RTFA: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getAr…

We’re nearing the end of a long campaign season in which every factor under the sun has come into play: Issues of age, race, gender, experience/inexperience. Round and round it goes, how it ends, nobody knows. At least one of the candidates on the ticket is not leaving anything up to chance. Famously superstitious, John McCain avoids taking salt shakers handed to him, tossing his hat on a bed, or commenting on his prospects without touching wood. An aide always has his lucky pen at the ready. And, a confirmed triskaidekophobe, he always carries 31 cents in his pocket that’s 13 backwards – in lucky coins. Also, since his campaign headquarters happened to be on the 13th floor of an Arlington, VA office building, he renamed the floor. He’s a powerful guy. It’s the “M” floor now.

It appears to be human nature to believe our thoughts, our words, or our rituals can influence remote outcomes. Yet in his classic 1948 paper on the subject, “‘Superstition’ in the Pigeon,” B.F. Skinner revealed that superstition isn’t particularly human at all (Skinner, 1948). If you put a hungry pigeon inside a box that automatically dispenses food at regular intervals, a funny thing happens: After a while, the pigeon will acquire some sort of idiosyncratic behavior or tic — perhaps spinning in circles, or bobbing its head rhythmically, or some other strange, random, senseless behavior. In effect, the pigeon has developed a superstition about the source of the food and behaves just like a baseball player before a big game or a candidate before an election: just doing whatever it thinks it takes to guarantee a good outcome.

This article has it all: Interesting tidbits about McCain’s attempts to grab fate by the reins, among other notable figures (such as Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager), and a mini-history of so-called “lucky” rituals and supposed curses in the wild world of sports. Mostly, however, this is a well-written and info-packed article reviewing cognitive, social cognitive, and neuroscientific research related to why humans rely on superstitious reasoning.