They always score when I'm away from the TV, so I better leave the room.

May 1, 2006 8:39 PM

What do you call that belief we all have that our actions directly effect things that we have no direct control over?

We all in one way or another tend to at some time or another believe our thoughts or actions are having either a positive or negative effect on the outcome of what we are witnessing. I'm mostly thinking sports but I know it's bigger than that. What is the name for this belief? It's not superstition. I just find it fascinating because we all seem to have that coded into our brains.

posted by furtive to writing & language (42 comments total)

Faith? Hope?
posted by SPrintF at 8:45 PM on May 1, 2006

Magical thinking.
posted by Nicholas West at 8:48 PM on May 1, 2006

It's not really faith or hope because the person can believe that their actions have a negative impact on the outcome.
posted by furtive at 8:48 PM on May 1, 2006

It's more of a "everything revolves around me" sort of mentality. I'm just guessing there's a word (or a Harper's article) for it.
posted by furtive at 8:50 PM on May 1, 2006

Delusions of grandeur?
posted by emelenjr at 8:51 PM on May 1, 2006

Hado?
posted by purephase at 8:52 PM on May 1, 2006

(i.e., a delusion that you are much greater and more powerful and influential than you really are)
posted by emelenjr at 8:52 PM on May 1, 2006

Warmer :-)
posted by furtive at 8:53 PM on May 1, 2006

Could it be called "being in a Presidential mood"?
posted by five fresh fish at 8:54 PM on May 1, 2006

Another vote for magical thinking. "Like science, magic is concerned with causal relations, but unlike science, magic often mistakes correlation for causation."
posted by scody at 9:01 PM on May 1, 2006

Is it so "everything revolves around me" as to be solipsistic?

Or is that too far?
posted by RavinDave at 9:04 PM on May 1, 2006

Related: ideas of reference.
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:22 PM on May 1, 2006

I've had the same feeling often, as in, I sneeze and Mookie Blaylock drops a fly ball and the Mets lose the World Series.

Could this be the term you're looking for? (As popularized by this movie, which I've never seen but am suspicious of -- Ashton Kutcher and all, you know.)

This tiny difference in the initial conditions becomes amplified by the evolution, until the two trajectories evolve quite separately. The amplification is exponential, the difference grows very rapidly and after a surprisingly short time the two solutions behave quite differently. This is an illustration of the butterfly effect - the idea in meteorology that the flapping of a butterfly's wing will create a disturbance that in the chaotic motion of the atmosphere will become amplified eventually to change the large scale atmospheric motion, so that the long term behavior becomes impossible to forecast.
posted by donpedro at 9:32 PM on May 1, 2006

Another vote for magical thinking. "Like science, magic is concerned with causal relations, but unlike science, magic often mistakes correlation for causation.",

Science mistakes correlation and causation all the time, especially in the popular press.
posted by Paris Hilton at 9:35 PM on May 1, 2006

Oops. I should have read more closely. You're looking not for the word describing the theory, but for the word describing the belief in it. If no luck turning up the right term, try sending it to Word Fugitives.
posted by donpedro at 9:37 PM on May 1, 2006

1) sensitive dependence on initial conditions, aka the butterfly effect (both phrases ascribed to Edward Lorenz, a pioneer in the study of chaos theory); or
2) heliocentrism; or
3) Gothamitis
posted by rob511 at 9:47 PM on May 1, 2006

I'm mostly thinking sport

How's that again? In sport we think our actions have great consequence?
posted by scarabic at 10:30 PM on May 1, 2006

"What is the name for this belief? It's not superstition."

Yes, it is.
posted by majick at 10:37 PM on May 1, 2006

Egomania? Solipsism?
posted by trip and a half at 10:50 PM on May 1, 2006

Agreeing with majick, Wikipedia's superstition page says:

A superstition is an irrational belief about the relation between certain actions—often behaviors—and later occurrences, such as the belief that the number 13 causes misfortune or bad luck.

posted by Sirius at 10:55 PM on May 1, 2006

Sounds like you're describing the Fundamental Attribution Error...
posted by LimePi at 11:02 PM on May 1, 2006

Mookie Blaylock was a point guard, and the Lakers do really play better when I drink beer, last nights game being a prime example.
posted by Manjusri at 11:41 PM on May 1, 2006

It can be superstition, or not, depending on the situation. Sometimes, observing an event does have an effect on that event. Everything is interconnected, and it's not always clear how one thing is connected to another.

Also, it's easy to confuse correlation with causation. Maybe they always score when you're away from the TV, because at some level you know they're about to score, and for some reason you respond to that by leaving the room.

Anyway, there probably is a term to describe the kind of holistic philosphy you're describing, but I don't know what it is.
posted by bingo at 11:42 PM on May 1, 2006

The observer effect, sometimes improperly referred to as the Uncertainty Principle?

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? was an awful, awful, awful movie that seemed to endorse this idea. Maybe the word you're looking for was mentioned there? Sorry for the commentary.

I must admit, though, that it really does seem like the Red Wings lose everytime I watch the third period.
posted by dsword at 12:22 AM on May 2, 2006

Cloud busting.
posted by zanni at 12:26 AM on May 2, 2006

Though it may not be what you have in mind, it reminds me of what I remember reading about sympathetic or imitative magic.
posted by juv3nal at 12:48 AM on May 2, 2006

Yeah, leaving the room to make your team score is definitely sympathetic magic. (See J.G. Frazer's The Golden Bough, which is an attempt to prove that all religions have common sacrifice-rebirth themes but has loads of stuff about symbolism in magic and how magic works, so to speak.)

More generally, I'm with RavinDave - it's a symptom of solipsism.
posted by jack_mo at 5:32 AM on May 2, 2006

some would use the term magick
posted by pyramid termite at 5:41 AM on May 2, 2006

Determinism or causality, perhaps? Recently well-covered in the novel "Improbable" by Adam Fawer.
posted by Thistledown at 6:02 AM on May 2, 2006

Crap, I meant Mookie Wilson. You are of course correct.
posted by donpedro at 6:13 AM on May 2, 2006

I'm with LimePi: fundamental attribution error (though I was thinking it was called "attribution error").
posted by adamrice at 6:20 AM on May 2, 2006

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

"Because I always put on my left shoe first, I always get a hit in the game."
posted by MasonDixon at 7:31 AM on May 2, 2006

This has nothing to do with fundamental attribution error, which is about people, not things. From the Wikipedia link above:

In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error ... is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior. In other words, people tend to have a default assumption that what a person does is based more on what "kind" of person he is, rather than the social and environmental forces at work on that person. This default assumption leads to people sometimes making erroneous explanations for behavior. This general bias to over-emphasizing dispositional explanations for behavior at the expense of situational explanations is much less likely to occur when people evaluate their own behavior.

I think "magical thinking" covers it nicely. (In the bottom of the 10th inning of the sixth game of the '86 Series, the guy I was watching it with and I both froze in the positions we were in when Kevin Mitchell singled, and stayed that way till Knight scored and the game was over. Clearly, if we'd sat back and relaxed, the Mets would have lost.)
posted by languagehat at 8:06 AM on May 2, 2006

Wow. Do people agree with the furtive that this is a "belief we all have"? It's so alien to me, I'm not even sure what he's talking about.

You're saying I worry that if I'm watching a ballgame on TV and I sneeze or drop something or whatever, I'll somehow affect the game?!?? THAT'S the belief?

I don't mean to offend anyone, but my name for that would be "insanity." (Or total ignorance about what a television is.)
posted by grumblebee at 9:08 AM on May 2, 2006

I immediately thought of Karma:

`for every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first, and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant according as its cause was skillful or unskillful.'
posted by cbushko at 9:21 AM on May 2, 2006

languagehat, perhaps The Illusion of Control is a much better description of the above phenomena, but I'd say it still falls under the aegis of attribution errors, if not the FUNDAMENTAL attribution error per se.
posted by LimePi at 9:36 AM on May 2, 2006

I think Nicholas West is right -- I believe it really is called "Magical Thinking". Don't know if I read it in an intro to psychology textbook or saw it on a documentary years ago, but I do recall being informed that this is indeed the term for it.
posted by treepour at 9:44 AM on May 2, 2006

Yes, it is Magical Thinking, and it does exist in most people.
posted by youarenothere at 10:32 AM on May 2, 2006

Grumble -- I take it you don't watch sports. I think it is a very common phenomenon. See: Rally cap.
posted by TonyRobots at 10:51 AM on May 2, 2006

I don't watch a lot of sports. But I HAVE watched sports. Why would this be something special to sports, though. Why wouldn't it happen while I was watching, say, someone play a video game or while I was watching theatre or opera?

I just know in my gut that there's NO WAY anything I do in my home can affect someone miles and miles away through my TV screen.
posted by grumblebee at 11:50 AM on May 2, 2006

Damn it, grumblebee, you just knocked over my drink.
posted by bingo at 6:32 PM on May 2, 2006

I'd argue that superstition isn't the correct term in that a superstition rides on a commonality, it's only superstitious if you've been told it's a superstition or more than one person feels that way, otherwise it's a fear or a hunch or a habit.
posted by furtive at 9:36 PM on July 8, 2006