A black cat silhouetted against an orange sky

Black Cats & Number 13: How Superstitions Make Us Feel Safe

Tonight is Halloween, and even though I’m in Australia, I know that in a few hours, the streets around my house will soon be filled with little witches, Marvel figures, ghosts, and other sundry spooky characters. The decorations of black cats, carved pumpkins, and film promotions like Friday the 13th over the past fortnight have me thinking about superstitions and how prevalent they are in our society.

Lots of us have little superstitions that we abide by day to day. Things like not stepping on the cracks, walking under ladders, or touching wood so you don’t ‘jinx’ something. Although less common nowadays, big organisations also abide by commonly held superstitions, such as some hotels not having a room 13. It makes you wonder, why are such beliefs so persistent?

Why do we have superstitions?

Superstitions have a fascinating history, with many (like the fear of the number 13), being so long-lasting that the definitive origin of the fear has been lost. However, the short version of why superstitions persist is because they make us feel safer.

The world is complex, and many of us are fundamentally aware of the fact that we are not in control of a lot of what goes on around us (weather, other people, traffic, world events etc.). This means that things can go wrong without warning and without us having much say in the matter. That is an overwhelming and frightening reality, that most of us don’t want to acknowledge in our daily lives.

Superstitions are ways to try and gain back control over the uncontrollable. If I avoid breaking a mirror, I can avoid bad luck. If I carry a four-leafed clover, good things might happen. If I believe that ‘bad things come in threes’, I feel like I know something of what to expect and prepare for. All of these are ways for us to feel more protected and safe in our environment. In this, they are similar to a common psychological concept, ‘safety behaviours’.

 Safety behaviours are a mechanism of avoidance

Safety behaviours are actions that are carried out in specific situations in order to avoid a feared outcome. They can be obvious, or covert. In this, they share the same function as a superstition. But unlike superstitions, safety behaviours are often very specific to the individual, and to their specific fears.

Some examples of safety behaviours:

  • Helping in the kitchen at a social event (behaviour) to avoid having to navigate small talk (the feared outcome)
  • Carrying hand sanitiser everywhere (behaviour) to avoid the risk of getting sick (the feared outcome)
  • Only going to events that serve alcohol (behaviour) to avoid feeling overwhelmed with anxiety (the feared outcome)
  • Looking at your phone (behaviour) to deter someone from talking to you (the feared outcome)

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether something is a safety behaviour. For example, lots of people look at their phones in public! The question to ask yourself is: how would I feel if I could not do this? If the answer is ‘more anxious’, it’s probably a safety behaviour.

The problem with feeling safer

 It seems hard to believe, but feeling safer from the thing you were afraid of, isn’t actually always a good thing. Consider this scenario:

I have a deep, overwhelming fear of tigers. To the point where I can’t leave the house for fear of running into a tiger in the street. I know this is irrational, but I can’t help it. Then one day, someone gave me a pen and said ‘this is a magic pen, it keeps away tigers!’ I cautiously try it out and find that when I’m carrying the pen, I do in fact encounter no tigers. My anxiety goes away and, pen in hand, I can venture forth into the world.

The question is, have I cured my fear of tigers?

Most people would say no, because I’ve just avoided my anxiety – as long as I have the pen, I feel safe. But what happens if I lose the pen? My anxiety would likely return.

Safety behaviours stop us from testing our fears and increase dependence

Safety behaviours provide immediate relief in the short-term. However, they often increase our anxiety in the long-term. They do this by stopping us from directly sitting with our anxiety and fear, so there isn’t any opportunity to learn if our negative predictions behind the fear are true. In the above example, going out only if I have my tiger-repelling pen doesn’t allow me to learn that I’m not likely to meet a tiger on the streets of Melbourne, and thus, overcome my fear.

The other problem is that we can become dependent upon our safety behaviour. For example, if I am afraid of catching public transport, but feel I can do so as long as I have my headphones and music with me, what happens if I forget to bring my headphones? My anxiety is likely to return, as I have become dependent on the safety behaviour to manage my anxiety symptoms.

Safety behaviours can also become self-fulfilling prophecies

Safety behaviours can also precipitate the exact scenario we were afraid of in the first place. Imagine I believe I need to ask lots of questions in conversation (the safety behaviour), because I am worried the other person will think I’m not interested and not want to talk to me (the negative prediction).

If I engage in this behaviour, not only will I not learn that the belief is potentially not true, but I might actually annoy the other person by asking too many questions, thus precipitating exactly what I was afraid of in the first place!

What to do about it?

If you identify that you have one or more safety behaviours in your life, good news, you can do something about it! Firstly, ask yourself; is this something that interferes with my life, and that I’d like to be able to change? You only want to work to change something that’s a problem.

If your behaviour is something you’d like to change, there are two main approaches.

Exposure therapy

This involves gradually testing your fear by not engaging in the safety behaviour. You start by making list of situations that allow you to confront your fear, but starting small. For example, for the behaviour of staying quiet in social situations (to avoid the fear that you might say something embarrassing), you could start by catching up with only 1-2 close friends and speaking up more around them. Then build up your confidence in different social situations. You can read more details about setting up exposure therapy here.

Challenge your thoughts

Have a careful, non-judgemental look at the fear and its associated safety behaviour, and assess whether it stands up to the facts. Some questions you could consider asking yourself include:

  • What is the genuine likelihood that my fear would come true if I didn’t engage in my safety behaviour?
  • Would it be the end of the world if it did? How could I cope with that situation?
  • Is it really my safety behaviour that’s preventing the feared outcome from occurring, or is actually chance or another factor?
  • Is my safety behaviour actually helping me, in the long run?

You can read more about challenging your thoughts here.

Although it can seem scary at first, learning to live without our own individual superstitions is liberating and empowering. If you’re curious about superstitions and their role in our psychology, you can listen to the author of “Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstitions” discuss their research in this podcast. If you’d like to understand more about anxiety, take a look at this blog, and this one. If you’d like more tips on managing anxiety, try this one and this one.