Why Do I Do That? Psychological Defense Mechanisms and the Hidden Ways They Shape Our Lives by Joseph Burgo

Author:Joseph Burgo [Joseph Burgo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: N/A
Publisher: Joseph Burgo
Published: 2012-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

NINE

Control

I'm an ordinary man,

Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance

to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants.

– from My Fair Lady (1956)

Superstitions

The well-known behaviorist B.F. Skinner once conducted a series of experiments using hungry pigeons in a cage attached to a mechanism that automatically delivered food at regular intervals, without reference to what the birds were doing beforehand. Skinner found that the pigeons would associate the delivery of the food with whatever they happened to be doing at the time it was delivered, and that they continued to perform those same actions, often bizarre and ritualized, as if there were a causal relationship between those actions and the delivery of the food. In other words, the pigeons came to believe they could influence the arrival of food with their behavior.

Skinner considered these actions analogous to human superstitions such as rituals for changing one’s fortune at cards. In tribal cultures, this type of superstition is quite common; many pantheistic religions use ritualistic behavior such as animal sacrifice in an effort to influence divine action. In modern America, professional baseball players commonly use superstitious rituals when going up to bat. Superstition is everywhere.

Many people believe they will incur bad luck if they open an umbrella indoors, walk under a ladder or cross paths with a black cat, so they avoid those actions in order to evade misfortune. Ancients once believed that a sneeze caused the soul to escape from the body through the nose, and that uttering the appropriate words would prevent the Devil from seizing it. To this day, many of us still say “Bless you” when somebody sneezes.

Have you ever crossed your fingers and told your friends to wish you luck, just before you started to do something that mattered deeply to you? As if your fingers and the wishes of your friends had any effect on the outcome!

Superstitions represent the longing to master an unpredictable world, to feel we have some control over what happens to us when in fact we’re often quite helpless. It might console us or boost our confidence if we believe that crossing two fingers will bring good fortune, but in truth it has no more causal effect on external events than the weird behavior of Skinner’s pigeons on the timing of their food’s delivery.

Helplessness and Control

The experience of helplessness is painful and difficult; making efforts to gain control over our circumstances in order to mitigate such helplessness is a natural response. In the states along Tornado Alley, people typically build storm cellars; the citizens of California often have earthquake preparedness kits in their homes; in Louisiana, the Army Corps of Engineers maintains dikes to control flooding. We do what we can to control our unpredictable environment, but in truth, we’re more vulnerable than we like to admit.

Most of us have a hard time living with the constant awareness of that fact. You can’t go through every minute of your life conscious that you’re not in control, unable to predict what will come next.

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