prasad1
Active member
We love to mimic the routines and rituals of the rich and famous – but they may be no more insightful than random behaviors.
Where would the self-help and business media be without the secret habits of highly successful people? Almost every week there’s a new article outlining a high-flying individual’s behaviors – with the implied promise that using the same techniques could deliver us fame and fortune, too.
Some of their advice is relatively common sense: you’ll often hear how top CEOs like Elon Musk begin work early, skip breakfast and divide their time into small, manageable tasks. Arianna Huffington, the CEO of Thrive Global, prioritizes sleep in the name of productivity, including a bedtime ritual in which she turns off all mobile devices and “escorts them out of [her] bedroom”.
Other inspirational figures are more idiosyncratic in their habits. Bill Gates, for example, would reportedly rock backwards and forwards in his chair while brainstorming – a bodily means of focusing the mind that apparently spread across the Microsoft boardroom. Gates was also very particular in his choice of notebook: it had to be a yellow legal pad. Further back in history, Charles Dickens carried around a compass so he could sleep facing north, something he believed would contribute to more productive writing, while Beethoven counted exactly 60 coffee beans for each cup, which he used to power his composing.
Why do successful people follow such eccentrically specific habits? And why are we so keen to read about them and mimic them in our own lives?
The answer lies in a powerful psychological process called ‘superstitious learning’. The brain is constantly looking for associations between two events. While it is mostly correct, it sometimes mistakes coincidence for causality – leading us to attribute success to something as arbitrary as the colour of our notebook or the number of beans in our brew, rather than our own talent or hard work. And when we hear of other’s triumphs, we often end up copying their habits, too, including the arbitrary rituals that they had acquired through superstitious learning – a phenomenon known as ‘over-imitation’.
This is not to say the resulting habits are completely devoid of benefits. By giving us a sense of self-determination, the adoption of rituals – including the completely random behaviors that we have learnt ourselves or borrowed from those we admire – can help us to overcome anxiety and may even bring about a noticeable boost in performance.
The scientific study of superstitious learning began in the late 1940s, with an influential paper by the American psychologist BF Skinner. It seems that the brain is constantly looking for associations among our behavior, our environment and the rewards that we seek – and quite often, it can come to the wrong conclusions.
“Superstition is a kind of maladaptive behavior that arises from what is normally a very good thing – the ability of the brain to predict,” says Elena Daprati, a neuroscientist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
Daprati’s own research has showed further evidence for this theory. In a 2019 paper, her team showed that individual differences in implicit learning – the brain’s ability to non-consciously pick up patterns – can explain why some people are more likely to form superstitious habits than others.
In everyday life, this associative learning might lead us to settle on a ‘lucky’ pen that seems to deliver particularly good grades in exams, or a certain suit that we feel guarantees a good job interview. Creative tasks are especially rife with uncertainty – which may explain why thinkers like Gates, Beethoven and Dickens adopted such specific behaviors to get their thoughts flowing. we have a tendency to “over-imitate” when we learn from others, copying every action they perform, even if there is no obvious logical reason for a particular deed. Often, we simply don’t even question the reason for doing something – we just assume that it must have a purpose.
www.bbc.com
Where would the self-help and business media be without the secret habits of highly successful people? Almost every week there’s a new article outlining a high-flying individual’s behaviors – with the implied promise that using the same techniques could deliver us fame and fortune, too.
Some of their advice is relatively common sense: you’ll often hear how top CEOs like Elon Musk begin work early, skip breakfast and divide their time into small, manageable tasks. Arianna Huffington, the CEO of Thrive Global, prioritizes sleep in the name of productivity, including a bedtime ritual in which she turns off all mobile devices and “escorts them out of [her] bedroom”.
Other inspirational figures are more idiosyncratic in their habits. Bill Gates, for example, would reportedly rock backwards and forwards in his chair while brainstorming – a bodily means of focusing the mind that apparently spread across the Microsoft boardroom. Gates was also very particular in his choice of notebook: it had to be a yellow legal pad. Further back in history, Charles Dickens carried around a compass so he could sleep facing north, something he believed would contribute to more productive writing, while Beethoven counted exactly 60 coffee beans for each cup, which he used to power his composing.
Why do successful people follow such eccentrically specific habits? And why are we so keen to read about them and mimic them in our own lives?
The answer lies in a powerful psychological process called ‘superstitious learning’. The brain is constantly looking for associations between two events. While it is mostly correct, it sometimes mistakes coincidence for causality – leading us to attribute success to something as arbitrary as the colour of our notebook or the number of beans in our brew, rather than our own talent or hard work. And when we hear of other’s triumphs, we often end up copying their habits, too, including the arbitrary rituals that they had acquired through superstitious learning – a phenomenon known as ‘over-imitation’.
This is not to say the resulting habits are completely devoid of benefits. By giving us a sense of self-determination, the adoption of rituals – including the completely random behaviors that we have learnt ourselves or borrowed from those we admire – can help us to overcome anxiety and may even bring about a noticeable boost in performance.
The scientific study of superstitious learning began in the late 1940s, with an influential paper by the American psychologist BF Skinner. It seems that the brain is constantly looking for associations among our behavior, our environment and the rewards that we seek – and quite often, it can come to the wrong conclusions.
“Superstition is a kind of maladaptive behavior that arises from what is normally a very good thing – the ability of the brain to predict,” says Elena Daprati, a neuroscientist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
Daprati’s own research has showed further evidence for this theory. In a 2019 paper, her team showed that individual differences in implicit learning – the brain’s ability to non-consciously pick up patterns – can explain why some people are more likely to form superstitious habits than others.
In everyday life, this associative learning might lead us to settle on a ‘lucky’ pen that seems to deliver particularly good grades in exams, or a certain suit that we feel guarantees a good job interview. Creative tasks are especially rife with uncertainty – which may explain why thinkers like Gates, Beethoven and Dickens adopted such specific behaviors to get their thoughts flowing. we have a tendency to “over-imitate” when we learn from others, copying every action they perform, even if there is no obvious logical reason for a particular deed. Often, we simply don’t even question the reason for doing something – we just assume that it must have a purpose.
Superstitious learning: Can 'lucky' rituals bring success?
We love to mimic the routines and rituals of the rich and famous – but they may be no more insightful than random behaviours.
www.bbc.com
