Everything About ___
Live briefing

Everything about Magical thinking

Belief in the connection of unrelated events

Magical thinking or superstitious thinking is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects. Examples include the idea that personal thoughts can influence the external world without acting on them, or that objects must be causally connected if they resemble each other or have come into contact with each other in the past. Magical thinking is a type of fallacious thinking and is a common source of invalid causal inferences. Unlike the confusion of correlation with causation, magical thinking can occur even when there is no statistical connection between two events. Wikipedia →

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

  1. Read the overview: Magical thinkingA 5-minute orientation
  2. Skim a recent paper: Magical thinking: Its effect on emergency medical careInfluential work since 2022
  3. Pick up a classic book: SabrielThe most-reprinted book on the subject
  4. Read the landmark paper: Magical Thinking and Consumer CopingCited 80 times
  5. Go sideways: Psychological theories of magicA closely related topic
  6. Go sideways: Piaget's theory of cognitive developmentA closely related topic

📖 Definitions

Noun The attribution of causal or synchronistic relationships between actions and events which seemingly cannot be justified by reason and observation.

🗂️ The subject at a glance

  1. Types
  2. Causes
  3. In children
  4. Related terms

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

🆕 Influential since 2022

📚 Books worth reading

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics