There's an interesting set of experiments involving making "superstitious pigeons." If you condition pigeons by providing food after a stimulus, a sound or light, the pigeons will learn to expect food coming from the slot. However, if you just randomly supply the food, the pigeons will have a tendency to associate the delivery of food with whatever random behavior they happened to be doing, from hopping around to standing on one leg.
If we apply this idea of superstition to humans, it's clear you've introduced a source of anxiety into the organism, the anxiety over whether the individual is doing what needs to be done to get the reward. If the source of the anxiety can't be efficiently addressed, would this also not lead to irrational mechanisms for dealing with the anxiety in humans? I think it's logical. If someone is "superstitious" in this way, the drive to reduce internal anxiety could lead them to adopt all sorts of irrational beliefs, independent of any actual reasons for adopting those beliefs and behaviors.
If we apply this idea of superstition to humans, it's clear you've introduced a source of anxiety into the organism, the anxiety over whether the individual is doing what needs to be done to get the reward. If the source of the anxiety can't be efficiently addressed, would this also not lead to irrational mechanisms for dealing with the anxiety in humans? I think it's logical. If someone is "superstitious" in this way, the drive to reduce internal anxiety could lead them to adopt all sorts of irrational beliefs, independent of any actual reasons for adopting those beliefs and behaviors.
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