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Gmelch's (1974) claim that professional athletes were more superstitious during difficult tasks than easy tasks was tested in a golf putting experiment. Forty college students, 26 male and 14 female, of varying golfing abilities, were tested in 20 easy putts from 3 feet, and 20 difficult putts from 9 feet. Using four colored balls, superstitious behavior was defined as selecting the same colored ball after a made putt, consistent with the methodology of Van Raalte, Brewer, Nemeroff, and Under (1991). Skill level was assessed by a median split of total putts made. There was a significant interaction between level of putt difficulty and skill level on superstitious behavior. Low skill participants were more superstitious in the easy putting task than the difficult putting task, and high skill participants were more superstitious in the difficult putting task than the easy putting task. Gmelch's claims were supported by the high skill participants' behavior and may be explained by the uncertainty hypothesis. The low skill participants' behavior did not support Gmelch's claims, and may be better explained by the reciprocal nature of learned helplessness and superstitious behavior.
Superstition appears to arise from situations of uncertainty (Burger & Lynn, 2005; Felson & Gmelch, 1979; Vyse, 1997). Skinner (1948) was one of the first to document 'superstition' as a way of describing the behaviors pigeons showed when reinforced with food on a fixed time interval. The pigeons were presented with a situation in which it was unclear why and when food reinforcement was to be given. The pigeons repeated specific behaviors that appeared to result in positive reinforcement. Skinner suggested that these behaviors were a result of the pigeons' chance actions being paired unintentionally with the reinforcement, which seemed to give the pigeon an illusion of control over the food presentation.
Superstition is wholly about the illusion of control. Humans demonstrate much offne same behavior as Skinner's (1948) pigeons (Ciborowski, 1997). When put in situations of uncertainty, individuals may try to achieve control by investing in irrelevant objects or actions, believing there to be a causal link between these objects or actions and particular results. Jahoda (1969) reported a distinction between 'causal' superstition and 'coincidental' superstition. A causal superstition was suggested to be part of a conscious belief; while...