MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences - Cryptome

504 Magic and Superstition
emotion of disgust (disgusting entities are contaminating,
i.e., negative contagion), and may have originated in the
food context. On the positive side, contagion provides a
concrete representation of kinship as shared blood, and may
serve as the proximal means to induce kin preferences.
Contagion, in opposition to similarity, holds that things
are often not what they appear to be, since they bear invisible
“traces” of their histories. Consistent with this sophistication,
contagion seems to be absent in young children and
all nonhumans. However, contagion is probably present in
all normal adult humans.
Magical contagion is shown by educated adults, who, for
example, reject a preferred beverage after brief contact with
a dead cockroach (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990). Western subjects
in situations such as these generally attribute their
aversion to health risks; however, they quickly realize that
this account is insufficient when their aversion remains after
the contaminant has been rendered harmless (e.g., sterilized).
Magical thinking often exposes such “head vs. heart”
conflicts.
Other examples of contagion in everyday life include
celebrity token hunting, valuing of family heirlooms, and
the reluctance of many individuals to share or buy used
clothing. Sources capable of producing positive contagion
(“transvaluation”) include loved ones and celebrities. Those
capable of producing substantial aversions include virtually
any disgusting substance, and a wide variety of people; even
unknown healthy others contaminate for most persons, and
contamination is enhanced if the person is described as ill or
morally tainted.
Some properties of contagion (Rozin and Nemeroff
1990) across situations and cultures are: (1) Physical contact
is either definitionally necessary or almost always present;
(2) Effects are relatively permanent; (3) Even very brief
contact with any part of the source produces almost the full
effect (dose and route insensitivity); (4) Negative contagion
is more widespread and powerful than positive (negativity
dominance); (5) Properties passed may be physical or mental,
including intentions and “luck”; (6) Contagion can operate
in a “backward” direction, with effects flowing from
recipient or vehicle back on to the source (as when one
attempts to harm someone by burning a lock of their hair).
The contagious entity or “essence” may be mentally represented
in at least three ways (depending on culture, nature
of the source, and individual within-culture differences).
One is pure association (which does not entail contact, and
can be thought of as an artifactual account of contagion), a
second is the passage of a material-like essence, and a third
is the passage of a spiritual, nonmaterial essence (Nemeroff
and Rozin 1994).
Magical thinking varies substantially in quality and
quantity across cultures, lifetimes, and history, as well as
among adults within a culture. Contagion, particularly via
contact with those perceived as undesirable, is omnipresent,
and is potentially crippling. While this type of interpersonal
contagion is universal, in Hindu India and many of the cultures
in Papua, New Guinea (Meigs 1984), it is especially
salient in daily life, and has an overt moral significance.
See also CULTURAL SYMBOLISM; CULTURAL VARIATION;
ESSENTIALISM; LÉVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE; RELIGIOUS IDEAS
AND PRACTICES; SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND ITS DEVELOP-
MENT
—Paul Rozin and Carol Nemeroff
References
Frazer, J. G. (1890/1959). The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic
and Religion. New York: Macmillan. (Reprint of 1922 abr. ed.
T. H. Gaster; original work published 1890.)
Freud, S. (1950). Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement
between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Translated
by J. Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published
1913.)
Mauss, M. (1902/1972). A General Theory of Magic. Translated by
R. Brain. New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published
1902: Esquisse d’une theorie generale de la magie. L’Annee
Sociologique 1902–1903.)
Meigs, A. (1994). Food, Sex, and Pollution: A New Guinea Religion.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Nemeroff, C., and P. Rozin. (Forthcoming). The makings of the
magical mind. In K. Rosengren, C. Johnson, and P. Harris,
Eds., Imagining the Impossible: The Development of Magical,
Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Contemporary Society.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nemeroff, C. and P. Rozin. (1994). The contagion concept in adult
thinking in the United States: Transmission of germs and interpersonal
influence. Ethos. The Journal of Psychological
Anthropology 22: 158–186.
Piaget, J. (1929/1967). The Child’s Conception of the World.
Totawa, NJ: Littlefield and Adams. (Original work published
1929.)
Rozin, P., and C. J. Nemeroff. (1990). The laws of sympathetic
magic: A psychological analysis of similarity and contagion. In
J. Stigler, G. Herdt, and R. A. Shweder, Eds., Cultural Psychology:
Essays on Comparative Human Development. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 205–232.
Sperber, D. (1985). Anthropology and psychology. Towards an
epidemiology of representations. Man 20: 73–89.
Tambiah, S. J. (1990). Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of
Rationality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, K. (1971). Religion and the Decline of Magic. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Tylor, E. B. (1871/1974). Primitive Culture: Researches into the
Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and
Custom. New York: Gordon Press. (Original work published
1871.)
Further Readings
Boyer, P. (1995). Causal understandings in cultural representations:
Cognitive constraints on inferences from cultural input.
In D. Sperber, D. Premack, and A. J. Premack, Eds., Causal
Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, pp. 615–644.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1976). Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic
among the Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original
work published 1937.)
Horton, R. (1967). African traditional thought and Western science.
Africa 37(1–2): 50–71, 155–187.
Humphrey, N. (1996). Leaps of Faith. New York: Basic Books.
Nemeroff, C., A. Brinkman, and C. Woodward. (1994). Magical
cognitions about AIDS in a college population. AIDS Education
and Prevention 6: 249–265.
Rosengren, K., C. Johnson, and P. Harris, Eds. (Forthcoming).
Imagining the Impossible: The Development of Magical, Scien-