Or a psychology teacher with some experience, through psychological counseling for these girls, we came up with a way: put some utensils such as clothes of dead girls, and tie some small garlands and paper cranes for each student. Run to the crossroads outside the city gate and burn them in the dead of night.
Strange to say, since then, several girls have psychologically accepted the fact that the girl has left and can stay in the dormitory with peace of mind.
This case is not an exaggeration, but more a process and behavior of psychological comfort.
Do you believe that magpies give good news and crows give bad news? Someone believed it. Hearing the chirping of magpies, I feel that something good is coming. At least there was a shadow in my heart when I saw the crow croaking.
Some superstitions are fabricated. In ancient novels, there are often examples of using superstition to form a sense of mystery and gathering people to make trouble. In most historical peasant uprisings, rumors and superstitions are often created at the launching stage, and then troops are sent to rebel when the time is ripe.
Superstition can also be inherited. It is observed that children's parents are often superstitious about one thing, such as being afraid of owls. Children are often superstitious about owls and think ghosts are crying. The reason is often that children are influenced by their parents in the process of growing up, and their superstitions about the same thing are also passed down.
There are many and complicated reasons for the formation of personal superstition. The superstition of mass psychology is even more complicated, and it is impossible to elaborate.
Superstition is hard to get rid of. Generally speaking, a person is superstitious about one thing, and what others say is useless. Fans are fascinated by themselves. This is a general conclusion and it is impossible to delve into it.
But there is a psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904- 1990) who doesn't believe in evil. He believes that all superstitious behaviors can be explained by his radical behaviorism theory. Through his "superstitious pigeon experiment" in the skinner box designed by himself, he thinks it is superstitious.
He believes that all behaviors, human and animals, public external and private internal, including some feelings and ideas, are ultimately the learning and control relationship between behavior and subsequent results. Although he admits that individual behavior is difficult to study, for example, people's thoughts and emotions are often the cause of behavior, not a mixture of environment and behavior.
In Skinner's behaviorism theory, your behavior may change with the result of your behavior under any scene conditions. For example, being praised, receiving money and solving a real problem will make you more likely to repeat the same behavior in the future to get the same motivation. He called these incentive results intensifiers.
The result of other behaviors, such as physical injury or feeling embarrassed, will lead to less or even deliberate avoidance of these behaviors to avoid the same embarrassing things. The result of these actions is called a punitive factor or punisher.
The strengthening of behavior, the role of punishment and encouragement are the basic process of Skinner's radical behaviorism theory to analyze behavior. His business model is:
This behavior pattern is not new. We knew it when we studied Pavlov's conditioned reflex. You train your pet dog to sit down. If you sit down, you will be rewarded with a bite of dog food or a touch. If you don't listen, at least there is no reward. The same is true when you train your dog not to pee in the room. You have been taking the dog out regularly since he was young. If you urinate outside, you will be rewarded; If you urinate at home, you will be punished. Slowly, keeping a dog has become a habit. He came in the morning and started asking you to go out and pee downstairs.
For example, when you are eating, the dog will beg around the table. Why is this happening? Because there are family members in your family who feed the dog. If you want to put an end to this behavior, you must first put an end to family members feeding dogs at the dinner table, and then don't give them anything. Over time, dogs will stop begging. If one of your family members is merciful and secretly returns it, your efforts will be in vain.
Skinner thinks that all human behaviors can also be explained by this model.
Why does Skinner think people are superstitious? It is because people believe or assume that there is a causal relationship between superstitious behavior and desired results in a specific environment. In fact, he believes that this relationship does not exist in reality.
Why do people prefer to believe in connections? Because in reality, this kind of behavior is often rewarded unexpectedly because of some accidental coincidence. He just called this inconsistency reinforcement, that is, the relationship between this behavior and the result does not always correspond.
For example, every time you go to the temple to burn incense and make a wish, some of them don't come true, but occasionally a wish comes true, and you will feel that you are sincere and immortal. If the wish doesn't come true, there is a saying, it's not a god, it's just your insincerity or other sins. Otherwise, why should others make a wish for Turin?
Skinner designed the famous Skinner box in 1948 to prove his theory. It's just a cage or an empty box with a plate or tray in it, which is convenient for putting food in.
The early Skinner box had a lever, which, if triggered, might cause food to fall off the plate. Later, it was changed to put food on it. Animals get behavioral incentives through trial and error. Enhancers can observe animal behavior. Rant Skinner's behavior motivation theory: how superstition is formed.
In order to test his theory, Skinner found eight pigeons to do experiments. The experimental rule is that the researchers start looking for eight pigeons, and then feed them less to keep them hungry.
Then put it in Skinner's box to study, and put a little food every 15 seconds (far from enough appetite). According to the degree of hunger of pigeons, they should keep pecking, but unfortunately there are no more. Grab it once, then wait 15 seconds; This cycle.
Each hungry pigeon is put into an empty cage one by one and observed once a day. Two independent observers recorded the pigeon's behavior.
Finally, it was found that six pigeons had a regular superstitious behavior, that is, they took certain actions and seemed to believe that they would expect their beloved food. In fact, for hungry pigeons, no matter how they behave, food needs to wait for the next 15 second. A pigeon rotates clockwise in the cage for two or three times before the food comes. The other one repeatedly pushes the upper corner of the cage with his head; The other pigeon shook its head up and down; Two pigeons are swaying as if dancing; Another pigeon touched the plate and flew away.
The behavior of these pigeons in the experiment was never discovered before they were put into Skinner's box for experiment. Even if these behaviors have nothing to do with putting food, it can be seen that pigeons think that food can be expected to alleviate hunger through such regular actions.
At least these six pigeons, Skinner turned them into superstitious pigeons.
In order to further dispel the superstitious behavior of pigeons, Skinner conducted a tracking experiment. First, the time to put the food in is extended from 15 seconds to 1 minute. Pigeons who believe in fixed movements start to go crazy and move up and down, just like pigeons dance. (pigeon food dance)
Then I began to try to eliminate pigeon superstition. That is to say, under the same premise, hungry pigeons can no longer get food in Skinner's box, no matter whether they show superstitious behavior before or dance with pigeons later.
The researchers found that with the progress of the experiment, the superstitious behavior of pigeons became less and less, until they finally disappeared completely and were no longer superstitious pigeons. It took 10000 times to complete the process from superstition to superstition.
This question is difficult to answer. Because people's emotional formation and personality formation are related to the growth environment and heredity, there are many reasons why an individual is superstitious about something.
When people face the natural environment, sometimes they often encounter that they are powerless and seem very small. They are not sure what they want to accomplish and the results they pursue.
Therefore, only by facing up to their own sense of powerlessness, helplessness and self-distrust, can we pin our hopes for success on the help of the outside world.
Once you get the desired result, it is what Skinner calls a positive stimulus. When you encounter a problem next time, you will repeat the same old story, and superstition will be formed.
Once superstition is formed, it is difficult to eliminate it. Skinner's superstitious pigeons were completely eliminated after 10000 negative stimuli.
Assuming that in this process, for example, it reaches 8000 times, there is another positive strong stimulus, that is, the inconsistency of stimulus, then superstitious behavior may not be completely eliminated. As mentioned above, if a dog begging around the table wants to put an end to this behavior, but your family can't help giving it once or twice while you are away, it is impossible to quit begging.
Because people's hope results are multiple, people's needs are multi-level, and people's desires are diverse, it is easy for people to settle for the second best and find suboptimal substitutes when the first wish cannot be met. For example, a magpie crows at your door, and your greatest wish is a promotion. After today, there is no hope. It just happens that someone gives out red envelopes today. You may think that Magpie is right, and this is what good things correspond to.
Therefore, people can always find ways to justify themselves, hear magpie, and then look for evidence in life to prove that magpie is a good thing. This psychological effect makes it difficult for people to quit superstitious behavior.
In order to survive, human beings have the instinct to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. So the memory of possible injury is deep.
Similarly, for superstition, compared with positive and negative stimuli, negative stimuli are much more effective than positive stimuli because they may cause harm to people.
In other words, you are more inclined to avoid the harm you may get by superstitious methods than to get good results by superstitious methods.
Atheists think superstition is stupid, but as Marx said, the existence of religion may eventually die with the demise of mankind. So is superstition. I am afraid that as long as human beings exist, there will be all kinds of superstitions. To some extent, the existence of superstition has its positive significance.
① Psychological comfort function
It turns out that the countryside is short of medicine and medicine. If you are sick, please jump into God. Sometimes you can really cure diseases. Word of mouth, so that the original great god, in the closed rural areas have a certain market.
Humans often think of jumping when they are seriously ill. The witch came, prepared a ceremony, and then walked around the fire, talking nonsense, saying that the gods had descended to earth. After the great god jumped down, he grabbed a handful of incense ashes and drank them as medicine. Sometimes, I really cure some incurable diseases.
In fact, this is a kind of psychological comfort. Incense ash is equivalent to a placebo (placebo), but you psychologically think that the gods bless you and your illness should be cured. In the case of psychological comfort, your immune system begins to work, and finally you get well, but the credit goes to jumping.
(2) enhance self-confidence, enhance their ability and control in a difficult situation.
Superstition can sometimes enhance self-confidence. Southerners often go to the god of wealth when doing business. What's more, when they encounter medium or large business obstacles, they will ask the god of wealth to bless them.
Why does it sometimes work? In fact, doing business is based on certain resource conditions, and the future is uncertain due to many factors. You go to the temple and draw a sign, and the monk tells you that you are lucky. You thought you were blessed by the gods, so you set foot on a business trip naturally, and then returned with a full load as you wished. In fact, it is your self-confidence that is blessing you, and it is your self-confidence that makes your career smooth.
The monks in the temple are well aware of this. If you don't believe me, you can pour out the bamboo sticks in the bamboo tube and have a look. Most of them are easy to sign. After you finish painting, you can send a few nice words to coax you into paying.
If it is really random, many people can't draw a good ticket and don't pay. Where can monks eat fast?
③ Dangerous workers are more superstitious than normal workers.
An interesting phenomenon is that practitioners engaged in dangerous work often have some special superstitious behaviors.
The possible reason is that dangerous practitioners are under great occupational pressure, so they use some superstitious behaviors to seek relief and find ways to relieve the pressure.