Lucky shorts? Lucky socks? A lucky ball? Yeah, it’s stupid, and yeah, it works. The New York Times Well column reports on research conducted at the University of Cologne in Germany (the country where, other research has shown, placebos are most effective) that required 28 college students to putt a golf ball. Some were told that they had been given a “lucky” ball. Others were not. The Times reports that students using the “lucky†balls sunk significantly more putts than those
who didn’t. The German scientists also tested whether people performed mental tests (of memory
and vocabulary) more proficiently when they had a lucky charm with them. Yah. They did.
Read more on the influence of luck in sports in the New York Times.
Read an excerpt from a study of how superstition improves performance in Psychological Science.
I knew my lucky underwear worked!
Seriously, the tales of the placebo effect or legion. My favorite was the football coach who told his players that he had received a limited amount of the latest steroid from then East Germany, that had no sexual side effects, was undetectable and gauranteed to pack on muscle.
He gave each play on capsule per week for a month and 90% gained muscle weight and strength from the sugar pills they had been taking.
The mind seems to be the muscle we exercise and use the least…