Summer means baseball,
and baseball means thongs.
Well, it did for one
summer at least, a few years back, when
then-New York Yankee Jason Giambi admitted
that he sometimes wore a lucky thong (tiger
print, gold lamé) when he hit a slump. He
added that he lent it to his teammates when
they needed a lift, too. Apparently, nothing
excites athletes like women's underwear ...
even on themselves.
Now it turns out my home
team heroes weren't quite as batty as they
sounded at the time. A new study by
researchers at the University of Cologne
reported in the current issue of
Psychological Science finds that a good luck
charm can actually improve a person's
performance.
This is not because the
charms possess real magical
power. (Though who knows?) The
researchers — psychologists — hypothesize
that a charm boosts its owner's confidence,
which in turn boosts his (or her)
performance. Could that be true?
Lead researcher Lysann
Damisch noticed — as have we all — that
athletes seem to be a particularly
superstitious bunch. Michael Jordan wore his
old blue University of North Carolina shorts
underneath his NBA shorts for good luck.
Serena Williams once admitted wearing the
same pair of socks throughout an entire
tournament. (Maybe she won by asphyxiating
her opponents.) Tiger Woods supposedly wears
a red shirt on the Sundays that he plays
professionally. (And just think how much
luckier he'd be today if he never took his
clothing off.)
Anyway, Damisch knew that
prior research on superstitions focused
mainly on when and why people indulge in
them. They generally do this in times of
stress, when they have to perform and are
worried that they might not make the grade —
sometimes literally. Like athletes, students
are a superstitious bunch. The lucky charm
or superstitious behavior ("If I don't step
on the foul line, I'm good to go!") gives
the fretter a feeling of being in control.
It's a stress reliever. But Damisch wondered
whether maybe it isn't more than that.
Can a lucky rabbit's foot
— or stinky sock — actually improve
performance?
To find out, she and her
colleagues Barbara Stoberock and Thomas
Mussweiler conducted several experiments. In
one, they asked students to take part in a
test and bring a lucky charm with them.
The researchers then
whisked away the charms — stuffed animals,
rings, stones — ostensibly to photograph
them. They gave the charms back to half the
students and then had them all perform a
memory test. The students in possession of
their charms did better than the ones
without!
In another experiment,
the researchers asked students to play a
putting game. Half of them were told, "Here
is your ball. So far, it has turned out to
be lucky!" The other half were just told,
"Here's your ball." The ones with the
"lucky" ball did better. And in yet another
test, half the students were told the German
equivalent of "I'll keep my fingers crossed
for you!" And that half did better on a
dexterity test.
All of which seems to
suggest that when people do the silliest,
most superstitious things, be that rubbing
the batboy's head or wearing a gold lamé
thong to an all-star game, they may actually
be indulging in high-powered psychological
enhancement.
Or maybe they just like
wearing ladies underwear. Beats steroids!
--
Lenore Skenazy is the
author of "Who's the Blonde That Married
What's-His-Name? The Ultimate
Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You
Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right
Now" and "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise
Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without
Going Nuts with Worry)." To find out more
about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com)
and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
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