The Psychology of Superstition - Gustav Jahoda

Superstition gets dragged out of the shadows and put under a microscope, not as something silly to laugh off, but as a stubborn, deeply human habit that refuses to die. Gustav Jahoda traces how beliefs in luck, omens, and unseen forces creep into everyday thinking, even in people who consider themselves rational. The result is less about ghosts and more about the strange shortcuts the mind takes when it wants certainty in an unpredictable world.

It’s sharp, quietly unsettling stuff, showing how culture, history, and psychology all conspire to keep superstition alive and kicking. You start to realise it’s not just about black cats or broken mirrors, it’s about control, fear, and the need to make sense of chaos. By the end, the uncomfortable takeaway lands: superstition isn’t some relic of the past, it’s still sitting there in modern thinking, just wearing better clothes.