Everyone shares, on some level, a superstition that has been passed down from generation to generation. Be the fear of going under the stairs, or breaking the mirror and so on! These beliefs are part of our collective imagination as human beings, but have you ever stopped to think where superstitions come from? Check out what the science says about it here.
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Anthropologists understand that human beings are always looking to understand the phenomena of nature in order to predict them. Therefore, they create a series of narratives based on the principles of similarity and contagion.
Therefore, there is interest in building standards to prevent certain things from happening, understand better:
The principle of similarity
Most superstitions are born from our understanding of similarities, that is, what is similar, in some way, has a relationship. For example, the reflection in the mirror sends us directly to the image of ourselves, therefore, when the mirror breaks, we believe that something bad will happen to us.
In this way, we can understand that we always prefer to believe that all things are connected and that events do not happen by coincidence. This thought was largely responsible for stimulating the belief that we can perceive signs from the universe or beyond that something is about to happen.
The principle of contagion
The principle of contagion, on the other hand, consists of the idea that we are always at risk of receiving influence of the things happening around us. This belief is born because, in fact, we can be susceptible to some situations and phenomena of nature. After all, we can burn our skin when we touch fire or get wet when we take the rain.
Similarly, we believe, for example, that passing in front of a cemetery will contaminate us with the supposed energy that place. Another example is the belief that someone's negative thought, or something that a person said, will influence our destiny and our life.
