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Michael Jordan Superstitions

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Michael Jordan wore his college team’s shorts underneath his Bulls uniform for six NBA championships because he believed that it brought him good luck. This superstition allowed Michael Jordan to perform better. Superstitions are all around us, some are really obvious, while others are more subtle, and are more deeply implanted in our everyday way of life. According to Dr.Vyse, a professor of Psychology at Connecticut College, and author of Believing In Magic:The Psychology of Superstition, “a superstition is a belief or behavior that’s inconsistent with conventional science and attributes functional mental properties into non-mental phenomena.”(39) In simpler terms, a superstition is doing something that you believe will make you perform better, like Michael Jordan and his shorts. Superstitions have multiple positive side effects, such as boosting performance. In the article, Dr Vyse says, “while doing routines have a psychological benefit, so do superstitions.”(201) Believing in a superstition, helps us perform better. Hudson explains, “For instance, a study (published in the journal of Psychological Science) gave golf balls to all of its subjects. Half of them were told the golf ball was lucky. These subjects made 35 percent more successful putts.”(218) Just by believing that the balls were lucky, people performed better because they tricked their brains into thinking that they would play better because their ball was apparently lucky. Not only do superstitions boost

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