Magical Thinking Research Articles

Grieving (un)like Me: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Contemporary Grief Memoirs

This article analyses the rhetoric of exemplarity in the contemporary grief memoirs The Year of Magical Thinking (2005, Joan Didion), Log of a Merciless Year (2001, Connie Palmen), and Levels of Life (2013, Julian Barnes). It complicates the view of post-Romantic literature of mourning as a mere expression of individuality and it qualifies the idea that modern and contemporary literature have become anti-exemplary. Rather than opposing exemplarity, grief memoirs foreground a subjective experience of grief as the most valuable basis for a true insight into grief, which becomes communicable and recognizable to an imagined community of grieving individuals.

ANTROPOLOGIE SOCIÁLNÍCH VZTAHŮ V SOUDOBÉM VIETNAMU

This review article presents a publication on ethnographic, linguistic, and social relations in the families that remained in Vietnam after the wars. Some family members still face post-war pressures and war trauma. Others face the social imperatives of caring for their elderly or sick relatives. Limitations in personal life are the main concept of the book reviewed which focuses on the role of the personal sacrifice. This is complemented by the social relations of love and care, the cult of ancestors and the demand for filial devotion. In Vietnamese families, these rules are fixed and are reflected in the linguistic means of communication (e.g., mother—child), which the author analyses from the linguistic point of view and documents it with the use of photographs of communication situations. The review points to alternative interpretations and cultural specifics of living traditions of magical thinking and polygamy.

Sports Fans and Magical Thinking: How Supernatural Thinking Connects Fans to Teams

Magical thinking describes beliefs and reasoning processes that defy generally accepted principles of logic and causality. Researchers have identified a link between strength of identification with a favorite sports team and superstition, an expression of magical thinking. Research on fans of fictional narratives has suggested magical thinking more broadly may play a role in being a fan. The authors posed the question, what is the link between sports fanship and two specific types of magical thinking: magical ideation and sympathetic magic? In a survey of 214 adults, relationships between strength of sports fanship and magical ideation, sympathetic magic in a sports context, and sympathetic magic generally were explored. Belief in sympathetic magic with regard to sports figures was found to be prominent among sports fans. In addition, a positive relationship was observed between strength of sports fanship and strength of belief in both sympathetic magic generally and magical ideation. Implications are discussed in terms of recruitment of and marketing to potential and existing fans.

The magic and misdirection of public service loan forgiveness in the United States

AbstractIn recent years, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has garnered more attention among student loan borrowers in the United States as a potential source of loan relief. However—at least prior to the PSLF Program Overhaul introduced in October 2021—arduous eligibility criteria, opaque communication on the part of the U.S. Department of Education and contracted loan servicers, and ongoing threats to the continuation of the program made for a skittish and frustrated group of enrollees. This article leverages a mixed methods study to explore the meaning borrowers ascribe to prospective loan forgiveness and interrogates how magical thinking contributes to enrollees' perspectives on prospective loan forgiveness. With several of these sources of meaning standing in conflict with each other and with confidence in personal prospects of loan forgiveness fairly low, we argue that magical thinking overlays the meaning of potential loan forgiveness among some borrowers.

Magic as Technological Dominion: John Dee\u2019s Hydragogy and the Draining of the Fens in Ben Jonson\u2019s The Devil is an Ass

This paper explores the ambiguous role of magic in the controversy over the draining of the fens, the last bastion of wilderness in seventeenth-century England. In what now looks like an early form of environmentalist resistance to the destruction of these wetlands, opponents of the drainage accused the undertakers of invoking diabolical aid in their audacious efforts to tamper with God’s creation. Evidence of this mentality can be found in both William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Ben Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass. Via a close reading of Jonson’s comedy, this paper navigates the confluence of magic, technology, and “projection” in the ideological debate surrounding the fens. Just as the traditional Vice figures (Iniquity and Pug) find themselves out-devilled by Jacobean Londoners, the play dramatizes the appropriation and displacement of a residual poetics of enchantment by the emergent discourses of economics and applied engineering. A tendency to equate magic with hydro-engineering technology may have been encouraged by John Dee’s involvement in the project. Drawing on an unpublished manuscript in the Ashmole collection at the Bodleian Library, this paper seeks to uncover the extent and impact of Dee’s role in the drainage. Advocates of the drainage, however, not only denied any supernatural involvement but also counterattacked by accusing their opponents of credulity and magical thinking. They characterized the native fen-dwellers as superstitious heathens and cast a scathing eye on local folklore depicting the fens as a demon-haunted wasteland. In pro-drainage documents, the proposed draining of the fenlands becomes tantamount to an exorcism, purging the rural backwaters of paganism and witchcraft. Wetlands management will now be conducted through applied engineering rather than magical incantations. A little known Jacobean ballad, “The Powte’s Complaint” (c. 1619) revives these animistic tropes to protest the fen’s destruction. Jonson’s play may explain why this tactic was doomed to fail and why this poem has been forgotten. As the credibility of magic eroded in the mid-seventeenth century, opponents of the drainage instead sought to stir up public resentment against the foreignness of the Dutch under-takers rather than their supposed collusion with supernatural forces. Jonson’s own projection that the drainage was an impossible con (like alchemy) would prove inaccurate. Nevertheless, The Devil is an Ass stands as the one of the most ecologically-engaged texts in the canon of early modern English drama.

Will blue hydrogen lock us into fossil fuels forever?

Will blue hydrogen lock us into fossil fuels forever?

The Year of Enduring COVID-19: Typology of Attitudes Displayed by Health Care Professionals in Ukraine

Aim. Identification and construction of the typology of attitudes of health care professionals in Ukraine to the current COVID-19 situation and vaccination process. Methods. Transcripts of 49 semi-structured interviews subjected to thematic analysis constituted the subject matter of the analysis. On the basis of the categories identified within the thematic analysis process, a typology was developed, with due account of two parameters: the idea about the origin of the virus: artificial or natural, and the attitude of the informants to the policy (implementation of policy decisions) chosen by the authorities to fight the virus. Combination of these two parameters gives four standpoints—types of attitude of health care professionals to the risks associated with COVID-19. Results and conclusion. Analysis of the results has enabled to outline the problem field for assessing the risk of COVID-19, which includes three topics, as well as to point out four typical standpoints in the attitude displayed by health care professionals that are marked as “magical thinking,” “technological thinking,” “negativistic thinking,” “critical thinking.” Originality. The research was conducted during the third wave of coronavirus in Ukraine, therefore, it reflects the analysed opinions of health care professionals about the threat of COVID-19 and vaccination process. The fact that the research was performed using qualitative methods ensured focusing on subjective peculiarities of the perception of changes in the COVID-19 situation.

Magical thinking and moral injury: exclusion culture in psychiatry.

This is an article about exclusion. We might not like to admit it - even fail to realise it - but National Health Service (NHS) mental health service structures have become increasingly focused on how to deny people care instead of help them to access it. Clinicians learn the art of self-delusion, convincing ourselves we are not letting patients down but, instead, doing the clinically appropriate thing. Well-meant initiatives become misappropriated to justify neglect. Are we trying to protect ourselves against the knowledge that we're failing our patients, or is collusion simply the easiest option? Problematic language endemic in psychiatry reveals a deeper issue: a culture of fear and falsehood, leading to iatrogenic harm. An excessively risk-averse and under-resourced system may drain its clinicians of compassion, losing sight of the human being behind each 'protected' bed and rejected referral.

Magical Amulets, Magical Thinking, and Semiotics in Early Byzantium

Abstract The term ‘magic’ is problematic. Magic studies have rapidly developed in recent decades and have suggested various ways of understanding the term, especially regarding objects from the medieval Roman Empire, Byzantium. Two early Byzantine amulets (as case studies) display conventional semiotic structures, which include persuasive analogy, speech-acts, and show-acts. Persuasive analogy, speech-acts, and show-acts – and how they organize information – operate also in religious, medical, and philosophical examples. Accordingly, art, archaeology, and texts of ritual power exemplify intersecting communities of thought and various types of social practices. Magic studies is interdisciplinary, and it encourages critique of modern assumptions regarding authority and of our intellectual colonization of times past. This essay is broad with several object examples across media, written as a conference presentation. Another approach to these semiotic structures on magical amulets – with examination of fewer objects and wider attention to the historiography of magic studies – will appear in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Byzantine Art and Architecture, ed. Ellen Schwartz.

Films at the fault line of ‘deep’ and ‘bright’ greens in the environmental movement

In this article, I review two films challenging the technological solutions and assumptions of ‘bright green’ environmentalism, Planet of the Humans and Bright Green Lies. I explain the ways these films showcase a ‘deep green’ challenge to what is charged as magical thinking in proposals for renewable energy transition. I summarize how filmmakers explore evidence that calls into question the potential for new forms of industrial expansion to save a biome in crisis. I consider the arguments raised in each film surrounding biological limits to extraction and growth. And I discuss the importance and value of exposing students to strong counter arguments to paradigmatic proposals for energy transition in a way that invokes a critical discussion of knowledge production and application.

Alexithymia Is a Key Mediator of the Relationship Between Magical Thinking and Empathy.

Thought action fusion (TAF), whereby internal thoughts are perceived to exert equivalent effects to external actions, is a form of magical thinking. Psychiatric disorders associated with TAF (e.g. schizophrenia; obsessive compulsive disorder) can feature atypical social cognition. We explored relationships between TAF and empathy in 273 healthy young adults. TAF was directly correlated with higher personal distress, but not perspective taking, fantasy or empathic concern. TAF moral (the belief that thinking about an action/behaviour is morally equivalent to actually performing that behaviour) was predicted by emotion contagion, alexithymia and need for closure. TAF likelihood (the belief that simply having a thought about an event makes that event more likely to occur) was predicted by personal distress, sense of agency and alexithymia. Both cognitive (TAF and negative sense of agency) and emotional (emotion contagion, alexithymia) factors contributed to personal distress. TAF, negative sense of agency and personal distress mediated the effect of emotion contagion on alexithymia. Our findings reveal complex relationships between emotional processes and TAF, shedding further light on the social cognitive profile of disorders associated with magical thinking. Furthermore, they emphasise the potential importance of alexithymia and emotion contagion as mediators or potential risk factors in the development of psychiatric symptoms linked to TAF, such as intrusive thoughts about harm to others.

What the Centre Cannot Hold: Pandemic Vicissitudes and Contemporary Art in Singapore

If anything, 2020 was a year to compel magical thinking; to paraphrase Joan Didion: for mourning the loss and getting to work in finding other ways out and doing the right thing. Coronavirus stoppe...

The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment

The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment

ПСИХОЛОГІЧНІ ПРОЯВИ МАСОВОЇ ПАНДЕМІЧНОЇ СВІДОМОСТІ

The COVID-19 pandemic contributes to numerous transformations of mass consciousness of varying content, depth and duration. Pandemic consciousness is considered by the author as the total amount of extreme and exaggerated assessments, views and attitudes which gain independence and become a mass trend, reflecting the current state of epidemic situation. The notion of pandemic consciousness of each of the subjects of public life (an individual, a group, a class, a nation, society as a whole) has several specific features and requires analysis from a scientific standpoint. The purpose of the study. The purpose of the study is a theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of pandemic consciousness as a special state of mass consciousness of society. Research methods include analysis, synthesis, comparison, specification, generalization, analogy and method of data triangulation. Results. Pandemic consciousness is a state of mass everyday consciousness that finds its expression in the indirect reflection of everyday life, its purpose being to assist society in meeting its needs related to physical and economic survival. An attempt was made to consider the procedural structure of consciousness which consists of six main elements, including: knowledge, thinking, emotions, attention, memory and will. Theoretical analysis of the phenomenon proved that basic manifestations of pandemic consciousness are situated in the cognitive plane – the phenomenon of infodemia, conspiracy theories, magical thinking, revival of enemy archetypes and conspiracies, search for new meanings, escape from unfavorable reality, generation of new simulacra, alarmism and angst-ridden future expectations. A number of negative psychological reactions to the pandemic were detected in the emotional plane of pandemic consciousness – sensory and emotional deprivation, increased feelings of danger and helplessness, anxiety, irritability, emotional exhaustion. The use of stereotypes simplifies reality and its image during pandemics. Pandemic experiences are influenced by the dynamics of personal needs, expectations integrated by the individual. The right way to alleviate the acute states of pandemic consciousness is to change perceptions of the world, vitality, tolerance for uncertainty, and one’s own life position.The main group of verbal stimuli that activate the causal links of pandemic fears are: COVID-19, virus, epidemic, pandemic, infection, contamination, risk of infection, unmasked person, disease, hospital. Conclusions. It is concluded that the crisis that humanity is experiencing today is primarily an existential crisis. It is concluded that one of the main ways to correct the acute states of pandemic consciousness is to change perceptions of the world.

Becoming Through Contiguity and Lines of Flight: The Four Faces of Celebrity-Proximate Assemblages

AbstractPrior consumer studies examined consumers in extraordinary contexts role playing and transforming using magical thinking. This study investigates consumers becoming in everyday life using celebrities and explores the dynamic relations between consumers and social media. Individual and group interviews and mobile digital data were collected. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) theory of becoming, four faces of celebrity-proximate assemblages were inductively derived to explore the range of dynamic states that can emerge at any moment. The celebrity-proximate assemblage includes the body without organization that is virtual and contiguous with diverting assemblages and forms fluid lines of flight with the possibility of disruption. The developing body is both virtual and actual and is contiguous with overlapping assemblages and actualizes tentative lines of flight for capacities to experiment in the real world. The enhanced and regimented body are also both virtual and actual. The enhanced body comingles with other assemblages and actualizes fewer expansive lines that map new capacities. The regimented body, however, is captivated by other assemblages and actualizes the fewest and most restrictive lines, which are often life diminishing. Implications for consumer research are explored for this model of becoming and the use of mobile digital data collection methods.

Protective Action and Risky Beliefs: The Relationship Between Religion and Gambling Fallacies.

A number of studies have explored the relationship between religious beliefs and gambling (including gambling fallacies and gambling harm) but report seemingly contradictory findings. While some studies have found religious belief to be positively associated with gambling fallacies, others have found it to be a protective factor from gambling harms. One explanation for these differing effects is that gambling fallacies and metaphysical religious belief share properties of supernatural and magical thinking. Nevertheless, social support and moral strictures associated with religion might help protect against an unhealthy engagement with gambling. Using a multidimensional measure of religiosity, we hypothesised that only the supernatural facet of religious adherence would present a risk for gambling fallacies. We analysed two archival data sources collected in Canada (Quinte Longitudinal Study: N = 4121, Mage = 46, SDage = 14, Female = 54%; Leisure, Lifestyle and Lifecycle Project: N = 1372, Mage = 37, SDage = 17, Female = 56%). Using the Rohrbaugh-Jessor Religiosity Scale, we confirmed that the supernatural theistic domain of religion was a positive risk factor for gambling fallacies. However, participation in ritual (behavioural) aspects, such as churchgoing, was negatively associated with risk, and no effect was observed for the consequential (moral) domain. We conclude that multidimensional aspects in religious measures may account for conflicting prior findings.

Social causality understanding in relation to irrational attitudes and ambiguity intolerance in schizophrenia

IntroductionThe uncertainty of contemporary social contexts fosters suspiciousness and anaclitic anxieties. In the context of interpersonal relationships this manifests in cognitive distortions and magical thinking, specially in the vulnerable populations.ObjectivesTo study the ability of understanding social causality and its relation to magical thinking and ambiguity intolerance in schizophrenia and controls.MethodsParticipants were 40 inpatients with paranoid schizophrenia and 40 controls. Understanding of social causality was measured by corresponding SCORS-S scale for Thematic Apperception Test, Magical thinking was measured by SPQ-74 and intolerance to ambiguity by the New Tolerance-Intolerance to ambiguity questionnaires.ResultsThe understanding of social causality was less developed in schizophrenia group (mean values 2.28 and 3.28, p<.001). They manifest omissions of psychological aspects, logical faults and inconsistencies in depicting social relationships. Magical thinking was higher in clinical group (4.32 and 2.33, p<0.001). Two measures were significantly (p<0.05) correlated in both groups. Regression analysis indicates that 37.7% of variance of dependent variable ‘understanding of social causality’ (R2=0,377) was predicted by ‘magical thinking’ (-0,398, p<0,001) and ‘tolerance to ambiguity’ (0,412, p<0,001). The overal level of tolerance of ambiguity was higher in control group (52.2 and 61.0, p<0.002).ConclusionsTolerance of ambiguity, being more characteristic for normal population, underlies the understanding of social causality. In contrast, the intolerance to interpersonal ambiguity is related to increment of anxiety, failures in cognitive elaboration of interpersonal relationships and leads to superstition and illogical beliefs. This relationship has a heuristic value for understanding what is happening to vulnerable individuals in the context of current COVID pandemic.

Beliefs about coronavirus: Relationship with magical thinking and adherence to self-isolation regimen

IntroductionPandemic is accompanied by “infodemic” that is related to higher anxiety (Moghanibashi-Mansourieh, 2020; Roy et al., 2020; Huang, Zhao, 2020). We suggest that indefinite and stressful situation of pandemic provoke magical thinking leading to lower adherence with recommendations for self-isolation.ObjectivesThe aim was to reveal the structure of beliefs about reasons, manifestation and consequences of coronavirus and their relationship with magical thinking, anxiety and COVID-19-related behaviour.Methods In April 2020 (2-3 weeks of self-isolation regimen) 402 adults aged 18-64 years old filled checklist including beliefs about pandemic (based on the model of Leventhal et al., 2003), Magical Ideation Scale Eckblad, Chapman, 1983) as well as scales measuring anxiety and protective behaviour in pandemic and monitoring of information about coronavirus (Tkhostov, Rasskazova, 2020).Results Factor analysis revealed three groups of radical beliefs about coronavirus (48.6% of variance, Cronbach’s alphas .62-.75). Belief about the particular meaning of coronavirus was associated with the magical thinking (r=.21), less anxiety about infection (r=-.19) and poorer adherence to self-isolation (r=-.26). Belief in the negligence as a cause of coronavirus was more typical for those with better adherence (r=.18) while catastrophic beliefs about the consequences of pandemic were related to frequent monitoring of the information about the pandemic (r=.24), and anxiety regarding future negative consequences of the pandemic (r=.46).Conclusions Dysfunctional beliefs about coronavirus could be a factor of poorer adherence related to magical thinking and could be addressed in psychological interventions. Research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project No. 20-04-60072.

Clinical reasoning in medicine I: A historical journey

Medical error is a public health problem, that may be related to failures in a doctor’s decisionmaking about a patient’s diagnosis, treatment, or prognosis, that is, in medical reasoning. Despite its importance, the understanding of clinical reasoning has been heterogeneous, with the use of multiple definitions and theoretical models, which focus on different aspects of the processing that physicians elaborate about taking care of a patient. This conceptual diversity can be explained by the influence of the historical context. How physicians think can be seen from magical thinking in Antiquity, through Renaissance rationalism and the modern scientific approach, to current models of dual thinking and probability estimation. What seems to be constant is that it has an explanatory mission of knowing what happens to the patient, although the ultimate goal is more to understand the patient’s experience. In this narrative review, this evolution is presented with a timeline, which summarizes the ways of conceiving reasoning in medicine according to the historical context.

Whispers of the Soul; Autohistoria-Teoría as Decolonial Knowledge Production

The imperative for decolonial research methodology has been long discoursed in academia. However, there remains a rift between dominant colonial research practices in the academy and the needs of researchers of color. In this article, I explore autohistoria-teoría as a decolonial research methodology by weaving between personal narrative, magical thinking, and contemporary academic discourse on autoethnographical research methods. I will exemplify both the uniqueness and importance of spirit in Anzaldúa’s iteration of autohistoria-teoría. Finally, I will challenge the academy’s perception of autoethnographical research methods as navel gazing and reframe autohistoria-teoría as decolonial praxis, and as such does not need adhere to the validity paradigm of western hegemonic knowledge production.