Hood, Bruce - Supersense

11.

R. Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow (Penguin Books, 2006), p. 36.

12.

N. Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (Mouton, 1957), p. 15.

13.

The Nobel physicist Richard Feynman once remarked that he found it easier to picture invisible angels than light rays; quoted in A. Lightman, A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit (Vintage Books, 2005): ‘Physics has galloped off into territories where our bodies cannot go’ (p. 63).

14.

This phrase was first coined by the psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby in ‘Origins of Domain Specificity: The Evolution of Functional Organization’, in Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture , edited by L. A. Hirschfeld and S. A. Gelman (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

15.

The neurophysiologist Rudiger von der Heydt of Johns Hopkins University demonstrated the presence of ‘end-stopped cells’ in the visual areas of the brain that are activated by such patterns as if the illusory contour were really there.

16.

H. Ghim, ‘Evidence for Perceptual Organization in Infants: Perception of Subjective Contours by Young Infants’, Infant Behaviour and Development 13 (1990): 221–48.

17.

The website for the World Rock Paper Scissors Society can be found at http://www.worldrps.com.

18.

A. D. Baddeley, ‘The Capacity for Generating Information by Randomization’, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 18 (1966): 119–29.

19.

A. M. Leslie, ‘Spatiotemporal Continuity and Perception of Casuality in Infants’, Perception 13 (1984): 287–305.

20.

Of all the sports, tennis seems to produce the greatest share of superstitious rituals in both men and women. Like John McEnroe, Martina Hingis also would never step on the lines between points. Marat Safin travels with an ‘evil eye’ given to him by his sister to help ward off malevolent stares. Goran Ivanisevic follows a strict pregame regimen: eating at the same table of the same restaurant and ordering a set feast of fish soup, lamb, and ice cream with chocolate sauce.

21.

The Young Ones , Episode no. 12 (‘Summer Holiday’), first broadcast 19 June, 1984 by BBC2. Directed by Geoff Posner and written by Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Lise Mayer.

22.

Tim Lovejoy, interview with David Beckham, broadcast on the United Kingdom’s ITV1, 2006.

23.

E. J. Langer, ‘The Illusion of Control’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 (1975): 311–28.

24.

G. Keinan, ‘The Effects of Stress and Desire for Control on Superstitious Behaviour’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, (2002): 102–8.

25.

T. V. Salomons, T. Johnstone, M. Backonja, and R. J. Davidson, ‘Perceived Controllability Modulates the Neural Response to Pain’, Journal of Neuroscience 24 (2004): 7199–203.

26.

J. A. Whitson and A. D. Galinsky, ‘Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception’, Science , 322 (2008): 115–17.

27.

E. Pronin, D. M. Wegner, K. McCarthy, and S. Rodriguez, ‘Everyday Magical Powers: The Role of Apparent Mental Causation in the Overestimation of Personal Influence’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91 (2006): 218–31.

28.

Another famous urban myth is that Galileo dropped cannonballs of different weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to demonstrate that they would land at the same time. In fact, others, such as the Flemish engineer Simon Stevin, had already published the results of experiments in 1586 on falling weights before Galileo’s appointment as professor of mathematics at Pisa in 1612.

29.

A. B. Champagne, L. E. Klopfer, and J. H. Anderson, ‘Factors Influencing the Learning of Classical Mechanics’, American Journal of Physics 48 (1980): 1074–9.

CHAPTER TWO

1.

Elli Leadbeater, ‘Woolly Ruse Incites Irrationality’, 4 September, 2006, BBC News , available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/sci/tech/ 5314164.stm.

2.

M. Van Vugt and C. M. Hart, ‘Social Identity as Social Glue: The Origins of Group Loyalty’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86 (2004): 585–98.

3.

G. Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896; reprint, Ernst Benn Ltd/Transaction Publishers, 1995), p. 148.

4.

N. Ambady and R. Rosenthal, ‘Thin Slices of Expressive Behaviour as Predictors of Interpersonal Consequences: A Meta-analysis’, Psychological Bulletin 111 (1992): 256–74; N. Ambady and R. Rosenthal, ‘Half a Minute: Predicting Teacher Evaluations from Thin Slices of Nonverbal Behaviour and Physical Attractiveness’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64 (1993): 431–41.

5.

A. Damasio, Descartes’ Error (Vintage Books, 1994).

6.

D. C. Fowles, ‘The Three Arousal Model: Implications for Fray’s Two-Factor Learning Theory for Heart Rate, Electrodermal Activity, and Psychopathy’, Psychophysiology 17 (1980): 87–104.

7.

P. Rozin, M. Markwith, and C. Nemeroff, ‘Magical Contagion Beliefs and Fear of AIDS’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology 22 (1992): 1081–92.

8.

The Festival del Burro, or Festival of the Donkey, takes place in March in the town of San Antero near Cordova in northern Colombia.

9.

A. Silverman, ‘Sexton Admits 2000 Killing of Atsuko Ikeda. July 29th 2006.’ Winooski police press release: www. winooskipolice.com/Press %20Release/Sexton.htm

10.

C. Zhong and K. Liljenquist, ‘Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing’, Science 313 (2006): 1451–2.

11.

The Exorcist , directed by William Friedkin (Hoya Productions, 1973).

12.

R. Wiseman, Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives (Macmillan, 2007).

13.

Available from the Gallup Organization, Princeton, N.J.: http://www.gallup.com.

14.

http:// www.gallup.com/poll/19558/ Paranormal-Beliefs-Come- SuperNaturally-Some.aspx

CHAPTER THREE

1.

A. Forbes and T. R. Crowder, ‘The Problem of Franco-Cantabrian Abstract Signs: Agenda for a New Approach’, World Archaeology 10 (1979): 350–66.

2.

D. Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art (Thames & Hudson, 2004).

3.

Gallup poll, May 2007, available from the Gallup Organization, Princeton, N.J., http:// www.gallup.com.

4.

J. Sulston, ‘Why won’t the public put their faith in scientists?’ THES (Times Higher Education Supplement) , 9 June 2005 pp.18-19.

5.

N. Humphrey, Leaps of Faith: Science, Miracles, and the Search for Supernatural Consolation (Springer, 1999), p. 8.

6.

T. Hobbes, Leviathan (1651; reprint, W. W. Norton, 1996).

7.

This interview is available at BBC Radio 4, ‘Science: The Material World’, http:// www.bbc.co.uk/ radio4/science/ thematerialworld_ 20060921.shtml.

8.

R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Bantam Press, 2006), p. 36.

9.

J. Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (AltaMira Press, 2004).

10.

R. Baillargeon, J. DeVos, and M. Graber, ‘Location Memory in Eight-Month-Old Infants in a Non-Search AB Task: Further Evidence’, Cognitive Development 4 (1989): 345–67.

11.

J. Connellan, S. Baron-Cohen, S. Wheelwright, A. Batki, and J. Ahluwalia, ‘Sex Differences in Human Neonatal Social Perception’, Infant Behaviour and Development 23 (2000): 113–18.

12.

G. Huntley-Fenner, S. Carey, and A. Solimando, ‘Objects Are Individuals but Stuff Doesn’t Count: Perceived Rigidity and Cohesiveness Influence Infants’ Representations of Small Groups of Distinct Entities’, Cognition 85 (2002): 203–21.