雙語：研究發現迷信是進化的產物

How far will you go to avoid bad luck? Do you avoid walking under ladders, carry lucky charms, or perhaps instead perform special rituals before important meetings or sporting events?

If you do any of those things, hold your head up high and be proud, because researchers are finding evidence that superstitions may not be as pointless at all. By adopting a belief that you can - or cannot - do something to affect a desired outcome, you're among the cadre of beings that learn。

Superstition is an evolutionary surprise - it makes no sense for organisms to believe a specific action influences the future when it can't. Yet superstitious behavior can be recognized in many Animals, not just humans. Superstitions are not free - there are rituals and avoidances cost. The question becomes how can natural selection create, or simply allow for, such inappropriate behavior?

"From an evolutionary perspective, superstitions seem maladaptive," said Kevin Abbott, biologist at Carleton University in Ottawa and co-author of a recent study published in Animal Behavior。

The study suggests multiple reasons for such anomalies to exist: perhaps superstition is adaptive as a placebo, or for social bonding. Or maybe it really is maladaptive now, but is "the outcome of traits that were adaptive in ancestral environment," said Abbott。爲了避免厄運你能迷信到何種程度？不在梯子下面行走？佩戴幸運咒語？還是在重大會議或體育盛事之前搞些特殊儀式？

不管你做了上述事情中的哪一種，請驕傲地擡高頭，因爲研究人員正日漸發現，迷信並非毫無意義。你可以(或者不可以)做些事情來影響預期結果，這種信仰能讓你成爲會學習生物中的精英。

迷信可謂進化過程給人們帶來的驚喜——相信某個特定行爲可影響未來(實際並非如此)對有機系統並沒有意義。但是迷信行爲不僅在人類社會可見，動物也有。迷信行爲也不是免費的——種種儀式和避諱都有成本。問題在於：自然選擇怎麼會創造(或者允許)這種不當行爲的？

“從進化角度看，迷信似乎並不適應(進化理論)，”最近發表於《動物行爲》的研究論文撰稿人之一、渥太華卡爾頓大學的生物學家凱文阿伯特說道。

該研究顯示，這種異常現象存在的原因各種各樣：作爲安慰劑迷信“適者生存”，或者迷信的存在只是爲了社會聯繫。或者現在它確實沒什麼意義，但卻是“古代環境適應特徵的結果，”阿伯特稱。