Nothing bad will happen to you today.. fingers crossed

Published on Friday 13 June 2008 08:54

Today is Friday the 13th, but should you be worried? Linda Summerhayes asks if there is a rational basis for us being superstitious, or are our fears based on nothing more than mumbo jumbo?

IF you woke up this morning with a sense of foreboding, you won't have been alone. Today is the day to avoid applying for a job, to delay going on an arduous journey or engaging in any kind of diplomatic relations. Today – oh, horror of horrors – is Friday the 13th.

While some might say it's "lucky for some", the number 13 has long had connotations with all things evil.

So prolific is our suspicion of this date that there is even a name for the fear it conjures up – although with its countless syllables, don't expect "paraskavedekatriaphobia" to trip off the tongue easily.

This superstitious condition and the symptoms it produces is an area of fascination for psychologists – especially those who deal in investigating paranormal belief.

One such scientist is Professor Richard Wiseman, a regular attender at the Edinburgh International Science Festival and an Edinburgh University graduate.

His study discovered that people who tend to worry about life are far more superstitious than others.

Prof Wiseman believes his study proves that luck and attitude are linked, with pessimists more likely to come a cropper on Friday the 13th than those of a sunnier disposition. He says: "The results support the notion that people make their own luck – lucky people carry out behaviours that make them feel good, whereas unlucky people's superstition causes them to expect the worst."

The superstition surrounding Friday the 13th has connotations steeped in biblical history and numerology, and the date reflects a double whammy of bad luck.

The number 13 is said to come from the number of apostles attending the ill-fated Last Supper, while Friday is a day of blackness because that's the day the crucifixion took place. Another school of thought contends that the tradition came from a single event – the slaughter of the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13, 1307.

However, at a time when churchgoing is on the wane, does modern man really continue to be fearful of Friday the 13th? Prof Wiseman believes that with almost half of Scots surveyed admitting they are superstitious, today's date will certainly be an issue for some.

"These are surprisingly high figures and indicate that superstition is alive and well in modern day Britain," he says. "Indeed, amazingly, 86 per cent of Britons said they carried out superstitious behaviours. Even scientists are not immune from superstition. For example, 15 per cent of people with a science background feared the number 13."

Dr Caroline Watt, who is based at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at Edinburgh University and worked with Prof Wiseman on his study, points out that superstitious behaviour makes more sense than we might think.

"On the face of it, it looks like irrational behaviour. Why would carrying a rabbit's foot make you lucky," she says. "But let's say you are going to a job interview and you carry your lucky charm with you and that makes you more confident. You will behave better in the interview and so get a better outcome.

"There's not anything magical about what has happened – it's your belief in the lucky charm that has made you more optimistic and gives you a better result."

Interestingly, superstitious dogma varies according to culture and where you live in the world, and there are even peculiarities within the UK.

For instance, while some of us will spend today in a state of fear, the residents of Greece, Romania and Spanish-speaking countries will not be at all worried.

They are more concerned on Tuesday the 13th. In Italy it's Friday the 17th. So jittery are the people of Japan and China about their unlucky days that the mortality rate shoots up as stressed people keel over in fright. Dr Watt adds: "Superstitions can be good for you and can make good things happen – but really there's nothing that's at all magical about that.

"It's clearly through your own optimism and your own psychology that you create your lucky outcome."

So this might be the chance to seize the day, to go out there and face the world standing tall – as long as you are wearing that lucky pair of socks with the four-leaf clover emblem.