Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University.
Department of Psychology, Davidson College.
Psychol Aging. 2017 Dec;32(8):681-688. doi: 10.1037/pag0000208.
Magical thinking, or illogical causal reasoning such as superstitions, decreases across childhood, but almost no data speak to whether this developmental trajectory continues across the life span. In four experiments, magical thinking decreased across adulthood. This pattern replicated across two judgment domains and could not be explained by age-related differences in tolerance of ambiguity, domain-specific knowledge, or search for meaning. These data complement and extend findings that experience, accumulated over decades, guides older adults' judgments so that they match, or even exceed, young adults' performance. They also counter participants' expectations, and cultural sayings (e.g., "old wives' tales"), that suggest that older adults are especially superstitious. (PsycINFO Database Record
魔幻思维，或迷信等不合逻辑的因果推理，在儿童期逐渐减少，但几乎没有数据表明这种发展轨迹是否会持续到整个生命周期。在四项实验中，魔幻思维在成年期逐渐减少。这种模式在两个判断领域中得到了复制，并且不能用与年龄相关的对模糊性的容忍度、特定领域的知识或寻求意义的差异来解释。这些数据补充和扩展了经验的发现，即几十年的积累经验指导老年人的判断，使他们的表现与年轻人的表现相匹配，甚至超过年轻人的表现。它们也与参与者的预期和文化谚语（例如，“老妇人的故事”）相悖，这些谚语表明老年人特别迷信。
