Sports lore abounds with accounts of athletes’ quirky superstitions. Basketball icon Michael Jordan famously wore the same pair of college practice shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform for years. Tennis legend Björn Borg popularized the “lucky beard” superstition over the course of his five straight Wimbledon titles. Throughout your time in sports, you’ve probably witnessed an assortment of superstitions among teammates as well as rivals. Perhaps you even have a few good luck traditions of your own.
So what is it about these behaviors that makes them so commonplace in the world of competitive sport? When we observe them from the outside, it’s easy to view superstitions as no more than a trivial accessories to the more rational causes of a great competitor’s dominance. True athletic success, after all, is based on factors like skill, physical prowess, hard work, and focused determination. Yet in many cases, athletes’ behaviors would suggest they give a lot of weight to superstition as well.
Perhaps these practices seem less mysterious when we consider that many coaches teach consistency and repetition as keys to best performance. There's good reason for that. Consider, for instance, the pre-shot routine of a basketball player at the free-throw line. Repeating the same number and cadence of dribbles, pauses, etc. on each shot helps center a player into a focused mindset and muscle memory, which in turn helps to ensure success.
But where do we draw the line between helpful habit and useless, or even harmful, superstition? If players avoid stepping on the team logo on the locker room floor, is that a silly myth unrelated to any true aspect of the team’s performance, or a valuable reminder that the group’s success relies on honoring the team’s needs over the individual’s?
Superstition defined
Typical dictionary entries for superstition read as follows:
A belief or way of behaving that is based on fear of the unknown and faith in magic or luck.
A belief that certain events or things will bring good or bad luck.
For purposes of this discussion, I find it helpful to consider the perspective of behavioral psychology, which characterizes superstition as behaviors that tend to precede a reward despite having no effect on receiving the reward. For instance, consider a learning experiment where a pigeon or rat is taught to get a piece of food by pressing the right lever. Animals will try all sorts of actions in the process of finding the correct response. If in the haphazard process of learning, the animal happens to spin around just before pressing the right lever, it might continue to spin before each subsequent lever press. In behavioral terms, the spinning part of their response is considered a superstitious behavior. The reward comes from pressing the correct lever, not from spinning.
Okay, now out of the Skinner box and back to human performers! There have been some studies that superstitious behaviors are more prevalent under conditions such as: higher levels of performance (such as Olympic or professional), greater task difficulty (such as with a new or complex skill versus a well-learned one), certain personality traits (such as obsessiveness), and with greater psychological pressure (such as in a high-stakes, tournament championship game).
Potential problems can arise when athletes become overly focused on superstitions. What happens when they forget to pack that special pair of "lucky" socks for the road trip? What if their obsession over remembering those socks distracts them from the mental and physical training they could be doing to actually prepare? What if they really do become convinced that their success is attributable to that particular pair of socks, rather than remaining confident in their skill and preparation?
Ritual defined
An arguably overlapping concept to superstition, is what we could call ritual. This term also has multiple definitions, and while it sometimes refers to a spiritual or religious practice, it can also be thought of more broadly. Ritual has been defined as:
A series of actions or type of behavior regularly followed by someone.
An action arising from convention or habit.
If we use the term ritual to characterize sport situations like a golfer’s setup for putting, or the aforementioned basketball free throw routine, it’s not hard to see how certain rituals can be very helpful. Successful athletes and coaches recognize the value of routines. When they operate most effectively, rituals contribute to a state of centered concentration, without fostering a sense of dependency on luck.
Athletes’ habits and the functions they serve
Although the definitions above provide some distinction between superstition and ritual, in reality these concepts tend to exist on a sort of continuum. In any given sports contest, there may be several people (coaches and athletes alike) doing superstitious behaviors that are not outright harmful, but that also don’t bring any direct benefit to performance. Why do these behaviors persist, and sometimes even grow, in sports? Well for one, they can make us feel more confident. And feeling confident does help performance!
How do I determine if a behavior is a help or a hindrance?
When it comes down to competition outcomes, whether you label a behavior as superstition or ritual, is not as important as what sort of impact the behavior is having on your performance. Superstitions and rituals could both be considered habits. The question is whether any given habit is a help or a hindrance. Here are some considerations for determining whether a behavioral habit is one to foster or discard.
Practicality. Is the habit simple and practical, or complex and cumbersome to carry out? Does it fit into the flow of your preparation, training, and competition, or is it something that can get in the way? Habits that are overly expensive, time-consuming, or awkward to implement are likely to detract from, rather than support, best performance.
Rationality. Is there some logical supportive connection between the behavior and the intended outcome? For example, a familiar bedtime wind down routine maintained nightly (including and especially the night before a big game) can help ensure adequate sleep and recovery. By contrast, “having” to do an exact number of pre-competition activation movements in a precise and rigid order, can be a cause of stress and distraction. While it is definitely important to do a full pre-game warm-up routine, being overly rigid about it can be counterproductive.
Centering capacity. Does maintaining the habit contribute to a sense of overall control, or does it foster insecurity? A good habit is one that helps you feel confident and grounded in your performance. If wearing a certain bracelet or medallion gives you a positive feeling of connection with people who have supported you in your past success, then great; wearing it will probably help keep you in a zone of optimal functioning. But if your mindset becomes “I can't succeed without my good luck charm,” then it’s probably best to let that habit go. Focus instead on the skills that you actually do control!
The take away
Superstition is a prevalent phenomenon in sports, especially at higher performance levels and in more crucial competitions. Whether it’s a help, a harm, or just an amusing accessory to success, depends on its position in the mind of the performer. There is an important place for ritual and habit in pursuing optimal performance, but truly superstitious behavior doesn’t have any logical impact on outcomes. At its worst, superstition has the potential to erode confidence over time.
In the quest for competitive advantage, it’s helpful to consider where any given behavior or habit exists on the continuum of detrimental superstition to supportive ritual. A key factor in making this determination, is considering who or what is in control. Is it the performer, or the superstition? If the behavior comes from a compulsive sense of “do this or fail,” it’s likely to detract from best performance. If on the other hand, it is based on a logical rationale and a conscious, proactive choice, then it may have a useful place in your ongoing pursuit of excellence!
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