Latest / The Psychology of Superstition
Why Smart People Believe Irrational Things
This episode explores why intelligence and education do not eliminate irrational beliefs. It explains how cognitive biases such as motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and overconfidence affect everyone, including highly educated people. Intelligence can make individuals better at defending existing beliefs rather than questioning them, while superstition often survives because it fulfills emotional needs such as comfort, certainty, and belonging. The episode concludes that intellectual humility and psychological flexibility—not intelligence alone—are the strongest protections against…
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