Superstitious Behavior Experiment

My experimental design is in the field of superstition. For this I have researched appropriate past studies and chosen those that examine the notions of illusions and beliefs based on concepts of superstitious behaviour, superstition and superstitious rules. Many experiments in this field point at the fact of how causal learning could be distorted by biased beliefs. Langer (1975) has indeed done many experiments and has gone on to define the aspect of ‘illusion of control’. And this, Langer has defined as one that stems from an expectation of personal success probability inappropriately higher than the objective probability justifies. Skinner (1981) also goes on to posit that illusions of control and expectancy that do not match with the contingencies

Proposed design:

Context: The element of superstitious rule suggested here is that which is relevant to the Hindu caste in South India. There is a general belief, practiced over generations, where invoking the Hindu deity, Ganesha, prior to commencing a task, leads to successful accomplishments. Thus for example in taking tests, students often pencil / pen at the top of the answer sheet a small character "ॐ"..

A control group of 60 students in the age group of 15 is taken for the experiment. Care is taken that they all belong to a similar background – thus all are chosen from the same school. A normal aptitude test (with about 20 questions) is administered to them in a defined time frame of ½ hour. The control group is not given any prior intimation about the nature of the experiment and is thus unbiased. They are only told that from among the whole lot of 60 students, the top 30 scoring students would qualify for the next stage. The answer sheets are corrected and scored. The marks are arranged in a descending order and the top 30 students are identified as the sample for the follow-on experiment which is explained

The presence or absence of this mark is the independent variable; and the test score is the dependent variable. This marking is done only for the top 30 students. This group is then communicated to as the ‘topper’ group. The instructor then goes on to elaborate that each of the 30 sheets – only these sheets – had been marked with an invisible ink with the character ॐ and then all the top 30 students are led to believe the causal fact of this. Therefore it is declared to them, that it is because of this "ॐ" marking on their sheets that they have found themselves to be in the ‘topper’