Yale University's Brian Scholl has a little fun with your superstitious brain. “People use the ease of imagining something as a cue to its likelihood.” “Generally speaking, I find that this occurs because the bad outcome springs to mind and is imagined more clearly following the jinx,” she explains. ( Learn about Friday the 13th with your kids.)
For example, they worry that stating they definitely won't get into a car accident will make it more likely to happen. In one 2016 study, Risen found that people who identify as superstitious and non-superstitious both believe a bad outcome is more likely when they've been jinxed. Jane Risen, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has found that superstitions can influence even nonbelievers. Sometimes we create them in our own minds-for good and ill. But Friday the 13th can still have noticeable impacts. There's no logical reason to fear the occasional coincidence of any day and date governed by the 400-year cycle of the Gregorian calendar. It seems that no matter how many of these frightening Fridays we survive unharmed, the dreaded day continues to inspire unease and fears of misfortune. But this year the inauspicious day occurs twice: January 13 and October 13, 2023. In 2022, there was just one ill-fated Friday-May 13. The creepiest day on the calendar has returned: Friday the 13th.
