Magical practice may not signal belief

Researchers propose that magical practices may reflect genuine belief, skepticism, social signaling, or other attitudes that can shift over time.

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A conceptual synthesis in Evolution and Human Behavior examined whether magical practices reflect genuine belief or other attitudes, including imagination, symbolism, and make-believe.
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The researchers argued that neither genuine belief nor non-doxastic commitment should be treated as the default explanation for magical practice.
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Seeking magical help for consequential problems, choosing shamans with better track records, and changing methods after failures were cited as evidence of genuine belief.
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Ethnographic examples showed that some people participate in magical rituals despite skepticism, potentially because of social obligations or a desire to hedge against possible efficacy.
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The authors proposed a heterogeneous account of attitudes but said available evidence cannot establish how common each attitude is or reliably classify individual practitioners.

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