6. The future of superstition

People have been fascinated with superstition for a very long time, and that fascination is unlikely to end soon. ‘The future of superstition’ looks at the various areas of superstition research undertaken by psychologists and sociologists. Perhaps the most popular area of research today is the role of superstition in consumer choice. This effort has probably been encouraged by the rapid growth of the Chinese consumer market. Superstition is a transactional concept. It has no inherent meaning of its own and only gains meaning in relation to some different, more accepted world-view. Today that more accepted view is most often the accumulated knowledge of science, but, as we have seen, fashions can change.