“I Feel Like I’m Going to Win”: Superstition in Gambling

[Disir]

I know, right? What is that doing on the religion section?

Very often, the definition of superstition is omitted or substituted with examples of such beliefs and behavior (Žeželj et al. 2009). In this lack of conceptual clarity, the borderline between superstition, the paranormal, magic, witchcraft, or even religion is ambiguous and vague (Delacroix and Guillard 2008)

In the following link is a small study that was done in Italy with 67 interviews mostly with people from Turin. For myself, the conversion of tragedy into numbers, ex-ante magic” and ex-post magic and the distance that was placed between an individual and superstition or an individual and gambling is fascinating.

http://www.qualitativesociologyreview.org/ENG/Volume29/QSR_10_2_DAgati.pdf

The study was based on the work of a man named Alan Dundee .
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/obituaries/02dundes.html?_r=0

Alan Dundes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia