Do good luck charms work?

Yes. Good luck charms inspire confidence which improves performance on a variety of tasks.

Via The Courage Quotient: How Science Can Make You Braver:

The researchers found that by activating good luck beliefs, these objects were consistently able to boost people’s self-confidence and that this up-tick in self-assurance in turn affected a wide range of performance. Lucky thinking, it turned out in this study, positively affected people’s ability to solve puzzles and to remember the pictures depicted on thirty-six different cards, and it improved their putting performance in golf! In fact, people with a lucky charm performed significantly better than did the people who had none. That’s right, having a lucky charm will make you a better golfer, should you care about such things, and improve your cognitive performance on tasks such as memory games.

More on luck:

1) Wish people luck. It really can improve their performance.

2) Homes with addresses ending in lucky numbers have been known to sell at a premium.

3) Feeling lucky can dramatically change people’s behavior.

4) Casinos should buy more hand sanitizer. Many people believe you can wash away bad luck.

5) There are methods for becoming more lucky.

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