The Superstitious Rat Superstition is usually considered a purely human affliction through which we hope to establish some ORDER in, and gain some CONTROL over, the capricious uncertainty of the world around us. But it can be fairly easily produced in animals, such as the laboratory rat (as well as pigeons. A rat is released from its cage into an area about three feet long with a food tray on the far side. Ten seconds after the rat's arrival, food is dropped into the tray. If the rat gets to the tray LESS than ten seconds after its release, it gets no food. Before long the rat, with its PRACTICAL mind manages "to put two and two together." Since it takes the rat only two seconds to run directly to the food tray, the extra time has to be spent in a way that is basically alien to the rat's normal inclination to head straight for food. Under these circumstances the delay acquires a pseudocausal significance; whatever the rat does during these eight seconds, becomes, in the rat's eyes, the "necessary" action that "produces", or is "rewarded" by, the appearance of food. These behavior patterns, of course, vary from rat to rat, which gives them a particularly capricious aspect: back-and-forth movements, a certain number of pirouettes to the right or the left, jumps (which the rat may have done purely accidentally at first), are faithfully repeated time after time. And every time the rat finds food in the tray, its belief is confirmed that this particular behavior is what produces the food. These types of behavior are the obvious equivalent of COMPULSIVE human superstitions, which are often based on the vague belief that they are required by some "divine experimenter." Source: from "How Real is Real?" by Paul Watzlawick.