To live long, believe in omens

Feb­ru­ary 12, 2017, 10:50

Фото: Peter Huys

Even in our age of com­put­ers and space­flight, a large num­ber of peo­ple remain super­sti­tious. British sci­en­tists argue that there is a direct rela­tion­ship between a per­son­’s belief in omens and life expectan­cy.

Spe­cial­ists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don con­duct­ed a unique study on this top­ic, which proved that super­sti­tious peo­ple live longer. For four years, the researchers stud­ied and sys­tem­atized the beliefs of 5,000 par­tic­i­pants in the exper­i­ment, liv­ing in var­i­ous cities in the UK.

A group of spe­cial­ists, led by Dr. Stel­la McGuire, found that most of the elder­ly sub­jects were very atten­tive to var­i­ous kinds of signs, super­sti­tions and fore­bod­ings all their lives. More­over, the pen­sion­ers all as one claimed that they believed uncon­di­tion­al­ly in at least one of the signs and always ful­filled its require­ments.

Sci­en­tists also noticed that the old­er a per­son becomes, the more he begins to believe in signs and super­sti­tions. Researchers attribute this fact to the fact that belief in signs, dreams and fore­casts devel­ops cau­tion, thought­ful­ness and pru­dence in a per­son.

Author and study leader Stel­la McGuire explains the ben­e­fi­cial effects of believ­ing in omens this way: “Super­sti­tion makes peo­ple think care­ful­ly about their behav­ior and be more calm about pos­si­ble fail­ures, and there­fore pro­tect the body from stress and guilt for an unsat­is­fac­to­ry result.”

By the way, accord­ing to the results of the study, the largest num­ber of super­sti­tious peo­ple live in Scot­land and Wales — here, accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics, the largest num­ber of long-liv­ers live.

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The opin­ion of the edi­tors may not coin­cide with the opin­ion of the author of the arti­cle.

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