PESSIMISTIC SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS OF OPTIMISTIC LATVIAN STUDENTS

• Authors: Žukovska Irēna , Ruža Aleksejs
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Everything has a reason, there are causes and consequences, sometimes they are not so obvious and are not on a surface, but they still exist. Human nature asks for explanation for every single event that are less or more important and when there is no obvious and usual explanation because of lack of experience the need for ready-made explanation just to calm down grows. Life is flooded with the events that person don’t like but still need to explain and even more justify by blaming external forces for everything that the person could not do. Superstitious beliefs are a great explanation for own failures, too general prediction about the situation outcome to be wrong, kind of magical approach for dealing with the problems, good taboo to keep the line uncrossed when it’s about forbidding something. Human nature asks for explanation, but it asks for one more thing as well, and it’s prediction. Everyone makes a prediction what is going to be next to build up a plan in order to achieve the aim. Some predictions are general, some are concrete, but still positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. The topic of the present study is Pessimistic superstitious beliefs of optimistic Latvian students. Present study focuses on the personal disposition (optimism/pessimism) and valence of superstitious beliefs, which can be positive or negative. The aim of the present study was to research students’ superstitious beliefs in a context of personal disposition. The questions of the study were: what are the most common positive and negative superstitious beliefs? Are there superstitions’ valence dispositional (optimism/pessimism) differences? 352 respondents volunteered to take a part in the present study, 184 females: 93 females with pessimistic personal disposition, and 91 females with optimistic personal disposition 168 males: 75 males with pessimistic personal disposition 93 males with optimistic personal disposition. The results of the study indicate that pessimists and optimists are pessimistic in their superstitious beliefs, to moreover the research has shed a light on the most common positive and negative superstitious beliefs.

Keywords

EN

superstitions,; superstitious beliefs,; personal disposition,; optimism,; pessimism,; the valence of superstitious beliefs

• Publisher: Daugavpils University, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Journal: Sociālo Zinātņu Vēstnesis
• Year: 2016
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 113-124

Contributors

author

Žukovska Irēna

author

Ruža Aleksejs

Identifiers

ISSN

1691-1881