Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Superstition of the Week: St. Joseph the Real Estate Agent
Today's Boston Globe points out just how much superstition has worked its way into our every day lives.
If you have ever sold a house, you have probably heard about the "help" you can get if you bury a St. Joseph statue in your front yard.
It appears that as the housing market slumps people are turning to St. Joseph. Supposedly, burying a little statue in your yard will increase the chances that your house will sell. At least one clever person has put together a kit for home sellers. The kit comes with a small statue and instructions. No doubt those instructions insist that you talk to yourself.
So let me start with some "dumb" questions.
Why not use the method during a booming market too? Why does the technique only become popular during slow markets? It would seem to me that if it really works, you would want to use it all the time.
Does anybody keep track of the unsuccessful sales when Joe is buried in the front yard?
This is yet another example of "random reinforcement" (a topic I wrote about here) coupled with our brains' ability to create patterns where there are none.
The St. Joseph superstition is no different than the "full moon" effect on emergency rooms. Despite the assertions of many, ERs do not get busier during full moons.
Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine points out that some 36 studies have been conducted on whether there's a full-moon effect. They found nothing."No more emergency room visits. No more babies born. No more psychiatric admissions, nothing,"
Basically our brains are selective. We remember what we want to remember. If the ER was busy and it's a full moon, we store that data point somewhere in our brain. But when there is a partial moon and the ER is busy, we don't store the data point. Do that enough times and we convince ourselves that ERs get busier during full moons.
My mother was a real estate agent in the 1980s. She survived through bull and bear markets. While I remember her talking about St. Joe, I seem to recall that the number one factor for selling a house was price. In one way or another, she would say that there was a buyer for every house provided the price was right. Because of that, her typical challenge was to convince a seller that his or her price was too high not convince them to bury a statue of St. Joseph in their front yard.
ARB
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I completely agree about the
I completely agree about the stupidity of the statue thing. But I think there's actually an easy answer to your first "dumb question" -- when the market is booming, people are confident that they'll be able to sell their house. So whatever added benefit they might get from burying the statue isn't worth the effort. In fact, they may be so confident (and so wrapped up in the excitement of anticipating a good price) that they don't even think about whether there might be some superstition that could help them out. Whereas when the market is bad, people are alert for anything that might give them an edge, since there's a very real prospect of failure.
Apophenia...
...makes the heart grow fonder, though it makes the mind more dumberer.
Great word
I had to look it up:
The spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena.
Those who ask the most questions, have the most answers. - ARB (1991)
God works in mysterious ways
because a non-existant entity can work in no other way.
Was the statue "exactly" facing the house? Was it off by 1 degree, 5 degrees, 10 degrees? This matters.
Lets assume that if the statue was plus or minus 30 degrees off from pointing at the house the finders would consider the statue to be "facing" the house. That is a total of 60 degrees.
There are 360 degrees in a circle so that suggests that there is one chance in six that the statue would land "facing" the house. (1/6 is about 17%)
It all depends on how you define "toward" if we use +/- 45 degrees then the probability jumps to 90/360 or one in four.
Flip a coin twice. There is a 1/4 chance it will come up heads twice or tails twice.
ahem. The statistics lesson for the day is over ;-)
Those who ask the most questions, have the most answers. - ARB (1991)
I heard the following story
I heard the following story on the radio; I think it took place somewhere in the wake of Katrina:
A couple were preparing to sell their house, so they buried the St Joseph statue in the yard, facing out to the street, as prescribed. The storm came through, devastated the house, which was no longer salable. The couple decided to simply fix it up and remain living there. And...when they returned following the storm, they spied the little statue on a pile of dirt and debris, upright, facing toward the house. When they saw that, they knew it was a sign from God that they should not move away.