Four-leaf clovers are one of the most widely known symbols of luck in the Western world. How did this superstition get so popular? What about these little plant mutations make people believe in their power to alter fate?
In Short: Magical Thinking
Before getting to the bottom of the whole “luck” business, let’s talk a little about four-leaf clovers. No one knows exactly what causes the fourth leaf, and it’s still argued whether the fourth leaf is genetically or environmentally caused. It’s also extremely rare to find them—they only occur about 1 in every 10,000 clovers. But these slim chances don’t stop avid collectors, who have reached as many as 160,000 four-leaf clovers in personal collections!
Four-leaf clovers have a long history of legend, going all the way back to the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. Story has it that as the first humans were being chased out of the Garden of Eden, Eve snagged a four-leaf clover as a reminder of the paradise they were leaving behind.
And that’s just scratching the surface—the druids used to carry these lucky little plants around to ward off evil spirits, and during the Middle Ages it was a common belief that having a four-leaf clover would give you the ability to see fairies. In English tradition, if your child has been stolen by pixies and replaced with a changeling, the way to get your baby back was to place a four-leaf clover on the forehead of the imposter.
Plus, there are a million other superstitions about clovers from unspecified origins like these:
- If you find a four-leaf clover, you’ll meet a future lover on the same day
- If you dream of clover, you’ll have a prosperous marriage
- If you carry a four-leaf clover, it will protect you from the evil eye
- If you hang one at home, it will ward off witchcraft and bad omens
Depending on where you live, there are probably even more local beliefs about these plants. This superstition about the luck of four-leaf clovers goes back for centuries, but why have they been such a lasting symbol of luck?
At least partially because it is lucky to find a four-leaf clover, since the odds are only 1 in 10,000. Some people think if you’re lucky enough to find something that rare, then it’s likely that you’ll have a whole slew of other lucky things happen to you. But it also has to do with magical thinking.
As humans trying to survive, our brains desperately try to make connections and recognize patterns in the world around us. Magical thinking occurs when we attribute a seemingly-ridiculous cause, like the power of a small, four-leafed plant, to some specific outcome. If you won the big game and you happened to be wearing your purple underpants, you might believe (at least a little bit) that you won because you were wearing them. Even if you know it’s ridiculous to think that your underpants have the power to influence anything, you might still decide to wear them to every game in the future, just in case.
This happens all the time. Humans want to be in control, especially over things that are important to us. Surprises can be dangerous to our survival and well-being, and if we believe that some arbitrary pattern might help prevent those surprises, then we’re more inclined to keep the pattern going.
On a psychological level, even though most people acknowledge that their superstitions make no sense to them, human bodies actively recognize causal relationships even in the coincidental. Imagine that while you’re doing some work at home, you drop your pencil. As it hits the floor, your lamp goes out. Even if you don’t believe for a second that dropping your pencil made the lamp go out, your eyes still recognize these occurrences as related. Our sensory systems don’t recognize coincidences. In essence, our bodies prime us for magical thinking.
While we can’t point to a particular group in history and find an elaborate explanation of why they found the four-leaf clover lucky, it’s likely that magical thinking was at the heart of their superstitions. Four-leaf clovers are rare, and if someone found one, they might have picked it up because of the novelty. Then, if something lucky happened to them, their excited brain would look for patterns and attribute the newfound luck to the clover. If this happens again and again over centuries, we have the lucky icon that we recognize today.
Do you have any weird superstitions? Do you have to walk on a specific side of the street to work or carry a lucky talisman with you on big days? Let me know in the comments below!
Just So You Know 