Psychologists say wearing a lucky bracelet is not just superstition but can genuinely improve performance by increasing confidence and persistence, according to researchers from the University of Cologne

Think of that friend who refuses to play a fantasy football final without his old team jersey, or the colleague who always wears the same watch before a big presentation. It's all too easy to write it off as harmless quirkiness. But a study titled ‘Keep Your Fingers Crossed! : How Superstition Improves Performance,’ published in Psychological Science by University of Cologne researchers Lysann Damisch, Barbara Stoberock and Thomas Mussweiler, suggests that hanging on to a lucky charm or superstitious ritual before a task can help people perform better, not because of magic, but because of what it does to the mind.

The paper reports that this wasn’t just a vague feel-good effect. Across four experiments, activating superstition through sayings like “break a leg,” crossed fingers, or a lucky charm improved performance in golfing, motor dexterity, memory, and anagram tasks. The authors say Experiments 3 and 4 traced the boost to higher perceived self-efficacy, and Experiment 4 also found greater task persistence.

The science behind feeling lucky
The Cologne researchers tested this idea in four separate experiments. In the same study, in one experiment, golfers were told they were putting with a lucky golf ball; in another, participants were asked to complete a motor dexterity task with tiny ball bearings after being told the German equivalent of fingers crossed; and in two further experiments, people played a memory game or solved word anagrams, sometimes while holding a personal lucky charm.


The four experiments tested the idea in a different setting. In the first, the golfers were all hitting from the same distance, but some were told they were using a ball that “has been lucky so far,” and that group made many more putts than golfers who weren’t given such a frame. The second experiment moved the action off the golf course and into a fine motor task, in which participants had to maneuver tiny ball bearings into holes in a handheld puzzle.

Those who were sent off with a German phrase equivalent to “fingers crossed” did the task more quickly than those who weren’t. In a third experiment, participants were asked to bring in personal lucky charms, keep them nearby while playing a memory-matching game, and then measure self-efficacy with a brief questionnaire afterwards. Those with their charm present performed better on the game and reported feeling more able to succeed.

In the fourth experiment we again used the same design, but this time with anagram solving. In addition to self-efficacy, we recorded how long participants persisted at the more difficult puzzles before giving up. Not only did the lucky-charm group have greater confidence, they also persisted longer, and their persistence partially mediated their higher solve rates.

Across these various tasks, Damisch and colleagues found that people primed with a good-luck cue consistently performed better than those not primed. Golfers made more successful putts, anagram solvers solved more words correctly, and players of memory games remembered more items than their counterparts in the control groups. The authors also note that the mechanism was not mystical luck but a boost in confidence that translated into better task performance.
It is not magic, it is a mindset
So what’s really going on here? The researchers didn’t just observe the effect. The study found that in two of the four experiments, the boost in performance was due to self-efficacy, a person's belief in their ability to perform well at a particular task.

As the paper reports, Experiments 3 and 4 were the critical tests of the mechanism because they measured participants’ perceived self-efficacy directly after the superstition prime. In those studies, the good-luck cue boosted confidence about handling the upcoming task. That confidence explained the better performance, not any change in actual skill.

The idea was first proposed decades ago by psychologist Albert Bandura, whose 1977 paper, ‘Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change,’ introduced the concept in the journal Psychological Review. Bandura's original account framed self-efficacy as a key source of motivation and behavior change, and later work has linked it to effort, persistence, and recovery after setbacks. The point is that confidence does not change ability itself, but it can change how much of that ability people actually use.

In other words, it doesn't matter if you cross your fingers or touch a lucky charm; it doesn't change your actual ability. What it seems to do is quietly communicate to the brain: I can handle this. The Cologne research team found that this small mental shift was enough to unlock greater focus and effort, especially when a task got difficult.

Why persistence matters more than you would think
One of the more interesting findings of the Cologne experiments concerned persistence. Finally, in the last experiment, Damisch and colleagues found that people who felt luckier were more likely to persist with a difficult puzzle rather than give up early, and that this extra persistence partly explained their improved performance.

If you’re getting ready for a job interview, or a first date, or a half marathon, this is worth sitting down with. The ritual itself, whether it is a bracelet, a specific playlist, or a pep talk in the mirror, might matter less than the feeling of capability it fosters.

A quick reality check
Before claiming a rabbit’s foot for every win in life, some nuance is worth adding. Psychology research on superstition and performance has had its challengers. In 2014, Robert Calin-Jageman and Tracy Caldwell replicated the lucky golf ball experiment in the study, ‘Replication of the Superstition and Performance Study by Damisch, Stoberock, and Mussweiler (2010),’ in the journal Social Psychology, using a superstition group and a control group, but found no significant difference between the two groups in two attempts.

That does not mean the underlying idea is groundless. Self-efficacy as a driver of performance is still one of the more well-supported concepts in psychology. Other researchers have continued to find links between luck-related beliefs and confidence. But the size and consistency of the original superstition effect may depend on factors that are still not fully understood, the Calin-Jageman and Caldwell paper notes. It’s a good reminder that a single widely cited study is rarely the final word on how the mind works.

The takeaway
Superstition probably is not secretly bending the odds in anyone's favor. But if a lucky bracelet, pre-game ritual, or certain pair of socks actually makes someone feel more capable, that feeling itself might actually be doing work. Confidence becomes effort, and effort becomes results.

So next time someone pulls out that same old hoodie for a big moment, there is no need to feel silly about it. They might just be giving their brain the nudge it needs to perform at its best.