Magical Thinking - in Children

In Children

Magical thinking is most dominantly present in children between age 2 to 7 years old. During this age, children strongly believe that their personal though has a direct effect on the rest of the world. Therefore if they experience something tragic that they do not understand, i.e., a death, their mind would create a reason to feel responsible. Jean Piaget, a developmental psychologist, came up with a theory of four developmental stages. Children between ages 2 to 7 would be classified under his Preoperational Stage of development. During this stage children are perceived to not be able to use logical thinking. There are many advances and progresses within this stage but children are still too underdeveloped cognitively and rely on fantasy to explain things that they cannot make sense of logically. A child’s thinking is dominated by perceptions of physical features, meaning that if they are told that a family pet has gone away then the child will have difficulty comprehending the transformation of the dog not being around anymore. Magical thinking would be evident here since the child may believe that the family pet being gone is just temporary and will return. A good example of magical thinking would be if you were to bury a pet the small child may not be sad as they may believe it will return with the flowers in the spring. Their young minds in the stage do not understand the finality of death and magical thinking bridges the gap.

A study posted in the British Journal of Psychology had two aims: to investigate magical thinking in young children and through to late adolescence, and to examine the relation between magical thinking and obsessive compulsion. Magical thinking is thought just be evident in small children yet this study proved that if an event is traumatic enough children older then seven may experience magical thinking. Children experience magical thinking because they are experiencing some confusion or error in their distinction between mind and reality. In children strongly believing what they perceive to be correct there are obvious dangerous and one in particular, explored in the study is the development of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The study holds that:

The form of high anxiety and coping apparently most connected with magical thinking is obsessive-compulsion, and connection between magical thinking, anxiety-reduction and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) has been hypothesized frequently.

To investigate the findings the researches had 127 participants ranging between the age of 5 all the way to 17 to uncover adolescent spectrum of magical thinking. The children were assessed in six different school-year age groups; 5- to 6-year-olds (N - 17), 7- to 8-year-olds (TV = 21), 9- to 10-year-olds (TV = 20), 12- to 13-year-olds (TV = 28), 14- to 15-year-olds (TV = 20), and 16- to 17-year-olds (TV = 22). A Magical Thinking Questionnaire (MTQ) was created to conduct the study and it was distributed to the children to fill out 30 questions with two subscales, ‘thought’ and ‘action.’ Some of the questions will ask the children if it is possible to make something happen just by thinking about it. Some questions on the MTQ inquire about action, and question whether children believe it is possible that by an action they can make something happen. Children too young to read had the questions read aloud to them and they individually recorded their own answer. The results of the study found:

The hypothesis under test-that magical thinking is associated with obsessive compulsive thoughts and behaviours-was supported. Magical thinking as measured by the MTQ was found to have strong and statistically significant correlations with obsessive compulsion as measured by the SCAS, in the group as a whole and in both genders.

Other results also reported magical thinking is linked to; particularly panic-agoraphobia, separation anxiety and generalized anxiety.