Barbara Stoberock

Barbara Stoberock

Barbara Stoberock is a researcher and co-author of the 2010 Psychological Science paper on superstition and performance.

Who they are

Stoberock wrote the paper with Lysann Damisch and Thomas Mussweiler. It reports four experiments in which activating a good-luck superstition was followed by better performance on golf, motor dexterity, memory and anagram tasks.

The article on lucky charms sets the paper beside two larger replications from 2014.

Key papers

Damisch, L., Stoberock, B. and Mussweiler, T. (2010), Psychological Science 21(7).

Key ideas

A good-luck superstition was followed by better performance.

Perceived self-efficacy was proposed as the route.

Sources

  1. Damisch, L., Stoberock, B. and Mussweiler, T. (2010), Psychological Science 21(7), 1014-1020.