“Rational” and “Irrational” Cognitions: which Links Between Magical Thinking and Scientific Thinking in Everyday Life Reasonings?

In everyday life, many events and behavior’s explanations refer to beliefs and reasonings are sometimes based on magical thinking. Associative and categorical reasoning is privileged. Judgments are based on the principle of similarity, on coherence of information and also on hypotheses confirmation without taking into account their validation. Scientific thinking, based on logical reasoning, invalidation and elaboration of alternative hypotheses, process differently.
    According to the review of the literature, these two modes of thinking differ also in the motivations of their use. The magical thinking would rather rely on a pragmatic motivation to accommodate personal needs and conclusions and would have an adaptative function. As for the scientific thinking, it would rather rely on epistemic motivation to search for accuracy.
     These two modes of thinking are proned to social regulations and seem to reflect adaptative dynamics of the human thinking.