structural:reformatting
cognitive perspective

From a simpler perspective, natural selection will tend to reinforce a tendency to generate weak associations or heuristics that are overgeneralized. If there is a strong survival advantage to making correct associations, then this will outweigh the negatives of making many incorrect, "superstitious" associations. It has also been argued that there may be connections between OCD and superstition. It is stated that superstition is at the end of the day long-held beliefs that are rooted in coincidence and/or cultural tradition rather than logic and facts.

OCD that involves superstition is often referred to as "Magical Thinking" People with this kind of manifestation of OCD believe that if they do not follow through with a certain compulsion, then something bad will happen to either themselves or others. Superstitious OCD, while can appear in anyone with OCD, more often appears in people with a religious background or with people who grew up in a culture that believes in magic and perform rituals. Like stated before in the article above, superstition and prophecies are sometimes linked together. People with religious or superstitious OCD may have compulsions and perform rituals or behaviors in order to fulfill or get closer to fulfilling a prophecy. Those with "magical thinking" OCD may realize that doing an action will not actually 'save' someone, but the fear that if they do not perform a certain behavior someone could get hurt is so overwhelming that they do it just to be sure. People with superstitious OCD will go out of their way to avoid something deemed 'unlucky'. Such as the 13th floor of a building, the 13th room, certain numbers or colors, because if they do not they believe something horrible may happen. Though superstitious OCD may work in reverse where one will always wear a certain item of clothing or jewelry or carry a certain item like a bag because it brings them 'luck' and allow good things to happen.

A recent theory by Jane Risen proposes that superstitions are intuitions that people acknowledge to be wrong, but acquiesce to rather than correct when they arise as the intuitive assessment of a situation. Her theory draws on dual-process models of reasoning. In this view, superstitions are the output of "System 1" reasoning that are not corrected even when caught by "System 2".