Systematic Review of Magical Thinking Studies in Psychiatry and Psychology

191 studies were identified in a systematic review exploring magical thinking, its predisposing factors, and behavioral consequences. The review, authored by Clare M. Eddy, was last updated on 2026-05-20. It synthesizes evidence from clinical and non-clinical samples across diverse cultural contexts.

Use Cases

• Analyzing cognitive and emotional correlates of magical thinking based on the review's synthesis.
• Investigating the relationship between magical thinking and social cognition as suggested by the description.
• Exploring the role of magical thinking in psychiatric symptomatology across different cultural contexts.
• Studying the link between magical thinking and secondary topics like gambling compulsions or childhood trauma.

Strengths

• Systematic review methodology covering 191 identified studies.
• Covers both clinical and non-clinical samples across a range of cultural contexts.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• The dataset is a 67.7 KB DOCX file, indicating a very limited textual scope rather than raw research data.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Clare M. Eddy

Collection Method

Systematic review of existing studies.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-20 05:46:11; freshness should be verified.