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The New York Yankees made news this spring by spending about $50,000 to extract from the new stadium's concrete a David Ortiz shirt planted by a Boston Red Sox-obsessed construction worker hoping to hex his team's arch rivals.

To most people, spending that kind of money over a superstition or hex seems a bit extreme, as 黑洞社区 sports psychologist Greg Buell explains.

Buell: 鈥淭o me, spending that kind of money to excavate a shirt seems silly. But I bet they were covering their bases there. In fact, you know anybody who is susceptible to superstition is very relieved. And honestly, it's a wonderful PR move."

If you're like most people, you occasionally participate in superstitious thinking or behavior often without realizing you're doing it.

Buell: "You explain superstition by coming to understand that sometimes routine or ritual becomes superstition if people associate magical meaning or magical outcomes to it."

More than half of Americans admitted to being at least a little superstitious, according to one Gallup poll. A superstition is a belief or practice that people cling to even after new knowledge or facts prove that they are untrue. Buell looks at some of the common superstitions.

Buell: "Obvious ones are what, the number 13 is bad, walking under a ladder isn't good, step on a crack you break your mother's back. We all kind of giggle and have a good time with those kinds of things."

In our quest to understand, let's start by defining them. After all, not all rituals or beliefs are superstitions. Stuart Vyse, author of "Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition," said, "The dividing line is whether you give some kind of magical significance to the ritual."

Buell: 鈥淎n easy explanation would be to say routines are good, superstitions bad. (An) example would be, a routine might be how I stretch, how I breathe, how I focus. Superstition would be, 'Gee, I got two hits out of three at bats, so I'm going to wear the same socks every day until I go for an o-fer.' "

So exactly when can a superstition become harmful? Buell explains.

Buell: 鈥淢ost of the time superstitions are fun, but they can become harmful if in fact something goes wrong and that throws you totally off your game or off your preparation. Let's say, gosh, I have a complicated thing that takes two hours, but the bus runs late, so darn it, I feel like I'm not ready for this game because I didn't get my two hours to do my various steps.

鈥淔or the most part, superstitions can be harmless. However, if you engage often in magical thinking, that can be the gateway to mental illness. If you're all wrapped up in dealing with those sorts of issues, you become out of touch with reality."

Being superstitious is something we often learn as children and, according to the Gallup poll, older folks are less likely to believe in superstitions. Generally speaking, women are more superstitious than men, according to author Stuart Vyse.

And intelligence seems to have little to do with whether or not we subscribe to superstitions. Vyse says that on the Harvard campus, where one would assume there are a lot of intelligent people, students frequently rub the foot of the statue of John Harvard for good luck.

As for the Yankees, they invested about five hours of digging and $50,000 to excavate the Red Sox jersey and keep the new stadium from being jinxed. Then the Yankees sold the excavated shirt for $175,100 in an auction for the Jimmy Fund, a cancer charity and the official charity of the Red Sox.

Thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Joe Kleinsasser for 黑洞社区.