From Abracadabra to Zombies
magic jewelry
In a nutshell: Magic jewelry gives you power and protects you from harm. It brings you health and keeps you from tipping over. Or maybe not.
Magic jewelry is any jewelry worn to make you better or to protect you from harm. A bracelet won't make you healthier or bring you good luck. A necklace won't make you stronger or bounce back evil rays. That only happens in stories. Pieces of metal, cloth, paper, rubber, or plastic that are made into jewelry might look nice, but they aren't magical. Yet, many people spend a lot of money on such jewelry. Why?
People buy and wear magic jewelry because they believe it works. They may have seen advertisements where a famous person says that a rubber band with a fancy name like PowerBalance gave them more energy and made them a better golfer or basketball player. A friend might have told them that her luck has been great since she began wearing her Q-Ray bracelet. Besides, she's seen on TV where it is "ionized" and "balances your yin and yang," so it must work. Ads say it has been tested by scientists, so it must be ok!
The athletes, celebrities, and friends who say magic jewelry works may really believe in the stuff. But they aren't scientists and they probably remember only things that favor their belief. They ignore or forget all their bad luck. They don't pay attention to all the people who have the same ups and downs they have but don't wear any magic jewelry. They probably don't think about it when their life doesn't change much even when they forget to wear their magic jewelry. But if they forget to wear it one day and something bad happens, they'll be sure to remember that.
Scientists who say magic jewelry works are never named in ads, are they? Scientists who have tested magic jewelry have found none of it works any better than non-magic jewelry. Those scientists let the world know who they are, how they tested the jewelry, and what the results were. You can look it up. But you can't look up the claims made in ads because you're never told who made the claims.
Tests have not found any magic jewelry that improves health or keeps bad luck or evil rays away. It doesn't matter whether the jewelry is made of magnets, plastic, rubber, copper, or gold. It doesn't matter if the jewelry has a hologram or not. Good that comes to anyone while wearing any piece of magic jewelry would probably have come anyway or it is due to a placebo effect
, which I will now try to describe.
Some benefit comes from expectation and suggestion. If someone you trust gives you hope that good things will happen if you wear a magic bracelet, your mood might get better. Why? The hope you are given can be relaxing. It can make you feel that good things are going to happen. So, even if there is no magic in the bracelet, it can make you feel as if there is.
Once your mood gets better, you might expect good things to happen. When they do, you'll remember them and maybe give credit to the bracelet. When they don't, you won't pay attention or you will forget them. Or, you might even make up some excuse to explain why the magic didn't work this time or that. (Maybe you forgot to rub it three times before putting it on!)
When your friends or ads you see over and over keep telling you how magical the bracelet is, you'll come to believe even more in its magic. (Scientists call this tendency we all have to focus on things that support what we already believe confirmation bias.)
Sometimes a lot of scientific-sounding words are used in ads that try to make you think a product is special. You may be told that the bracelet somehow "aligns your body's energy" or "strengthens your cell's frequencies." The words don't mean anything to real scientists, but they sound good to many people.
When you hear about a magic bracelet, at first you might laugh and think the idea is silly. But if you hurt yourself and weeks of trying this and that don't seem to help, you might try it. You might say "what the heck; I've tried everything the doctor ordered and I'm still in pain." You try the bracelet and sure enough in a couple of weeks your pain is gone! You might give credit to the bracelet, but it may have been the other treatments finally taking effect. Or, it may have been that the injury healed itself in its own good time. Maybe neither the medical treatments nor the bracelet made you better. Most minor injuries do heal themselves. We often give credit to the last thing we tried before we began feeling better again.
The good news is that magic jewelry won't harm you, though it might cost you a pretty penny.
further reading
Placebo bands (This site makes fun of magic jewelry. Enjoy.)
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