Principles of operant conditioning have been used to help explain why people get

Superstitious behavior can be learned through operant conditioning.
For example, you might be wearing a new pair of socks during the first game that your basketball team wins.
Even though the socks had nothing to do with the win, you insist on wearing the same socks for all future games.
Skinner taught pigeons to behave superstitiously by rigging their cages to deliver food every 15 seconds regardless of what they were doing.
Whatever the animal happened to be doing when the food was delivered was reinforced.
Within a short time, six of eight pigeons were practicing some sort of consistent ritual, such as head bobbing or turning counterclockwise, even though these behaviors had nothing to do with getting reinforcement.