Magical Thinking for beginners

So, I’ve been working on this quite large project for my Masters and digging into how children’s cognitive development takes place through a career development lens, and this week it’s taken me in the direction of thinking about imagination.

Specifically, how it develops, when it develops, and how we use it.

This matters because a good deal of career decision making requires hypothetical thinking – you must first imagine an alternative scenario to the one you currently find yourself in, then use your deductive reasoning ability to hypothesise what that alternative scenario may mean, then make inferences about your reasoning which can be applied to your current scenario.

It’s a pretty complex process, and it’s certainly not perfect – most adults still manage to stuff it up or let their bias get in the way – but it’s what needs to happen if we want to make informed, accurate, and realistic career decisions.

Children can’t use deductive reasoning very well before the age of around 10 to 12. Don’t get me wrong, there are some prodigies who have got it sorted well before that age, and others take a little longer to work it all out, but in general, studies show that children master the basics of deductive reasoning at about that age. It’s also the time when they tend to start feeling the effects of puberty, and when they move from a less formal setting into a more formal, future-focused context (like secondary education, full time caregiving, or the workplace).

Without deductive reasoning, children will use exploration and a form of trial and error to work through their options, with unpredictable outcomes. They can still use their imaginations, and they can still think about how things may be if they were different, they just can’t use that ability as a tool to explore the possibilities.

So, if we know how deductive reasoning fits in, then my next question was about imagination, specifically, when and how do we develop the ability to imagine. My first guess was that it’s around the age of two – thinking back to when my babies were actually babies, and not the all-consuming monsters they have become, it’s somewhere around two that they stop being amazed when magical things happen and start pretending that they’re in on the act. They’ll happily potter around making you cups of ‘tea’ that you must drink, and imagining worlds for their toys which take on a life of their own. But that doesn’t mean i’m right.

Imagination is not one global, homogenous concept – there are facets to imagination and how it develops, and even its role in hypothetical thinking. Our ability to imagine doesn’t develop in one smooth trajectory, and as well as thinking about play and cognitive development, we also need to think about storytelling and the role of imagination there. Children move back and forth between the worlds of make-believe and reality throughout their day, and often encouraged to believe in things which aren’t true (magic, fairies, Santa, the Easter Bunny) or for which they have no evidence. We also tell stories which are true and others which are completely made up, and no one explains which is which to the child.

Magical thinking is not a new concept in career development – it played a central role in the Model of Children’s Conceptions of Career Choice and Attainment (CCCA) – and there’s an argument to be made that magical thinking persists long into adulthood. It’s the kind of thinking we use when we say that the dryer has eaten the socks, or that Murphy’s Law has intervened to make everyone go wrong on our most important day. As adults, magical thinking helps us move on and accept what has happened without needing to search for the cause.

How does magical thinking, storytelling, and playing pretend fit into career development? I’m not sure yet, and I’m not finished with this work, so I’ll let you know when I’ve worked it out.

References:

Howard, K. A. S., & Walsh, M. E. (2010). Model of children’s conceptions of career choice and attainment. Journal of Career Development. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894845310365851

Rosengren, K. S., & French, J. A. (2013). Magical thinking. In M. Taylor (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195395761.013.0004

Taylor, M. (2013). Transcending time, place, and/or circumstance: An introduction. In M. Taylor (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195395761.013.0001