Do you wear a lucky shirt on race day? Or perform some other superstitious ritual before trying to drain a long putt? New research suggests it just might help.

“I watch a lot of sports and I read about sports, and I noticed that very often athletes — also famous athletes — hold superstitions,” said Lysann Damisch, a researcher from the University of Cologne in Germany. “And I was wondering, why are they doing so?”

Damisch and her colleagues designed a series of experiments to find out if superstitions had any impact on performance. They asked volunteers to bring a lucky charm and took the charm away from them with the pretext of photographing it. Half of the volunteers got their charms back before taking a memory game on the computer. The other half were told there was a malfunction with the camera equipment and they’d get their charm back after the game.

The researchers found that, sure enough, the test subjects who had their lucky charms by their side scored better in the game than those without. Other tests showed those with their charms felt more confident and set higher goals for themselves.

Just wishing somebody good luck, such as saying, “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,” improved performance in a game of manual dexterity. So go ahead, pocket that lucky rabbit’s foot, wear your rally cap, and don’t wash your socks after winning a race.

“It doesn’t mean you’ll win, because of course, winning and losing is something else,” Damisch said. “Maybe the other person is stronger.”

— Markian Hawryluk, The Bulletin