Superstition and the nocebo-effect - Should tall buildings / skyscrapers have a thirteenth floor?
If you don’t like staying on the 13th floor of a building, do you think we should also drop the thirteenth day from every month? This would mean for example Thursday November 12 is followed by Friday November 14.
In its original application, “nocebo” had a very specific meaning in the medical domains of pharmacology, and nosology, and etiology. It was a subject-oriented adjective that was used to label the harmful, unpleasant, or undesirable reactions (or responses) that a subject manifested (thus, “nocebo reactions” or “nocebo responses”) as a result of administering an inert dummy drug, where these responses had not been chemically generated, and were entirely due to the subject’s pessimistic belief and expectation that the inert drug would produce harmful, injurious, unpleasant, or undesirable consequences. (from Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo_effect
In Europe almost all tall buildings have a 13th floor including office buildings and hotels. I’ve heard about cases of American travelers feeling sick in the morning and it wasn’t because they had plundered the minibar in their hotel room.
A compromise would be if travel agents or hotel receptionist always ask two questions: smoking or non-smoking and triskaidekaphobic or non-triskaidekaphobic?
Any thoughts?
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26 Answers
I think non-smoking floors are a myth. If people smoke in the hotel, and they travel around from floor to floor, then they inadvertantly stink up the whole place. I think the hotel should be smoke-free period.
As for your question: I don’t think I’ve ever paid attention to it. But now I will – thanks a lot!
I had not really heard about that phenomenon until my brother went to Asia. They are way more serious about the numbers there!! Not really sure about which countries follow the rule to exclude the 13th floor. And I think the 4th is lucky.
If a tall building is tall enough it will have 13th floor whether its called th 13th floor or the 12a floor or whatever. Pretending it’s not there is stupid.
Agreed with @Lightlyseared .. though it is quite fascinating that our brain/biology is capable of creating these psychosomatic effects .. if only we could harness this power for good not evil .. =)
@Lightlyseared and @NaturalMineralWater – Human can harness this power for good and it’s called the placebo effect or maybe a more friendly version of the term: positive thinking. Yes, I will get healthy again. Yes, the glass is still half full. Let’s enjoy this wonderful wine.
@mattbrowne well sure.. but it hasn’t worked on my bronchitis as of yet xD
13 here is not regarded as bad number nor it is shadowed by anything.
I wonder why people out there are hesitant to the number 13, or try to avoid it.
Of course, there are other superstitions here that haunt people like when a cat crosses your way, it is taken as something wrong or bad is gonna happen to you. However, people are now becoming more ignorant to such superstitions.
When I was in church two weeks ago, one of the hymns was on page 666. It struck me as funny, and I was reminded of superstitions about the 13th floor of buildings.
@prasad – I wonder what really superstitious / triskaidekaphobic people do if they were born on the 13th day of a month. Instead of having a party on their birthday they probably loiter near the entrances of hospital because something bad can happen anytime. So help is nearby ;-) And of course as you mentioned it’s a good thing that people become less and less superstitious.
I work in a building on the 13th floor. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Although we do get a lot of jokes about it from clients.
In Japan/China/Korea, 4 is the unlucky number. Its pronounciation and character is shi, the word for death.
There will not be a Playstation 4 [it’ll skip to 5, or will be named something]. They never have version 4 of anything [cameras, gadgets, anything]. They do not have parking spaces numbered 4. Sets of plates are sold in fives and not fours. Food items as well. Its considered SO unlucky, that elevators usually have the letter “F” instead of the number “4”. It goes to say that they do not have 4th floors.
So, excluding 13th floors would be… hmmm… not extraordinary. It would be very hard to do – because as a non-homogeneous culture, not everyone is superstitious of the number 13.
The problem is, the more hotels avoid using a “13th” floor, the more POWER they give the superstition.
I had no idea a public business would take any ideas of the number 13 serious.
Wow, this is interesting. I know about Friday the 13th being unlucky, and I guess I sort of knew that this extended to the number 13 being considered unlucky, but I never thought it extended this far. I thought this level of superstition was left back in the 19th century. I’ve stayed in hotels, but just never noticed that they skip the 13th floor! It seems really really silly to me.
@squirbel – Do their calendars have a fourth day of a month? Or what about the year 2004? It has a 4 in it.
Well, basically, they already do.. it’s silly. Calling the 13th floor something else doesn’t negate the fact that it is the 13th floor of the building.
“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”
—Abraham Lincoln
There is a town nearby that doesn’t have a 13th Street or 13th Avenue. Not sure if it was an oversight or intended.
@mattbrowne:
2004 is not the same as 4. 24 is not the same as 4. You’re being facetious. ^.~
It must be very sad when kids turn 4 :(
I honestly think its peer pressure. The more you hear from elders that truly believe it the more it makes you wanna believe it growing up. I remember transporting a painting for someone that said it was bad luck! and they removed it from their house. The whole day I was driving I was trying to reverse the idea, I was like, this painting is actually good luck, and it made me feel alot better. Hah, but still.. scary.
The only explanation for that is the same – the pronounciation of fourteen is a homonym for death.
I find it interesting that in Europe a building has to have one more floor than an equivalent building in the United States in order to even have 13 floors. In the US the floor that is at ground level is the first floor. Although sometimes it is called the ground floor the next floor above it is floor number 2. In Europe, the floor at ground level is the ground floor and the floor above it is floor number 1.
I can never remember whether I lived on the fifth floor in Spain or the sixth, I just know it was called the fifth and I had to go up five flights of stairs to get to it, but from the outside you counted up six rows of windows to find my room.
In any case, I lost 50 pounds that year because the elevator hadn’t worked in more than 10 years.
@Darwin – Yes, it’s a peculiar difference between the two continents. When I first came to the United States in 1988 and people told me to go into room this-and-such on the first floor I was trying to locate the stairs first. Then I went up and ended up in the wrong room and was told I had to go down again. Sadly I didn’t lose 50 pounds…
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