In anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science, magical thinking is nonscientific causal reasoning that often includes such ideas as the ability of the mind to affect the physical world (see the philosophical problem of mental causation), and correlation mistaken for causation. Associative thinking may be brought into play, as well as the power of magical symbols, metaphor and metonym, and synchronicity. Since, in both theory and practice, magic does not conform to Western and modern canons of causality it is therefore appropriate to ask if it is rational to practice or believe in magic.

For most theorists these questions turn on the matter of the practitioner’s thought processes, intentions, and the efficacy of their practice. Prominent Victorian theorists typically regarded practitioners of magic as irrational because they felt magic was based on incorrect notions of causality, called "associative thinking." Edward Burnett Tylor coined this term, characterizing it as pre-logical, in which the "magician's folly" is in mistaking an ideal connection with a real one. The magician believes that thematically-linked items can influence one another by virtue of their similarity.

For example, in E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s account, amongst the Azande one rubs crocodile teeth on banana plants to make them fruitful, because crocodile teeth are curved (like bananas) and grow back if they fall out. The Azande observe this similarity and want to impart this capacity of regeneration to their bananas.

To them, the rubbing constitutes a means of transference. Sir James Frazer later elaborated upon this principle by dividing magic into the categories of “contagious” and “sympathetic” magic. The former is based upon the law of contagion or contact, in which two things that were once connected retain this link and have the ability to affect their 'related' objects, such as harming a person by harming a lock of his hair.

Sympathetic magic operates upon the premise that "like affects like," or that one can impart characteristics of one similar object to another. Frazer believed that ‘primitive peoples’ think the entire world functions according to these mimetic or 'homeopathic' principles.

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