Epigraph

Allah is the knower of the unseen; and He reveals not His secrets to anyone, except to him whom He chooses from among His messengers. (Al Quran 72:20-21)

How Come Some People Believe in the Paranormal?

Those who favor Bigfoot, UFOs and ghosts share a thinking style

BY SANDER VAN DER LINDEN

I loved magic shows when I was a kid. I remember being absolutely fascinated by mysterious events and the possibility that some of us might possess supernatural powers such as the ability to read minds, get a glimpse of the future, or, perhaps, suddenly port into another dimension. The human mind is a curious one. Although it is well-known that children have a lively imagination, what about adults? You might be surprised to learn that a recent national poll found that over 71% of Americans believe in “miracles”, 42% of Americans believe that “ghosts” exist, 41% think that “extrasensory perception” (e.g., telepathy) is possible and 29% believe in astrology.

Other recent polls have indicated that public belief in things like conspiracy theories or other pseudo-scientific phenomena are equally prevalent. For example, 21% of Americans think the government is hiding aliens, 28% of Americans believe that a mysterious, secret elite power is plotting a New World Order (NWO) and 14% of Americans believe in Bigfoot. Recent psychological research has found a surprising relationship between these types of personal convictions; espousal of conspiracy theories, pseudo-science and belief in the paranormal turn out to be highly correlated with one another. What could explain these findings?

While perhaps belief in say, lizard people and astrology seem relatively unrelated on the surface, so-called “magical thinking” may very well have a common underlying “cognitive style” — that is, the way in which we think about and make sense of the world. In fact, a new study explored this very question and suggests that the answer may indeed lie in the way we think about things, or, more precisely, the way in which we fail to think about things.

Two researchers at the University of Toulouse in France set out to investigate to what extent “cognitive thinking styles” are predictive of believing in the paranormal after experiencing an “uncanny” event. The research team designed a number of clever experiments to test their hypothesis. In the first study, the researchers invited students on campus to participate in an experiment that investigated astrological signs as a predictor of one’s personality. After providing their date of birth, participants received a personality description that matched their astral theme. In reality, each person was given the same 10 “Barnum” statements. These are statements that could ring true for nearly anyone (e.g., “you have a need for people to like you” or “at times you have serious doubts about whether you have made the right decision”). Participants were then asked to evaluate how accurate they thought this description was. Before starting the experiment, participants were also asked to complete a Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) as well as a “Paranormal Belief” questionnaire. The cognitive reflection test is a very short three-item test that essentially measures whether you are more of an intuitive or reflective thinker. Consider the following example; if a baseball and a bat cost $1.10 and the bat costs $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost? The quick and intuitive answer that comes to mind for most people is simply $0.10. Yet, this is also the wrong answer. More reflective thinkers tend to suppress this automatic and intuitive answer and are more suspicious of the first thing that comes to mind. (If you’re curious, the correct answer is: $0.05).

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Epigraph: And they ask you (Muhammad) concerning the soul. Say, ‘The soul is by the command of my Lord; and of the knowledge thereof you have been given but a […]

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