Lecture 8: Cognitive Factors Underlying Paranormal Belief

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Lecture 8Cognitive Factors Underlying
Paranormal Belief

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Review of relevant cognitive factors
• 3. Conclusion

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One of every four Americans believes in ghosts
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One of every four Americans believe they have had
a telepathic experience
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One in six Americans have felt that they have
been in touch with someone who had died
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One in ten claim to have seen or been in the
presence of a ghost
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More than half believe in the Devil, and one in
ten claimed to have talked to the Devil
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One in seven say they have personally seen a UFO
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Three in four read their horoscopes in the
newspaper, and one in four say they believe in
astrology
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Opinion Poll Data, Daily Mail, 2/2/98

• 64 believe that some people have powers that
  cannot be explained by science
• 63 believe in God
• 52 believe in life after death
• 49 believe in ghosts
• 49 believe in precognitive dreams
• 49 believe in heaven (only 28 believe in hell!)
• 47 believe in thought reading
• 41 believe in communication with the dead
• 34 believe in psychokinesis
• 26 believe in angels
• 25 believe in reincarnation

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Anomalistic Psychology

• Anomalistic psychology may be defined as the
  study of extraordinary phenomena of behaviour and
  experience, including (but not restricted to)
  those which are often labelled paranormal. It
  is directed towards understanding bizarre
  experiences that many people have without
  assuming a priori that there is anything
  paranormal involved. It entails attempting to
  explain paranormal and related beliefs and
  ostensibly paranormal experiences in terms of
  known (or knowable) psychological and physical
  factors.

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Illusion of Control(Langer, 1975)

• a tendency for people to perceive a random
  process as being potentially under their control,
  which is increased if the situation seems to
  incorporate elements of skill.
• Cf. New Hampshire Lottery (1964) with New Jersey
  Lottery (1971)
• ESP Ayeroff Abelson (1976)
• PK Benassi, Sweeney Drevno (1979)
• Coin-tossing Blackmore Troscianko (1985)
• PK Brugger, Regard Landis (1991)

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Poor Estimation of Probabilities

• The Birthday Problem How many people would you
  need to have at a party to have a 5050 chance
  that two of them share the same birthday
  (ignoring year)?
• 23

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Precognitive Dreams (1)

• Dreams will come true purely on the basis of
  coincidental matches between dream events and
  future events (Paulos, 1988)
• If we label a dream as apparently precognitive
  if chances of it coming true are less than 1 in
  10,000 and assume each person remembers one dream
  per night ...

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Precognitive Dreams (2)

• over a full year, 96.42 of the population will
  not have such a dream BUT
• around 3.6 of the population WILL!
• Thats 9 million people in the US alone.
• In fact, additional non-paranormal factors will
  lead to even greater numbers

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Probability Estimation

• Blackmore Troscianko (1985) found some
  significant differences between believers and
  non-believers
• Other studies have failed to do so (e.g., Mathews
  Blackmore, 1995 Blackmore, 1997 Blackmore,
  Galaud Walker, 1994)
• Musch Ehrenberg (2002) did find correlation but
  claimed it reflected general intelligence
  (Irwins reviews cast doubt on this)

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Poor Concept of Randomness

• Would lead to a tendency to read significance
  into random patterns
• Subjective random number generation tasks (e.g.,
  Wegenaar, 1972)
• Repetition avoidance in random strings (Brugger,
  Landis Regard, 1990)

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Reasoning Errors

• Wierzbicki (1985) produced evidence suggesting
  that believers were poorer at syllogistic
  reasoning than non-believers
• Irwin (1991) unable to replicate suggested
  results might reflect experimenter/context
  effects
• Roberts Seager (1999) did replicate

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Critical Thinking

• Alcock Otis (1980) and Gray Mill (1990)
  claimed believers were poorer at critical
  thinking
• Roe (1995) has criticised these studies on
  methodological grounds

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Confirmatory Bias

• Believers in astrology ignoring those parts of a
  reading that do not fit?
• Psychics ignoring failed predictions?
• Bias stronger in believers than disbelievers?
• Alcock Otis (1980)
• Russell Jones (1980)
• Jones Russell (1980)
• French (1992)
• Roe (1985)

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Lack of Knowledge of Conjuring Techniques

• Singer Benassi (1981)
• Wiseman Morris (1995)
• Wiseman, Smith Wiseman
• (1995 following Besterman,
• 1932)

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Population Sterotypes

• Marks (2000 after Marks Kammann, 1980)
• Lund (1939) star is favourite response using
  Zener cards
• Rigby (1989)
• French (1992)

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Perceptual Biases

• Blackmoore Moore (1994)
• Brugger et al. (1993)

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Lack of Knowledge of Cold Reading the Barnum
Effect

• Cold reading a technique that can be used to
  give complete strangers the impression that you
  know all about them (Hyman, 1977 Dutton, 1998
  Roe, 1995)
• The Barnum Effect one aspect of cold reading,
  relying on the fact that people often accept
  vague, general and ambiguous statements as
  descriptive of their own unique personalities
  (Dickson Kelly, 1985 Furnham Schofield,
  1987 Snyder, Shenkel, Lowery, 1977)

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Subjective Validation

• This occurs when two unrelated events are
  perceived to be related because a belief,
  expectancy, or hypothesis demands or requires a
  relationship" (Marks, 2000, p. 41).

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Electronic Voice Phenomenon

• It is claimed (e.g., Raudive, 1971) that by
  leaving a tape-recorder in record mode or by
  recording from a radio set between stations,
  messages from the spirit realm can be recorded
• Interpretation of the vague sounds recorded is
  often entirely subjective (Smith, 1972 Ellis,
  1975)

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Examples of EVP (1)

• The coward
• Were sorry
• Get out, get out, get out of my house

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Examples of EVP (2)

• Come and find the cake
• Supposed to say Someones in the way!

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Universality ofCognitive Biases

• It would make sense in evolutionary terms for
  humans to develop cognitive systems that can
  readily detect patterns and regularities, causes
  and effects, in the environment. The fact that
  people claim to detect regularities even when
  confronted with true randomness, or that people
  often perceive causal relationships where none
  exist, may be a small price to pay from an
  evolutionary perspective.
• (French, 1993, p. 195)

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Acknowledgement

• With thanks to Hilary Evans, proprietor of the
  Mary Evans Picture Library, for permission to use
  illustrations featured in this presentation.
  These illustrations must not be reproduced in any
  form without permission from the Mary Evans
  Picture Library.