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4.3 PARANORMAL BELIEFS AND GENDER
No significant gender differences were found on either global paranormal
belief or on any of the seven subscales. This result was different from
previous findings, suggesting that women score higher on global paranormal
belief (Clarke, 1991; Rice, 2003; Tobayck and Milford, 1983; Wolfradt,
1997), while men have stronger beliefs in the existence of UFO’s and
extraterrestrials (Clarke, 1991; Dag, 1997; Rice, 2003). However, Dag
(1997) also found no significant gender differences, except for Superstition
scores among females and Extraordinary Life Forms scores among males,
which were significantly higher. However, his study was based upon a
Turkish sample, so maybe cultural differences might be at work here as it
might also be in this study. The university education of the participants
might also have been a confounding factor with regard to this previously
fairly robust finding – the other surveys may reflect the gender differences
in a more representative sample of the general population. Also as an aside,
it has been found, via ‘top-down purification’, that the RPBS can yield
systematically biased results with respect to gender differences in
paranormal belief.
4.4. RELIGIOSITY AND PERSONALITY FACTORS
The fact that the personality factor Agreeableness was significantly
correlated with religiosity, provides partial support for previous studies
reporting low Psychoticism (Agreeableness and Conscientiousness in the
FFM) to be associated with religiosity (Francis, 1992a, 1992b, 1993; Francis
and Katz, 1992; Francis and Pearson, 1993; Lewis and Joseph, 1994; Lewis
and Maltby, 1995, 1996; Maltby, 1999a, 1999b; Saroglou, 2002). With
regard to the FFM, many studies have shown that religiosity is positively
related to Agreeableness and Conscientiousness (Saroglou, 2002; Kosek,
1999, 2000; Taylor and McDonald, 1999), although these correlations are
typically low, as highlighted by Saroglou (2002) in his meta-analysis of
previous studies. No significant correlations were found between
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Conscientiousness (or any of the other factors) and religiosity. Thus, this
result largely confirms previous findings regarding religiosity and
personality.
With respect to the religiosity subscales, Openness to Experience was
significantly negatively correlated with Orthodoxy and significantly
positively correlated with Relativism. This adds weight to the theories that
state Openness to Experience ought to be crucial in understanding the
relation between personality and religiosity (McCrae, 1996, 1999; McCrae,
Zimmerman, Costa and Bond, 1996; Saroglou, 2002; Duriez, Luyten,
Snauwaert and Hutsebaut, 2002). However, this result does not support
previous findings by Duriez, Soenens and Beyers (2003) that Openness to
Experience is significantly related to the Literal vs. Symbolic dimension.
4.5. POST-CRITICAL BELIEF SCALE (PCBS) AND
REVISED PARANORMAL BELIEF SCALE (RPBS)
The first use of the PCBS with a UK sample went without a glitch. The
internal consistency of the scale, as measured by Cronbach’s Alpha, was
global religious belief .77, Orthodoxy .82, External Critique .87, Relativism
.69 and Second Naiveté.73, respectively. This indicated that the scale (and
subscales) performed adequately for the sample used. The only Cronbach
Alpha below .70 was Relativism but the score of .69 was only just below
and considered acceptable, particularly as the maximum coefficient to be
obtained was .71 if one item was removed (question number 28: ‘Secular
and religious conceptions of the world give valuable answers to important
questions about life’). This provides further confirmatory evidence for the
usefulness of the scale, for previous research that has shown validity of the
scale construct, implying that its four subscales provide accurate measures
of Wulff’s four approaches to religiosity (Duriez, Fontaine and Hutsebaut,
2000) and that these can be interpreted in terms of the dimensions Exclusion
vs. Inclusion of Transcendence and Literal vs. Symbolic (Fontaine, Duriz,
Luyten and Hutsebaut, 2003).
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The only drawback found when using the PCBS was that 4 out of the
original 69 (6 percent) questionnaires completed had a host of missing
responses to given statements, presumably due to the sometimes complex
language (e.g. ‘immutable’) or statements (e.g. ‘Secular and religious
conceptions of the world give valuable answers to important questions about
life’) as noted previously by Duriez, Soenens and Hutsebaut, 2004. This
incomplete percentage may be higher when a random sample is conducted
rather than the sample used here, which consisted mainly of university
students.
The internal consistencies of the RPBS were also more than adequate with
Cronbach’s Alpha’s of .91, .87, .72, .87, .85, .79, .79, .71 and .83 for global
paranormal belief, Traditional Religious Belief, Psi, Witchcraft,
Superstition, Spiritualism, Extraordinary Life Forms and Precognition
respectively. The one notable exception was the Extraordinary Life Forms
scale which had an initial coefficient of .48 before one item was removed
(question number 20: ‘There is life on other planets’). This item doesn’t fit
in well with the other items (‘The abominable snowman of Tibet exists’ and
‘The Loch Ness monster of Scotland exists’) on a semantic basis, as the
latter two could be regarded as ‘mythological’ artefacts, whereas the former
is open to interpretation, i.e. there is either intelligent life on other planets or
some other form of non-intelligent life such as bacteria. Again, this relates
to the semantic ambiguity and the imprecise operational definitions of what
constitutes paranormal phenomena (Irwin, 1993).
4.6. PROBLEMS WITH THE STUDY
The most obvious shortcoming of this study was the relatively small sample
used (n = 65), which consisted mainly of university students. Hence, the
question of generalisability could be raised, since this sample did not truly
represent a random cross-section of society. For example, previous research
indicates that university students are less likely to hold religious beliefs than
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