Paranormal beliefs, religious beliefs and personality correlates

1. INTRODUCTION

Surveys, such as the one conducted in 1996 by Gallup of a nationally representative sample of Americans, continue to show a high degree of belief, interest and involvement in a variety of paranormal and religious related phenomena among the general population. For example, 48 percent believed in the possibility of extra-sensory perception (ESP), 45 percent believe that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have already visited Earth, and 56 and 72 per cent believed in the reality of the devil and angels, respectively (Gallup, 1997). In fact, these numbers have actually gone up since the surveys first started (Gallup and Newport, 1991) and other surveys amongst university and college students have yielded similar results (e.g. Messer and Griggs, 1989). Perhaps due to the widespread existence of such beliefs, the investigation of personality correlates of paranormal and particularly religious belief has received considerable attention in recent years, but little attention was given to both simultaneously. This study intends to provide a first exploratory look at the relationships between paranormal beliefs, religious beliefs and personality correlates.

1.1 PARANORMAL BELIEFS AND PERSONALITY

The term paranormal is used to describe phenomena, which - if authentic - violate basic limiting principles of science (Broad, 1949; Tobayck, 1995). The question of why so many people, including the well educated, believe in the possibility of such phenomena has perplexed the scientific community and as such the investigation of individual differences in the belief in the paranormal has been a prominent avenue of psychological inquiry.

Early studies into paranormal beliefs rendered a most negative view on believers, emphasising deficiencies in intelligence, education and personality (Emme, 1940; Lundeen and Caldwell, 1930). However, these early studies tended to focus on simple superstitions compared with the recent research focus on more complex and sophisticated phenomena such as ESP, psychokinesis and precognition (Boshier, 1973; Irwin, 1993). Also, some research has indicated that beliefs in the paranormal are associated with higher rather than lower education and intelligence (McGarry and Newberry, 1981). Other findings suggest that belief in paranormal phenomena is not associated with the rejection of mainstream science or technology, at least among college and university students (Schouten, 1983).
Two areas that have received a lot of attention in relation to paranormal beliefs have been locus of control and psychopathology. The connection between paranormal beliefs and feelings of control were proposed as far back as the 1940’s by Malinowski (1948), with these beliefs serving as a kind of illusion of control (Langer, 1975). Early research demonstrated a relationship between a more external locus of control and greater belief in paranormal phenomena (e.g. Tobayck & Milford, 1983). However, the results from the global measurements of paranormal belief and locus of control have been shown questionable. This was due to the measurement tools (or scales), which included both forms of paranormal belief implying a belief in fate and lack of control (e.g. superstitions, spiritualism) and forms suggesting that the world can be changed by one’s own will (e.g. psi, psychokinesis). Therefore, it was suggested that superstition and spiritualism should correlate positively, and psi belief should correlate negatively with external locus of control (Wolfradt, 1997). Indeed, taking this multi-dimensional approach, significant relationships between externality in personal and socio-political control and belief in religion, superstitions and spiritualism have been found. Similarly, a significant relationship between internality in personal and interpersonal control and belief in psi has also been found (Davies and Kirkby, 1985).
The other correlate that has received much attention with respect to paranormal beliefs is psychopathology and in particular ‘magical thinking’ (as seen in psychokinesis), which is among the defined symptoms of some psychiatric disorders like schizotypal personality disorder in the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). It has been found that those who scored highest on magical thinking showed a predisposition to psychosis (Eckblad and Chapman, 1983). Research has also shown that paranormal beliefs are significantly and positively correlated with schizotypy (Thalbourne, 1994; Chequers, Joseph and Diduca, 1997) and with manic-depressive experiences (Thalbourne and French, 1995).
As can be seen there are various forms of paranormal belief. Here the individual is heavily influenced by cultural factors, such as family, peer group processes, dissemination of paranormal concepts in the media and formal persuasion by social institutions, e.g. the church (Schriever, 2000). Socialisation has been one of the reasons used to explain gender differences concerning the extent of paranormal beliefs. Females express greater global paranormal belief than males (Irwin, 1993; Rice, 2003), although men express greater belief in UFOs and extraterrestrials (e.g. Rice, 2003). Blackmore (1994) speculated that males were socialised to take more interest in science, while females were socialised to be better informed about religious issues, implicating women’s richer fantasy life as possible explanations for gender differences. Furthermore, a study by Lester, Thinschmidt and Trautman (1987) reported that precognition experience and paranormal belief were directly related to feeling and intuition scores, supporting the view that believers tend to be less logical, more open-minded and prone to fantasy than non-believers.
All this may suggest that (strong) believers in paranormal phenomena may be maladjusted in some form or another, but the evidence with respect to personality dimensions is decidedly mixed. Early research with regard to personality and religiosity used Eysenck’s three-dimensional model of personality, based on the underlying factors of Psychoticism, Extraversion and Neuroticism (PEN) (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1968, 1985), whereas ewer research used the Five Factor Model (FFM) introduced by Costa and McCrae (1978, 1992, 1995). The FFM can be thought of as an extension to Eysenck’s model with Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, now providing a two dimensional view of Psychoticism (Digman, 1997; McCrae, 1996b) and Openness to Experience constituting a new element (Costa and McCrae, 1995). This model claims to represent the basic factors organising human traits (Saucier and Goldberg, 1998). Bearing this in mind, Thalbourne, Dunbar and Delin (1995) found a significant positive relationship between paranormal beliefs (specifically belief in psi, witchcraft, spiritualism, precognition and traditional religion) and Neuroticism using the revised Paranormal Belief Scale (RPBS), whereas other researchers (Lester and Monaghan, 1995; Willging and Lester, 1997) have found no such relationship. In a similar way, anxiety showed a close relation with paranormal beliefs in some studies (Okebukola, 1986; Wagner and Ratzeburg, 1987), but it didn’t in others (Tobayck, 1982). A more recent study has reported significant relationships between paranormal beliefs, trait anxiety and dissociative experiences (Wolfradt, 1997), which mirrors findings of previous studies (Irwin, 1994; Pekala, Kumar and Marcano, 1995).
It is postulated that paranormal beliefs serve the same function as dissociative experiences, i.e. creating a distance from reality (of a situation or experience) as a defence mechanism (Wolfradt, 1997). Similarly, fantasy proneness - correlated with paranormal beliefs- is also believed to serve this function (Irwin, 1990). Even so, a low but significant correlation has been found between paranormal belief and irrational thinking (Tobayck and Milford, 1983; Roig, Bridges, Renner and Jackson, 1997).
One personality factor that would have been thought related to paranormal belief is Openness to Experience, as individuals scoring high in this factor may be characterised by a particularly permeable structure of consciousness, as well as an active motivation to seek out the unfamiliar. This goes hand in hand with tolerance of ambiguity and open-mindedness and leads those high in Openness to Experience to endorse liberal political and social values, because questioning conventional values is a natural extension of their curiosity (McCrae, 1996a). However, currently there is little or no support for this hypothesis (Thalbourne, Dunbar and Delin, 1995; Lester and Monaghan, 1995; Willging and Lester, 1997).
Perhaps the strongest evidence relating personality correlates and paranormal beliefs has come from empirical studies showing Extraversion to be a salient correlate of paranormal belief. The prime example is the study of Thalbourne (1981), who discovered that individuals with higher paranormal belief scores (sheep) were more extraverted than disbelievers (goats), with Eysenck (1967) and Thalbourne and Haraldsson (1980) reporting similar results. However, some other studies have shown no such association (Lester et al., 1987; Windholz and Diamant, 1974), which may be due to some of the issues highlighted below.
Unfortunately, some of the prior research in this area has been plagued by several methodological problems, including semantic ambiguity regarding the dimensions of paranormal belief, imprecise operational definitions that blur the constructs of belief and experience, and measurement inconsistencies of the constructs themselves. For example, Irwin (1993) points out that the numerous scales differ widely in their operational definitions of the construct and as such ‘paranormal belief’ has been stretched to include a host of unusual phenomena, e.g. belief in witches, UFOs, etc., which do not fall under the traditional definition of the term (French, 1992)¹. The reasons for this include specific biases of the researchers, limitations of the measurements, or conceptual differences regarding the dimensionality of the construct (Rattet and Bursik, 2000).
With respect to the employed RPBS, a controversy exists (Lawrence, 1995) regarding the classification of traditional religious beliefs and superstition as paranormal, despite some strong empirical evidence (Thalbourne, 1997). However, many of the phenomena associated with traditional religion (in this case Christianity) such as miracles, resurrection, souls etc. also violate the basic limiting principles of science and therefore some authors suggested that they fit the stated definition of paranormality (e.g. Tobayck and Pirittila-Backman, 1992). Hence, it is clear that further research will be necessary to explore and verify the limited and mixed findings that have been produced so far.