Paranormal beliefs, religious beliefs and personality correlates

4.2 PARANORMAL BELIEFS AND PERSONALITY

Conscientiousness was found to be the only personality factor significantly predicting paranormal beliefs and it was negatively correlated to it. This finding was in contrast with previous research, which revealed mixed results regarding personality correlates of paranormal belief. Some studies suggested that neuroticism was significantly related (Thalbourne, Dunbar and Delin, 1995), while others did not (Lester and Monaghan, 1995; Willging and Lester, 1997). Similarly Extraversion was found to be a significant correlate of paranormal belief in some studies (Thalbourne, 1981; Eysenck 1967; Thalbourne and Haraldsson, 1980), while not in others (Lester et al., 1987; Windholz and Diamant, 1974).

The influence of the Conscientiousness factor upon paranormal belief may be a reflection of the relatively small sample in the study and the use of the RPBS, which has only been used in a handful of previous studies. So it may in turn reflect the differing operational definitions of paranormality as a construct (Irwin, 1993). As can be seen, no clear consistent picture is emerging regarding personality correlates of global paranormal belief. Further research is necessary and perhaps an approach investigating those subscales that share similar attributes is required, e.g. superstition and spiritualism have been shown to correlate positively with external locus of control, and psi belief has correlated negatively (Wolfradt, 1997), so perhaps a more consistent picture with regards to personality factors may emerge taking this route.

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 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).

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).