Belief in the Supernatural among Harvard and West African University Students

Pasachoff, Jay M.; Cohen, Richard; Pasachoff, Nancy W.

doi:10.1038/227971a0

Cited by 25 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…The amount of paranormal beliefs was not associated with years of university education. Similar findings have been obtained also earlier (Pasachoff et al 1970;Salter and Routledge 1971;Aarnio and Lindeman 2005). Furthermore, the present result that the students of architecture, design, arts, education, history and cultural studies endorsed more confusions than other students, is in accordance with earlier findings that considering different academic fields, the highest numbers of paranormal believers have been found among education, art, and humanities (Vyse 1997).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 95%

“…Thus, while education usually does influence conscious processing, it may fail to reach implicit memory and intuitive information processing, which may explain why paranormal beliefs do not decrease during university education (Pasachoff et al 1970;Salter and Routledge 1971;Aarnio and Lindeman 2005). Because paranormal beliefs are quite common among university students (Tobacyk and Pirttilä-Backman 1992;a review: Martin 1994;Vyse 1997;Genovese 2005), it is probable that the students also display core knowledge confusions.…”

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confidence: 93%

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Core Knowledge Confusions Among University Students

Lindeman

Svedholm

Takada³

et al. 2009

Sci & Educ

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Previous studies have demonstrated that university students hold several paranormal beliefs and that paranormal beliefs can be best explained with core knowledge confusions. The aim of this study was to explore to what extent university students confuse the core ontological attributes of lifeless material objects (e.g. a house, a stone), living organisms (e.g. plants), and mental states (e.g., thoughts); whether some core knowledge confusions are more common than others; whether the confusions differ between students from different fields of study, and to replicate the finding that paranormal beliefs increase together with core knowledge confusions. The results showed that half of the participants considered at least four, and one quarter of the participants considered 8-30 confusion statements to be literally true and that the confusions were strongly and positively associated with the amount of paranormal beliefs. The findings indicate that university education does not abolish the misconceptions that characterize children's thinking.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 95%

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Core Knowledge Confusions Among University Students

Lindeman

Svedholm

Takada³

et al. 2009

Sci & Educ

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“…We investigated SB using 10 beliefs and practices. Some items were designed to measure SB indirectly (Adorno et al, 1950), while others were formulated as direct statements on nature and intensity of beliefs (Adorno, 1974a(Adorno, , 1974bPasachoff, Cohen, & Pasachoff, 1970;Wuthnow, 1976;Randall & Desrosiers, 1980;Randall, 1997aRandall, , 1997bBeit-Hallahmi, 1998;Yaar, 1998). Items were chosen following review of the relevance to the Israeli mystic scene, for example, "It is possible to prove that astrology can explain many things.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Contextual and Psychological Variables on Extreme Right-Wing Sentiments

Canetti

Pedahzur

2002

soc behav pers

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This article assesses how socioeconomic and psychological factors explain right-wing extremist (RWE) sentiments. A correlation was expected between two psychological factors: authoritarianism and supernaturalist beliefs, and RWE, and a weaker correlation between socioeconomic variables and RWE, compared to psychological variables. Questionnaires were given to 1,247 Israeli university students. Results confirmed the expectation that psychological variables were better predictors of RWE. These conclusions contradict attributing RWE to socioeconomic factors.Recently, Western politics have shown an increase in the power of right-wing extremist parties. Political intolerance, xenophobia and ultranationalism are defined as normative pathological characteristics (Minkenberg, 2000). The recent unprecedented rise in right-wing power induced many scholars to examine the socio-cultural roots of these phenomena. There is a lack of psychological explanations, pivotal in explaining the rise of extreme right sentiments, in contemporary research.Studies using psychological factors for predicting right-wing extremist sentiments (RWE) focused mainly on the authoritarian personality (AP) (Altemeyer, 1996). We, however, following Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, and Sanford (1950), refer also to a rather neglected cluster -supernaturalist beliefs (SB) -or, as Adorno et al. designated it -the mystic personality, revealing a remarkable increase in supernaturalism in Western societies. Palmistry, astrology, psychic readings, amulets and talismans are no longer features of marginality. Rather, they are mainstream popular culture among Western societies (Truzzi, SOCIAL

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“…Several studies have investigated the relationship between belief in psychic ability and various measures of academic achievement, including participants' course grades, Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, exam performance and highest level of educational attainment. Although many of these studies have reported that believers show significantly lower levels of academic performance than disbelievers (Gray, 1987; Messer & Griggs, 1989; Musch & Ehrenberg, 2002; Otis & Alcock, 1982; Pasachoff, Cohen, & Pasachoff, 1970), the overall pattern of results is inconsistent, with some researchers failing to replicate this finding (Thalbourne & Nofi, 1997) and others reporting believers outperforming disbelievers (Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Haraldsson, 1985; Tobacyk, Miller, & Jones, 1984). Studies examining the relationship between belief in psychic ability and scores on intelligence tests have also yielded mixed findings, with some researchers reporting negative correlations (Smith, Foster, & Stovin, 1998), others failing to find this relationship (Thalbourne & Nofi, 1997; Wiseman & Watt, 2002) and, in at least one study, believers obtaining significantly higher scores than disbelievers (Jones, Russell, & Nickel, 1977).…”

Section: The Misattribution Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Belief in psychic ability and the misattribution hypothesis: A qualitative review

Wiseman

Watt

2006

British J of Psychology

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This paper explores the notion that people who believe in psychic ability possess various psychological attributes that increase the likelihood of them misattributing paranormal causation to experiences that have a normal explanation. The paper discusses the structure and measurement of belief in psychic ability, then reviews the considerable body of work exploring the relationship between belief in psychic ability, and academic performance, intelligence, critical thinking, probability misjudgement and reasoning, measures of fantasy proneness and the propensity to find correspondences in distantly related material. Finally, the paper proposes several possible directions for future research, including: the need to build a multi-causal model of belief; to address the issue of correlation verses causation; to resolve the inconsistent pattern of findings present in many areas; and to develop a more valid, reliable and fine-grained measure of belief in psychic ability.

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Belief in the Supernatural among Harvard and West African University Students

Cited by 25 publications

References 1 publication

Core Knowledge Confusions Among University Students

Core Knowledge Confusions Among University Students

The Effects of Contextual and Psychological Variables on Extreme Right-Wing Sentiments

Belief in psychic ability and the misattribution hypothesis: A qualitative review

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