Related Experiment Videos
Reasoning in believers in the paranormal
Emma Lawrence1, Emmanuelle Peters
1Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom.
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
|October 27, 2004
Summary
Belief in the paranormal is linked to reasoning errors, particularly with non-paranormal information. This cognitive bias appears specific to belief, not experience, suggesting evaluation stage abnormalities in forming unusual beliefs.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Parapsychology
Background:
- Reasoning biases are observed in individuals with delusions and paranormal beliefs.
- Understanding these biases is crucial for explaining the formation of unusual beliefs.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate content-specific reasoning and delusional ideation in paranormal belief.
- To determine if reasoning biases are domain-specific in believers of the paranormal.
Main Methods:
- 174 members of the Society for Psychical Research completed questionnaires on delusional ideation.
- Participants performed a deductive reasoning task with statements manipulated for belief congruency.
Main Results:
- Strong paranormal believers made more reasoning errors and showed higher delusional ideation than skeptics.
- No reasoning differences were found for belief-congruent statements, indicating domain-specificity.
- The reasoning bias was associated with belief, not direct experience, of paranormal phenomena.
Conclusions:
- Reasoning abnormalities may play a causal role in the development of unusual beliefs.
- These abnormalities likely occur during the evaluative stage of information processing, not perception.