Religious People and Paranormal Believers - Hogrefe eContent

K. Aarnio and Journalof M. Lindeman: IndividualD © Paranormal 2007 ifferences Hogrefe and 2007; &Religious Huber Vol.Publishers 28(1):1–9 Beliefs

Religious People and Paranormal Believers Alike or Different? Kia Aarnio and Marjaana Lindeman University of Helsinki, Finland Abstract. This study aimed at clarifying the relationship between religious and paranormal beliefs, on which previous studies have yielded varying results. It was examined whether the relationship varies by the level of religiousness, and individual differences between religious and paranormal believers and sceptics were compared. Finnish participants (N = 3261) filled in an Internet-based questionnaire. The results showed that the relationship between religious and paranormal beliefs was positive among paranormal believers and sceptics but negative among religious people. High intuitive thinking, low analytical thinking, mystical experiences, and close others’ positive attitude toward the supernatural distinguished both kinds of believers from the sceptics, while conservation and self-transcendence values distinguished religious people from paranormal believers. Keywords: paranormal beliefs, religious beliefs

The acquisition of religious and paranormal (superstitious, magical) beliefs and their interrelation has been the topic of an on-going debate for decades (Durkheim, 1915/1964; Frazer, 1922/1963; Malinowski, 1948/1984; Mauss, 1950/2001). However, empirical studies have been scarce, and the results have been variable. The aim of this study, therefore, was to analyze the relationship between religious and paranormal beliefs in more detail, and to compare individual differences between believers and nonbelievers. Some studies suggest that a person inclined to religious beliefs is also susceptible to paranormal beliefs, and vice versa (Goode, 2000; Haraldsson & Houtcooper, 1996; Orenstein, 2002; Rudski, 2003; Sjöberg & af Wåhlberg, 2002). These results have been explained by pointing out the similar neglect of modern scientific views in religion and paranormal beliefs, and that they share more with each other than with modern science (Goode, 2000). Likewise, it has been argued that different kinds of supernatural beings and phenomena, be they angels or ghosts, life after death or reincarnation, all appeal to people’s intuitive minds (Barrett, 2003; Boyer, 2003; Wuthnow, 1978). In contrast, another line of research suggests that religious and paranormal beliefs are negatively connected or independent of each other (Donahue, 1993; MacDonald, 2000; Rice, 2003). Two reasons have been suggested to explain this. One is that paranormal beliefs fill a religious void (Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Wuthnow, 1978), and the other is the incongruity of paranormal beliefs with the teachings of traditional Christianity (Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Goode, 2000; Rice, 2003). It has, however, been suggested that it may be only those whose beliefs follow the official doctrine most strictly who © 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers

abandon paranormal beliefs (Goode, 2000). Religious people can also conceptualize God and other religious entities intuitively, and perhaps those people’s belief systems include paranormal beliefs (for the two ways to conceptualize God and other religious entities, see Barrett & Keil, 1996; Boyer, 1994; Whitehouse, 2002). In earlier studies it has been assumed that the relationship between religious and paranormal beliefs is the same for everyone and, thus, only an average estimate for the relationship has been measured. One reason for the varying findings may be that the relationship is different in subpopulations, namely, negative among those who are highly religious and positive among others. Therefore, our aim was to analyze the relationship between paranormal and religious beliefs separately in different believer groups. Instead of the common tendency to use median splits, which divide a dataset into equally sized groups, we utilized a cluster analysis to distinguish natural believer groups, varying in terms of paranormal and religious beliefs. A cluster analysis is a personcentered approach, which aims at grouping individuals so that people in the same group are as similar to each other as possible and as dissimilar to people in other groups as possible (Caspi & Silva, 1995; Muthén & Muthén, 2000). A cluster analysis, thus, differs from variable-centered approaches, which focus on relationships among variables. Earlier research on the relationship between religious and paranormal beliefs has relied on variable-centered approaches. As these studies do not reveal how religious and paranormal beliefs are organized within different types of people, a person-centered method could yield valuable new information on the patterns of beliefs among individuals. We then investigated which psychological characterisJournal of Individual Differences 2007; Vol. 28(1):1–9 DOI 10.1027/1614-0001.28.1.1

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K. Aarnio and M. Lindeman: Paranormal and Religious Beliefs

tics differentiate and unite the believer groups. So far, the correlates of paranormal and religious beliefs have been studied separately. Moreover, the vast majority of studies have examined relationships between one kind of belief and only a few correlates and, therefore, it is difficult to confirm their relative importance. For these reasons, we designed a study where several correlates of religious and paranormal beliefs were examined simultaneously. We concentrated on variables that have either been suggested or shown to account for religious beliefs, paranormal beliefs, or both. The correlates studied were analytical and intuitive thinking, mystical experiences, close others’ attitude toward the supernatural, values, negative life experiences, emotional instability, and gender. The most traditional and well-known statement about the formation of paranormal and religious beliefs is that magical thinking is the most primitive mode of thinking, which in the course of human phylogeny has been followed by religious thinking, and finally, by scientific and analytical thinking (Frazer, 1922/1963; Mauss, 1950/2001). Indirect evidence for this claim comes from studies showing that people who have paranormal beliefs are somewhat less inclined to analytical thinking than other people (Brugger & Graves, 1997; Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996; Pacini & Epstein, 1999). The claim that magical, religious, and scientific thinking demonstrate different developmental levels of thinking, either in ontogeny or in phylogeny, has been criticized, as they all coexist in modern society (Nemeroff & Rozin, 2000). However, underlying this criticism is the false presumption that development of thinking would be a unidimensional process with magical and other poor thinking on the one end and accurate, analytical reasoning on the other. Yet, the basic tenet of dual-process theories of thinking is that people have two modes of processing information, intuitive and analytical reasoning, which rely on different databases and have different rules of operation (Epstein, 1994; Evans, 2003; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich & West, 2000; Sun, Slusarz, & Terry, 2005). Analytical processes and knowledge do not replace intuitive processes and contents as analytical thinking matures; rather, both types of processes and knowledge exist and develop throughout an individual’s life. Therefore, people can hold conflicting beliefs: rational and verbally justifiable on the one hand (e.g., “Death is final”) and automatic and resistant to logical arguments on the other hand (e.g., “The soul continues to exist though the body may die”). When paranormal beliefs have been examined from a dual-processing view, it has been detected that people who use more intuitive thinking are especially inclined to them, and that the positive relationship between intuitive thinking and paranormal beliefs is much stronger than the negative relationship between analytical thinking and paranormal beliefs (Epstein et al., 1996; Wolfradt, Oubaid, Straube, Bischoff, & Mischo, 1999). Whether the same relationships exist between thinking styles and religious beliefs has not been empirically studied. Journal of Individual Differences 2007; Vol. 28(1):1–9

The idea of coexistence of two cognitive systems in the human brain is consistent with the classic claim that believers of magic and religion believe in two different realities, a natural and a mystical reality (Bronowski, 1978; LévyBruhl, 1949/1975; Tambiah, 1990). The mystical reality is thought to “unveil” when a person experiences something interpreted as mystical (Lévy-Bruhl, 1949/1975). In empirical studies, mystical experiences have been shown to be positively associated with paranormal and religious beliefs (Hay & Morisy, 1978; MacDonald, 2000; Rattet & Bursik, 2001; Wolfradt et al., 1999). We, thus, hypothesized that paranormal and religious believers would have witnessed more mystical experiences than other people. The social character of religion has been indicated in two ways. First, religious beliefs have been shown to be socially transmitted to children from their parents and educators in that religious education leads to religiosity (e.g., McCullough, Tsang, & Brion, 2003), and that parents and their teenage and adult children have similar levels of religiosity (Flor & Knapp, 2001; Okagaki & Bevis, 1999). The influence of family, friends, and social group has also been suggested to be considerable for paranormal beliefs (Vyse, 1997) but the topic has not been studied empirically. Therefore, the influence of other people on an individual’s religious and paranormal beliefs was addressed in this study. Second, religion has been shown to be based on social traditions and values (de St. Aubin, 1999; Schwartz & Huismans, 1995). The results have shown that in comparison with other people, religious individuals endorse more conservation values such as tradition, conformity, and security (Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, & Knafo, 2002; Saroglou, Delpierre, & Dernelle, 2004; Schwartz & Huismans, 1995). In addition, religious people differ from others in self-transcendence values by valuing benevolence more and universalism less than nonreligious people (Saroglou, Delpierre, & Dernelle, 2004; Schwartz & Huismans, 1995). In other words, religious people are committed to the members of their in-group rather than to all people. We expected to replicate the findings on the importance of conservation and benevolence values to religious people. No hypotheses about the relationship between values and paranormal beliefs were set cause of the lack of earlier studies. Further, we examined how religious and paranormal beliefs are related to negative life events. Many researchers have suggested that paranormal and religious beliefs provide a sense of control over the uncontrollable and that they reduce anxiety during crises, traumas, and threatening situations (Frazer, 1922/1963; Malinowski, 1948/1984; Nemeroff & Rozin, 2000). In line with these suggestions, some studies have shown that both religious beliefs (for a review see Pargament, 2002) and paranormal beliefs (Keinan, 1994; Padgett & Jorgenson, 1982) emerge as a response to frightening situations and personal crises. Thus, we assumed that paranormal believers and religious people would have experienced more negative life events than other people. Additionally, we examined emotional stability, or in © 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers


terms of the Big Five personality dimensions, Neuroticism, among the believers and nonbelievers. There is some empirical evidence that people who hold paranormal beliefs are more neurotic than others (Wiseman & Watt, 2004; Vyse, 1997), whereas religious people mostly seem to be as emotionally stable as any others (Hills, Francis, Argyle, & Jackson, 2004; McCullough et al., 2003; Saroglou, 2002). We, therefore, hypothesized that paranormal beliefs, but not religiosity, are positively associated with emotional instability. Some of the studies on the association between neuroticism and religiosity have shown that the association depends on the type of religiosity. Our hypothesis is based on the results between neuroticism and intrinsic religiosity, as intrinsic religiosity seems to correspond to general religiosity (Maltby, Talley, Cooper, & Leslie, 1995; Saroglou, 2002). Demographics have been shown to be poor predictors of religious and paranormal beliefs. The only exception is gender. Women have consistently been shown to have more paranormal (for a review see Vyse, 1997) and religious beliefs (e.g., Stark, 2002) than men, and we expected to replicate this finding in the present study. In sum, we first examined by a cluster analysis what kind of paranormal and religious believer groups could be distinguished, and analyzed how paranormal and religious beliefs were related in these groups. Second, we examined the individual differences between the believer groups, and hypothesized that individuals with paranormal and religious beliefs, in comparison with others, would be higher in intuitive thinking but lower in analytical thinking, have witnessed more mystical experiences, have close others with more positive attitude for supernatural phenomena, have experienced more negative life events, and show a higher percentage of women. In addition, we hypothesized that religious people would hold more conservation and benevolence values than others. Finally, we expected that people with paranormal beliefs would be emotionally less stable than others.

Method Participants The participants of this study (N = 3261) were from Finland, of whom 85% were full-time students and the rest either employed or part-time students; 74% of them were females. The mean age of the participants was 24 years (SD = 4.67) with a range from 15 to 60. The students were from universities (77%) and from vocational schools (23%), representing diverse disciplines including medical, behavioral, social, and natural sciences, law, arts, humanities, theology, technology, business, and service. The religious denomination of the participants was not requested but it is known that 85% of Finnish people belong to the Lutheran church, while 10% do not have a religious affiliation © 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers

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(Churches and religions in Finland, 2002). Of the 3282 people who originally took part in the study, 21 were excluded because of missing data.

Procedure The participants were recruited through six universities and 10 vocational schools in Finland. Where applicable, a recruitment message was sent to an electronic student mailing list. Where such lists were unavailable, an employee of the educational institute posted information on the study on a communication board. A minority of the participants (n = 279) was informed about the study by a researcher at the beginning of a lecture. Other students were referred to the questionnaire, which was posted on the Internet. Since no data is available on how many people were reached by the recruitment message, the response rate cannot be reliably calculated. The respondents were told that they could get feedback on their responses by requesting it, and that it would require them to reveal their pseudonym but not their identity. The web survey was implemented as a Java servlet, running on an Apache web server and a Tomcat application server. The survey was placed in a hidden directory where it was unavailable to casual browsers. All questionnaire data and answers were stored in a MySQL relational database. The backups were encrypted with GPG (industry standard encryption protocol) to ensure confidentiality and all data transmissions were further encrypted with SSH (industry standard secure connection protocol). Multiple responses were not controlled but it is unlikely that anyone would answer a questionnaire as lengthy as this several times (approximate response time was 1 h).

Measures Paranormal belief was measured with a slightly revised version of the most popular measure of paranormal beliefs, namely, the Paranormal Belief Scale, excluding the Traditional religious beliefs subscale (RPBS: Tobacyk, 1988; original scale: Tobacyk & Milford, 1983). The six subscales used were (example items in parentheses): Psi (“Mind reading is not possible,” reverse-scored), Witchcraft (“Witches do exist”), Omens of luck (“Black cats can bring bad luck”), Spiritualism (“It is possible to communicate with the dead”), Extraordinary life forms (“The Loch Ness monster of Scotland exists”), and Precognition (“Astrology is a way to accurately predict the future”). The items were measured on a 5-point rating scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). As all the six subscales correlated positively with each other (r = .22-.65, p < .001), a mean score of paranormal belief was calculated of all the items. The reliability of the scale was Cronbach’s α = .92. Religious belief was gauged by the RPBS subscale of Traditional religious beliefs (Tobacyk, 1988). The four items Journal of Individual Differences 2007; Vol. 28(1):1–9

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(Cronbach’s α = .88) were: “I believe in God,” “There is a devil,” “There is a heaven and a hell,” and “The soul continues to exist though the body may die.” They were also measured on a 5-point rating scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Analytical and intuitive thinking were assessed by the Rational-Experiential Inventory (Pacini & Epstein, 1999). The inventory consists of two 20-item scales, Rationality (Cronbach’s α = .87) and Experientiality (Cronbach’s α = .88), which use 5-point rating scales (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Example items include: “I usually have clear, explainable reasons for my decisions” (rational or analytical thinking) and “I believe in trusting my hunches” (experiential or intuitive thinking). Mystical experiences were assessed with three questions: “Have you (Has someone very close to you / has an acquaintance of yours, respectively) experienced something unexplainable, mystical? By this we mean things that you find lacking a natural, rational explanation.” The scale for the first question ranged from 1 = never to 5 = very often, and the scale for the other two questions from 1 = nobody to 5 = very many. The items were averaged into a sum score (Cronbach’s α = .87). Close others’ attitude toward the supernatural was assessed by four questions. Two of them concerned the attitudes of the respondent’s parents on mystical experiences: “How did your mother (respectively, father) respond to mystical, supernatural phenomena when you were a child?” (1 = very disbelievingly, 5 = very seriously). The other two questions concerned the attitudes of the respondent’s friends: “How many of the people closest to you in your youth (respectively, at present) took (take) mystical, supernatural phenomena seriously?” (1 = none, 5 = numerous [over five] people). All the items were averaged into a sum score (Cronbach’s α = .76). Values were measured with an abbreviated version of Schwartz’s Value Survey (Lindeman & Verkasalo, 2005). The original scale (Schwartz, 1992) consists of 45 interculturally stable value items, that are divided into ten distinctive values: power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, benevolence, tradition, conformity, security, self-direction, and universalism. The 10-item Short Schwartz’s Value Survey (Lindeman & Verkasalo, 2005) gave the participants the name of the value and the related value items as description (e.g., “Tradition, that is respect for tradition, humbleness, accepting one’s portion in life, devout, moderate” and “Benevolence, that is helpfulness, honesty, forgiveness, loyalty, responsibility”). The ten value items were rated on a 6-point scale (–1 = against my values, 1 = not at all important, 5 = supremely important). Primarily the two broader value dimensions, conservation – openness to change and self-transcendence – self-enhancement, but also the 10 value items, were used as variables. The dimensions were calculated so that in conservation – openness to change, especially tradition, conformity, and security were positively weighted, and in self-transcendence – self-enhancement, particularly universalism and benevolence Journal of Individual Differences 2007; Vol. 28(1):1–9

were positively weighted (For details, see Lindeman & Verkasalo, 2005). Negative life events were measured by asking the participants to mark how many crises or traumas they had experienced. Twelve negative life events that are commonly considered to be threats to psychological well-being (Cullberg, 1985; Janoff-Bulman, 1989) were selected as examples, including economical difficulties, infidelity, a lifethreatening situation, and death of a close relative or friend. Neuroticism was measured by a subscale of the Finnish version of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (McCrae & Costa, 1987; Pulver, Allik, Pulkkinen, & Hamalainen, 1995). The neuroticism subscale consists of 48 items (5-point scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) that measure anxiety, depression, self-consciousness, vulnerability, impulsiveness, and hostility. The reliability (Cronbach’s α) of the scale was .93.

Results First, to analyze what kind of believer groups could be found in the present sample, a hierarchical cluster analysis on the two variables, religious and paranormal beliefs, was conducted with squared Euclidian distance and the Ward minimum variance clustering algorithm. No outliers were found in the data. The four-cluster solution was selected as the best fitting solution, primarily on the basis of the meaning of the cluster content. Table 1 shows the extent to which participants in the four clusters endorsed religious and paranormal beliefs. The clusters were labeled as sceptics (n = 1615), religious people (n = 1157), paranormal believers (n = 375), and double believers, who highly endorsed both paranormal and religious beliefs (n = 114). Second, the correlations between religious and paranormal beliefs were analyzed for the total sample and separately for the four believer groups. The results showed that paranormal beliefs and religiosity were positively correlated in the total sample (r = .42, p < .001), in the sceptics group (r = .43, p < .001), and among the paranormal believers (r = .42, p < .001), negatively correlated in the religious group (r = –.41, p < .001), and unrelated in the double believer group (r = .15, n.s.). As the correlations were unequal in the groups, we analyzed a nonlinear correlation in the total sample by curve estimation. When religious belief score was the dependent variable and standardized paranormal belief score was the independent variable, the quadratic model was statistically significant, F(2, 3260) = 417.63, p < .001, R² = .20. Third, we compared the believer groups on gender distribution and on the psychological variables. A nonparametric χ² test showed that men and women were unevenly divided into the believer groups: χ²(3) = 80.45, p < .001. More men than women belonged to the group of sceptics (62% vs. 45%, respectively). Further, more women than men belonged to the religious believers (39% vs. 25%), the © 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers


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Table 1. Comparisons of psychological variables between the sceptics (n = 1615), the religious (n = 1157), the paranormal believers (n = 375), and the double believers (n = 114) Variables

Scepticsa

Religiousb

Double believersd

M

SD

M

SD

M

SD

M

SD

M

SD

Religious beliefs

2.04 bcd

0.81

4.07 ac

0.65

2.24 abd

0.46

4.21 ac

0.39

2.86

1.21 2061.65*** .655

Paranormal beliefs

Paranormal believersc

All F(3, 3260) χ²

1.51 bcd

0.31

2.20 acd

0.53

2.55 abd

0.46

3.38 abc

0.38

1.94

0.64 1401.79*** .564

Extraordinary life 2.02 bcd forms

0.55

2.20 acd

0.70

2.60 abd

0.64

2.97 abc

0.72

2.19

0.66 152.91*** .123

Psi

1.59 bcd

0.54

2.35 acd

0.83

2.80 abd

0.85

3.62 abc

0.68

2.07

0.88 638.22*** .370

Omen of luck

1.16 bcd

0.44

1.47 acd

0.78

1.69 abd

0.92

2.45 abc

1.17

1.37

0.73 185.03*** .146

Precognition

1.34 bcd

0.46

1.97 acd

0.73

2.31 abd

0.72

3.23 abc

0.76

1.74

0.77 624.35*** .365

Spiritualism

1.62 bcd

0.64

2.63 acd

0.88

3.01 abd

0.84

3.96 abc

0.68

2.22

1.00 793.25*** .422

Witchcraft

1.39 bcd

0.51

2.41 acd

0.92

2.72 abd

0.79

3.71 abc

0.69

1.99

0.96 847.33*** .438

Intuitive thinking

3.17 bcd

0.56

3.41 acd

0.55

3.52 abd

0.51

3.74 abc

0.62

3.32

0.57 85.48***

.073

Analytical thinking

3.94 bcd

0.50

3.84 a

0.52

3.79 a

0.53

3.79 a

0.56

3.88

0.52 15.42***

.014

Conservation values –0.11 bc

0.99

0.25 acd

0.99

–0.27 ab

0.99

–0.01 b

0.88

0.00

0.98 41.92***

.037

Self-transcendence values

–0.20 bd

0.95

0.29 ac

0.94

–0.14 bd

0.99

0.18 ac

0.82

–0.00

0.97 65.81***

.057

Other’s positive atti- 1.99 bcd tude toward the supernatural

0.68

2.45 ad

0.80

2.42 ad

0.74

2.86 abc

0.80

2.23

0.78 124.28*** .103

Mystical experiences 1.73 bcd

0.71

2.37 ad

0.88

2.39 ad

0.82

2.97 abc

0.96

2.08

0.87 221.75*** .170

Neuroticism

0.54

2.76 ac

0.50

2.85 ab

0.53

2.86 a

0.54

2.72

0.53 22.41***

.020

Negative life events 2.74 cd 1.99 2.88 d 2.07 3.20 a 2.39 3.77 ab 2.68 2.88 2.11 12.14*** Note. The letter symbols indicate the statistically significant (p < .05) differences between the groups a–d. *** p < .001

.011

2.65 bcd

paranormal believers (12% vs. 10%), and the double believers (4% vs. 2%). One-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) were conducted separately for each psychological variable with believer group as a between-subjects variable. The results, shown in Table 1, indicate that the groups differed significantly regarding every variable. The post-hoc test (Bonferroni) results are indicated in Table 1 with small letter symbols showing the statistically significant (p < .05) differences between the groups. Mystical experiences and other’s positive attitude toward the supernatural had large effects on group membership. Intuitive thinking and values had medium-sized effects and neuroticism, analytical thinking, and negative life events had small effects on group membership. Further, to analyze whether intuitive thinking is a more important predictor of group membership than analytical thinking, we computed 95% confidence intervals of the effect sizes of intuitive and analytical thinking by RMSSE, that is, root-mean-square standardized effect (Steiger, 2004). The results showed that the confidence interval of analytical thinking was 0.10–0.18 and that of intuitive thinking was 0.28–0.37. As the confidence intervals did not overlap, intuitive thinking was a more important predictor of group membership than analytical thinking. When the 10 values were correlated with religious beliefs, it turned out that the high prevalence of self-transcen© 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers

dence values in the religious group was primarily from benevolence (r = .24, p < .001), not universalism (r = .00, n.s.), power (r = –.03, n.s.), or achievement (r = –.11, p < .001).

Discussion Four believer groups were found in the sample: the sceptics, the religious, the paranormal believers, and the double believers who highly endorsed both religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs. The results showed that the association between paranormal and religious beliefs was different in the groups. For the sceptics, the less religious beliefs they adhered to the less paranormal beliefs they held. Similarly, the more paranormal beliefs the paranormal believers held the more religious beliefs they had. In contrast, the relationship was reversed for the religious people: The more religious they were, the less they supported paranormal claims. In short, the question in the old debate of whether religious and paranormal beliefs co-occur or exclude each other seems to be wrongly posed. The relationship is not clearly positive or negative but curvilinear, and seems to depend on one’s religious commitment. Both belief types can be accommodated in the belief systems of those whose Journal of Individual Differences 2007; Vol. 28(1):1–9

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religiosity is moderate. However, highly religious people reject paranormal beliefs, possibly because they follow the doctrine more than others. The double believers who made up of only 5% of the population were the only group in which paranormal and religious beliefs were unrelated. It comprised people who were attracted by religion and the paranormal more than the other participants, although the beliefs did not covary linearly. It may only be speculated that this group consisted of people who are outside of mainstream religion, which may enable a coexistence of strong religious and paranormal beliefs. Small religious groups without a formal religious affiliation have also been found in earlier studies (Bainbridge, 2004; Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Orenstein, 2002). The results on the psychological characteristics deepen our understanding of the similarities and dissimilarities among nonbelievers and the three believer groups. The paranormal believers, the religious, and the double believers shared many determinants that distinguished them from the sceptics. First of all, they were all less prone to analytical thinking than the sceptics. Regarding the paranormal believers, these results were in line with earlier empirical findings (Brugger & Graves, 1997; Epstein et al., 1996; Pacini & Epstein, 1999). The finding that the believers relied less on analytical thinking than the nonbelievers parallels the arguments that low reasoning abilities are related with various forms of religion (Frazer, 1922/1963; Mauss, 1950/2001) and paranormal beliefs (Brugger & Graves, 1997; Epstein et al., 1996). However, as in earlier work, the differences were not very strong, and the religious did not differ from the paranormal believers. Intuitive thinking, however, differentiated the groups better from each other than analytical thinking. All the believers relied on intuition more than the nonbelievers. The double believers relied on intuition the most, followed by the paranormal believers and the religious. The high intuitiveness of paranormal believers has been shown in earlier studies (Epstein et al., 1996; Wolfradt et al., 1999) but the result on the higher intuitiveness of religious people in comparison with the sceptics was new. The results imply that contrary to what has often been presented, nonscientific and low analytical thinking is not the most important cognitive mechanism behind paranormal and religious beliefs; rather, the implicitly and associatively operating intuitive thinking is. Furthermore, the results slightly support Boyer’s (2003) suggestion that different kinds of supernatural beings and phenomena vary in extension of intuitive elements; it is possible that paranormal beliefs appeal more to intuition than religious beliefs. A third common denominator of the believer groups was that they differed from the sceptics in having witnessed more mystical experiences, as was predicted based on earlier studies (Hay & Morisy, 1978; MacDonald, 2000; Rattet & Bursik, 2001). The results also fit with Journal of Individual Differences 2007; Vol. 28(1):1–9

the idea that the coexistence of two cognitive systems in the human brain, analytical and intuitive reasoning, may sometimes give rise to the view that there are two different realities in the world, a natural and a mystical reality (Lévy-Bruhl, 1949/1975). Furthermore, all the believer groups were comprised of more women than men. This result is consistent with earlier research on religious people (e.g., Stark, 2002) and paranormal believers (for a review see Vyse, 1997). In accordance with suggestions that women are less analytical and more intuitive than men (Lieberman, 2000; Pacini & Epstein, 1999), the gender difference in paranormal beliefs is partly explained by intuitive and analytical thinking, as we reported in an earlier study using the same data (Aarnio & Lindeman, 2005). A fifth common denominator of the three believer groups was the positive attitude toward the supernatural demonstrated by participants’ closest others. Along with mystical experiences, this was the best discriminator between the believers and nonbelievers. Unfortunately, the differences between the transmittance of religious and paranormal beliefs could not be studied with the measure we used, as it referred to ’mystical, supernatural phenomena’, which could include both religious and paranormal phenomena. Furthermore, although the differences were small, all the believers were emotionally less stable, in other words more neurotic, than the sceptics. As regards paranormal believers, this was in accordance with earlier empirical research (Wiseman & Watt, 2004; Vyse, 1997). As regards the religious, the result was inconsistent with our hypothesis and the majority of empirical research, which has shown religious people to be emotionally as stable as others (Hills et al., 2004; Saroglou, 2002). Some previous studies, however, have indicated that emotional stability is lower among those whose religiosity is extrinsic, that is, utilitarian and instrumental (Hills et al., 2004; Saroglou, 2002), which shows that the nature of religiosity should be examined in more detail in future studies. Finally, paranormal and double believers, but not religious people, had faced slightly more negative life events than the sceptics. This finding is consistent with previous studies that have shown paranormal beliefs to emerge as a response to frightening situations and personal crises (Keinan, 1994; Padgett & Jorgenson, 1982). However, we acknowledge that the effect of negative life events may require a longitudinal research design: For example, some people’s paranormal belief may strengthen and others’ weaken as a result of adverse events, and the effect may also vary depending on how much time has passed since the event (cf., Exline, 2002; Pargament, 2002). Although all the believer groups were, thus, similar in several ways, the religious people differed notably from the other believers in their set of values. First, the religious people emphasized conservation values such as respect for tradition, conformity, and security substantially more than the other believers, who in turn gave more pri© 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers


ority to openness to change by valuing reliance on one’s own judgment. This result supports Durkheim’s (1915/1964) argument that unlike in other supernatural beliefs, inherent in religion is god’s moral authority, ensuing submission of self to external expectations, and giving priority to social consensus and a stable social order. The second difference in values was that the religious people supported self-transcendence values, especially benevolence, more than the sceptics and the paranormal believers. Thus, as Schwartz and Huismans (1995) have noted, religious people value devotion to one’s in-group more than others. The results are in line with earlier work on religiosity and values (Roccas et al., 2002; Saroglou et al., 2004; Schwartz & Huismans, 1995) and highlight the importance of values in distinguishing different believers. A major limitation of this study was that our questions about participants’ religious beliefs were general in nature and did not differentiate between participants’ various approaches to religion. Therefore, in future studies, different kinds of religious beliefs should be taken into account. Also the nature of the sample restricts the results. Half of the participants were sceptical of both kinds of beliefs, indicating that supernatural explanations did not appeal to them. The prevailing scepticism toward the paranormal may reflect the participants’ high level of education and it is, thus, possible that replication of the present study with a more heterogeneous sample would provide other differences between the believers and the nonbelievers. Replications in other countries are also needed before generalizations can be made. While evidence about disparate correlates of either religious or paranormal beliefs has been available, the majority of studies to date have ignored systematic and simultaneous comparisons between both religious and paranormal beliefs and their alternative predictors. The present results supplement earlier work in important ways. As a whole, the study suggests that the role of analytical thinking, emotional instability, and negative life events in the formation of paranormal and religious beliefs is slight, and that mystical experiences, the influence of close others, and a tendency to rely on intuitive thinking explain the pull of both belief types to a great extent. Additionally, the degree of one’s conservation and benevolence values and the nature of one’s religiosity constitute important factors in determining whether a believer adopts paranormal beliefs, religious beliefs, or both. These individual differences may help to make theoretical statements about the psychological processes that underlie the formation and maintenance of religious and paranormal beliefs.

Acknowledgments This study was supported by a grant from the Academy of Finland (200828). © 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers

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