A common assumption is that belief in conspiracy theories and supernatural phenomena are grounded in illusory pattern perception. In the present research we systematically tested this assumption. ...Study 1 revealed that such irrational beliefs are related to perceiving patterns in randomly generated coin toss outcomes. In Study 2, pattern search instructions exerted an indirect effect on irrational beliefs through pattern perception. Study 3 revealed that perceiving patterns in chaotic but not in structured paintings predicted irrational beliefs. In Study 4, we found that agreement with texts supporting paranormal phenomena or conspiracy theories predicted pattern perception. In Study 5, we manipulated belief in a specific conspiracy theory. This manipulation influenced the extent to which people perceive patterns in world events, which in turn predicted unrelated irrational beliefs. We conclude that illusory pattern perception is a central cognitive mechanism accounting for conspiracy theories and supernatural beliefs.
Abstract Reputation monitoring and the punishment of cheats are thought to be crucial to the viability and maintenance of human cooperation in large groups of non-kin. However, since the cost of ...policing moral norms must fall to those in the group, policing is itself a public good subject to exploitation by free riders. Recently, it has been suggested that belief in supernatural monitoring and punishment may discourage individuals from violating established moral norms and so facilitate human cooperation. Here we use cross-cultural survey data from a global sample of 87 countries to show that beliefs about two related sources of supernatural monitoring and punishment — God and the afterlife — independently predict respondents' assessment of the justifiability of a range of moral transgressions. This relationship holds even after controlling for frequency of religious participation, country of origin, religious denomination and level of education. As well as corroborating experimental work, our findings suggest that, across cultural and religious backgrounds, beliefs about the permissibility of moral transgressions are tied to beliefs about supernatural monitoring and punishment, supporting arguments that these beliefs may be important promoters of cooperation in human groups.
Awe is an emotional reaction to something that is perceptually vast and elicits a need for mental accommodation. Virtual reality (VR) is effective in eliciting awe through simulating natural wonders ...and even supernatural experiences. Few studies have examined supernatural awe since it is, by definition, difficult to manipulate. We propose that supernatural awe can produce prosocial outcomes, including the intention to help others, and self-improvement as a newly-theorized outcome. A total of 125 participants participated in a between-subjects experiment: natural awe vs. supernatural awe vs. a control group. Results showed that supernatural and natural awe produced similarly high levels of vastness. In addition, supernatural and natural awe both led to stronger prosocial and self-improvement intentions through vastness than the control group. The participants found the supernatural awe content to be more enjoyable, arousing, and suspenseful, whereas natural awe elicited greater appreciation and more positive affect. Theoretical contributions and implications are discussed.
•Supernatural awe can be operationalized in virtual reality (VR).•Supernatural & natural awe both had higher levels of vastness than the control group.•Supernatural & natural awe led to prosocial intent and self-improvement via vastness.•Supernatural awe is more enjoyable, arousing, and suspenseful than other types of awe.•Natural awe elicited the greatest appreciation and most positive affect.
How do people decide whether a supernatural entity (God, the devil, ghosts/spirits, fate/destiny, karma, or luck) has intervened in their lives? Their decisions may depend partly on how well the ...event fits with beliefs about the entity's supernatural operating rules, such as the entity's power, scope of communication, and intent. We examined these ideas among undergraduates from three U.S. universities (N = 3,840). To assess beliefs about power, we asked questions like these: Do you believe that God has the power to violate natural laws and to work indirectly through nature? Can the devil affect many parts of people's lives, such as thoughts, relationships, and health? To assess beliefs about scope of communication, we asked about frequency (How often do ghosts/spirits try to communicate with people?), breadth (Does God try to communicate with many people, or just a few?), and modes (Does the devil communicate in multiple ways?). To assess intent, we asked about positive, negative, and justice-maintaining intentions ascribed to the entities. God was clearly seen as most powerful and intentional, with the broadest scope of communication. In most ways, ghosts/spirits were rated least influential. Impersonal forces and the devil were rated between God and ghosts/spirits in terms of influence. Correlations and regressions confirmed that beliefs about power, scope of communication, and intent all predicted more perceived experiences with entities. These findings, coupled with other research on supernatural beliefs and attributions, help to explain why some people perceive high levels of supernatural activity and communication, while others do not.
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► Show that both religious and paranormal belief can be predicted by cognitive style. ► Findings are independent of cognitive ability and demographic variables. ► Cognitive style also predicted the ...type of God belief/unbelief.
An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting (i.e., unbelieving) supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement (attendance at religious services, praying, etc.), conventional religious beliefs (heaven, miracles, etc.) and paranormal beliefs (extrasensory perception, levitation, etc.) with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically.
What types of attributions and appraisals predict gratitude to God (GTG)? After preregistering key hypotheses, we did an Internet survey of 1078 U.S. adults focused on a recent positive event. Even ...when controlling religiousness and God belief, GTG was strongly related to divine attributions for the event, which seemed more plausible when God was seen as powerful and loving and when divine attribution made the event seem more meaningful. In addition to these cognitive judgments, divine attributions and GTG were linked with desire: wanting to see God as a cause. Relationally, GTG was associated with seeing God's intentions as positive (trying to help, love, comfort, encourage, or protect), with actually feeling loved, cherished, valued, or appreciated by God in response, and with seeing the event as a divine gift - a perception more likely when people saw God as a gift-giver: giving gifts often to many people, including themselves.
Séances were wildly popular in France between 1850 and 1930, when members of the general public and scholars alike turned to the wondrous as a means of understanding and explaining the world. Sofie ...Lachapelle explores how five distinct groups attempted to use and legitimize séances: spiritists, who tried to create a new “science” concerned with the spiritual realm and the afterlife; occultists, who hoped to connect ancient revelations with contemporary science; physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists, who developed a pathology of supernatural experiences; psychical researchers, who drew on the unexplained experiences of the public to create a new field of research; and metapsychists, who attempted to develop a new science of yet-to-be understood natural forces.
Lachapelle examines the practices, aims, and level of success of these five disciplines, paying special attention to how they interacted with each other and with the world of mainstream science. Their practitioners regarded mystical phenomena worthy of serious study; most devotees—with notable exceptions of physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists—also meant to challenge conventional science in general and French science in particular. Through these stories, Lachapelle illuminates the lively relationship between science and the supernatural in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France and relates why this relationship ultimately led to the marginalization of psychical research and metapsychics.
An enlightening and entertaining narrative that includes colorful people like Allan Kardec—a pseudonymous former mathematics teacher from Lyon who wrote successful works on the science of the séance and what happened after death—Investigating the Supernatural reveals the rich and vibrant diversity of unorthodox beliefs and practices that existed at the borders of the French scientific culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Theories differ over whether religious and secular worldviews are in competition or represent overlapping and compatible frameworks. Here we test these theories by examining homogeneity and overlap ...in Christian and non-religious people's explanations of the world. Christian and non-religious participants produced free text explanations of 54 natural and supernatural phenomena. Using a new text analytic approach, we quantitatively measure the similarity between 7613 participant generated explanations. We find that the relative homogeneity of Christian and non-religious people's explanations vary depending on the kind of phenomena being explained. Non-religious people provided more similar explanations for natural than supernatural phenomena, whereas Christian explanations were relatively similar across both natural and supernatural phenomena. This challenges the idea that religious systems standardize and restrict people's worldviews in general, and instead suggest this effect is domain specific. We also find Christian and non-religious participants used largely overlapping concepts to explain natural and supernatural phenomena. This suggests that religious systems supplement rather than compete with secular based worldviews, and demonstrates how text analytics can help understand the structure of group differences.
•Hyperactive agency detection can predict conspiracy mentality.•This association is stronger in schizotypal individuals.•Causal ambiguity of schizotypal experiences may motivate conspiracy ...thinking.•Secular and supernatural conspiracy mentalities may have distinct correlates.
We examined whether belief in conspiracy theories is predicted by an overactive tendency to perceive agency in the environment, and hypothesized that this association is especially robust among high-schizotypy individuals. Samples of undergraduates (n=209) and conspiracist website visitors (n=37) completed measures of conspiracy mentality, hyperactive agency detection, and schizotypy. Correlation analysis indicated significant positive relationships between all pairs of variables in both groups. Multiple regression analysis showed that schizotypy is incrementally predicted by conspiracy mentality and hyperactive agency detection, with chi-square analysis revealing a significant tendency for high-schizotypal individuals to score higher on both variables. Heightened uncertainty about causally ambiguous subjective experiences likely predisposes schizotypals to greater hyperactive agency detection, thereby increasing the probability of conspiracy thinking. Findings are linked to ideological and theoretical differences between secular and supernatural conspiracist beliefs, which are readily apparent in conspiracist literature and communities, and bring into question the homogeneity of the conspiracy mentality construct.
This volume provides the three corpora on which the associated monograph The Boggart: Folklore, History, Place-Names and Dialect is based. Offering detailed insights into a ground-breaking research ...method, it will be of particular interest to folklorists, historians and dialect scholars.
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