Abstract
In a sample of 599 participants (60% female, 18–81 years), we tested the hypotheses that cognitive ability and the big-six personality traits suffice to explain the individual-difference component of paranormal beliefs (belief in magic, astrology, esoterism, supernatural beings, and spirituality). Additionally, we measured 14 other potential predictors that were found to correlate with paranormal beliefs in prior research (e.g., ontological confusion). Although cognitive ability and the big-six explained 10% of the variance in individual belief, ontological confusion and causality understanding also were significant predictors in regression analyses. The resulting model, explaining 19 % of variance, consists of ontological confusion, cognitive ability (negative correlation), openness to new experiences, emotionality, conscientiousness (neg. corr.) and causality understanding (neg. corr.). We discuss the findings with reference to two hypothetical factors that drive individuals' acceptance of paranormal beliefs, inclination for story-telling, and tendency to evaluate belief content in terms of reason and conscientious evaluation.
Highlights
The homo sapiens is capable of telling fictions, i.e. stories about entities or phenomena that cannot be seen, heard, touched, or smelled (Harari, 2015)
We replicated most of the correlations reported in the literature with the exception of life satisfaction (Gray and Gallo, 2016) and some personality traits
These findings indicate that the majority of the variables assessed in our study represent promising candidates for predictors of paranormal beliefs
Summary
The homo sapiens is capable of telling fictions, i.e. stories about entities or phenomena that cannot be seen, heard, touched, or smelled (Harari, 2015). If Carla destroys Tom's sandcastle and Tom's mother subsequently complains about “that aggressive girl at the playground”, this would be an example of a fictitious story. According to attribution research (Uleman and Bargh, 1989), this judgment reflects a so-called spontaneous trait inference (aggressiveness) based on observation of a behavior (destroying a sand castle). Even if we doubted the idea that Carla truly is aggressive, we would not label the mother's belief as paranormal, because the notion that traits can predict behavior converges with theory and empirical evidence in academic psychology. We generally accept stories referring to stable individual differences, we may consider a single observation an invalid measure of Carla's personality. In principal it would be possible to subject Carla to a standardized personality test, which represents a widely accepted means with which to measure the distal entity of a trait
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