Abstract
Belief in astrology remains strong even today, and one of the explanations why some people endorse paranormal explanations is the individual differences in analytical thinking. Therefore, the main aim of this paper was to determine the effects of priming an analytical or intuitive thinking style on the credulity of participants. In two experiments (N = 965), analytic thinking was induced and the source of fake profile (astrological reading vs. psychological testing) was manipulated and participants’ prior paranormal beliefs, anomalous explanation, cognitive reflection, and depression were measured. Although analytic thinking was proved to be hard to induce experimentally, the results showed that analytic thinking predicts credulity and belief in the paranormal was linked with experiencing more anomalous experiences and more paranormal explanations. The more people were able to think analytically, the less credulous they were as reflected in the lower acceptance of fake profile as accurate.
Highlights
According to the various studies from around the globe, the number of people believing in astrology ranges from 28% (Newport and Strausberg, 2001) to 70.51% (Cavojová and Jurkovic, 2017), depending on the exact question asked and the cultural background of participants
The source of information was entered in the first step, analytic cognitive style (CRT) in the second step, prior paranormal beliefs (PBS), and proneness to anomalous explanation (PAE) in the third step of regression
The effect of the source of profile was not significant, and, in contrast with Bouvet and Bonnefon (2015, Study 1), we found that credulity was significantly associated with paranormal attribution and predicted by previous paranormal beliefs and paranormal explanation of uncanny events
Summary
According to the various studies from around the globe, the number of people believing in astrology ranges from 28% (Newport and Strausberg, 2001) to 70.51% (Cavojová and Jurkovic, 2017), depending on the exact question asked and the cultural background of participants This variability in self-reported belief in astrology depends on whether we ask about personal experience and behavior or objective facts. According to Campion (2017), when researchers ask about personal experience (e.g., “Do you check your partner’s zodiac sign?”), they get almost two times higher ratings than when they ask about objective facts (e.g., “Do you think astrology can make accurate predictions about the future?”) Still, it is unclear why so many people still believe things that have been proven to be untrue time and again. Analytical processes are necessary to overcome these intuitive processes, but people may fail to notice the necessity to override the intuitive response (detection failure), they may lack necessary knowledge (storage failure), or they may fail to override their intuitive response despite the effort to do so (inhibition failure) (De Neys and Bonnefon, 2013)
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