The Psychology of Paranormal Belief: A Researcher's Handbook

Abstract

It would perhaps be an overstatement to describe paranormal beliefs as ubiquitous, but they certainly are shared by many people. Rigorously solicited poll data suggest that a majority of the American population embraces at least one paranormal belief... Some account here should also be taken of the degree of conviction, because the rejection of even the less widely endorsed paranormal beliefs may be unequivocal in only a minority of the population. For example, Hamilton (2001) found that while there was considerable scepticism toward astrology, only 25 per cent of her sample said they had 'no belief at all' in astrology. In short, some degree of conviction in paranormal beliefs is very common in the general population... Strictly speaking, paranormal phenomena are scientifically impossible events or, as Broad (1949) argued, they are phenomena that violate the 'basic limiting principles' of current scientific understanding. Not all of the above beliefs relate to paranormal phenomena as thus defined; it may reasonably be argued that in a strict sense the existence of UFOs or the existence of God, for example, is not 'scientifically impossible'. There is a fundamental dilemma here that requires at least tentative resolution. One option would be to implement from the outset a definition of paranormal belief as belief in scientifically impossible phenomena and henceforth to exclude discussion of any belief (e.g., the existence of UFOs or God) that does not meet this criterion. Although this option is logically defensible, at this point of the exposition it would be tactically injudicious. There is a substantial quantity of research on these 'paranormal' beliefs that do not pertain to scientifically impossible phenomena and it would be premature to discard this knowledge without examining its potential implications for paranormal belief as more widely conceived. If belief in scientifically impossible phenomena were to be found to differ from the other beliefs that researchers have classified as paranormal, there will be ample opportunity in the final chapter of the monograph for some conceptual house-cleaning in relation to the 'paranormality' criterion. Thus I now aim to construct a working definition of 'paranormal belief' that accommodates the common broad usage of this term by most researchers and lay people. Under this approach paranormal belief cannot viably be defined simply as belief in scientifically impossible phenomena and, indeed, even a minor modification of Broad's (1949) definition of paranormality would not suffice for this purpose. As will become evident, the formulation of a working definition is not a straightforward task, but the following critical scrutiny of various definitional issues may help to clarify the nature of the concept of paranormal belief as it is popularly applied.